“Christ in you, the hope of glory”: Three Poems on the Incarnation
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Incarnation has come to be a theological word associated primarily with the embodiment of God Himself in human flesh, living for a time on earth with the name of Jesus of Nazareth. He was also given the name of “Immanuel,” meaning “God with us” (Matt. 1:23). But “God with us” means more than the fact that the Son of God was historically present on earth for a short time. When He went back to Heaven to be with the Father, His place was taken by the Holy Spirit, so that the joyful Presence of God within us is the “hope of glory.” Just as Jesus’ time on earth was lived and terminated for a larger purpose, so we, dying to the flesh, will find His Presence in these mortal bodies to be fulfilled by being resurrected into the eternal Presence of God. God’s Incarnation is reenacted in us, adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.
The three poems below present responses to and experiences of the Incarnation. In “The Husbandry of God,” Mary wrestles with the implications and the aftermath of yielding herself to be the instrument by which the God of Heaven would be incubated and born into the world. She is the willing ground into which divine seed will be planted to bear the fruit of Heaven, and therein she prefigures the process by which every believer in the Messiah becomes a recipient of the Presence of God and by His power reaps eternal life.
The Husbandry of God
(Luke 1:26-35)
How can I contain this word from the Lord?
His light has pierced my being
And sown in single seed
Both glory and shame.
Content was I
To wed in lowliness
And live in obscurity,
With purity my only dower.
Now, ravished with power,
I flout the conventions of man
To incubate God.
In lowliness how shall I bear it?
In modesty how shall I tell it?
What now shall I become?
But the fruit of God's planting
Is His to harvest.
No gleaner I, like Ruth,
But the field itself,
In whom my Lord lies hid.
In “Immanuel,” the “one birth” at the center of the poem both emanates from and ends in God’s Presence. In the first triplet, we look back to the source of the unique “one birth”; in the last triplet we see the results of the “one birth.” God became flesh that we might truly know Him, and He truly know us.
Immanuel
In God's Presence
Is the essence
Of perfect earth;
In one birth
Knows all earth
The essence
Of God's Presence.
Finally, “And the Word Became Flesh” emphasizes that it was the very essence, or “Word” of God Who gave up His rightful place beside the Father and came in the form of a fleshly baby. In His short earthly ministry, He steadfastly walked the road to a death He did not deserve, and thereby enabled us who believe in Him to become children of God, inhabited by His Presence as a guarantee that we will someday abide eternally in His Presence.
"And the Word Became Flesh"
(John 1:1)
When Word invested in flesh,
No matter the shrouds that swathed it;
The donning of sin's poor corpse
(Indignity enough)
Was rightly wrapped in robes of death.
Yet breath of God
Broke through the shroud,
Dispersed the cloud
That darkened every birth before.
Those swaddling bands bespoke
A glory in the grave,
When flesh emerged as Word.
Take up this flesh, O Lord:
Re-form it with Your breath,
That, clothed in wordless death,
It may be Your Word restored.
