Word Made Flesh

Word Made Flesh

The ties that bind…
in unity and diversity…
welcoming everyone…

The words in the Sunday
liturgy and song
ring from the page –
this Gospel Call
of conviction and change,
this alternative story:
remember our connections…
resist evil with good…

Our confessed
complicity
with injustice
and discrimination…
not just words we glaze over –
today they stand out:
we see this,
we know it all around.

Our special offering
we’ve been collecting all month
without thinking much about it –
just a simple thing
that churches do –
raising funds for refugees from Syria…
becomes this past week
a revolutionary act.

Our simple words –
all are welcome to this table
the creation of a community
so far from where we live.

And what of this neighbor, this enemy
we must love as ourselves – 
these persecutors who we must pray for?

Perhaps now
we are finally Waking Up
awakening as if for the first time
to this story made
for times like this.

I don’t know what’s happened to America
this America I used to know and love –
but I hear today what’s happening to the church –
naming, remembering, living our call
as we have never sung it before.

Coins ring in the offering plate
Voices rise to sing
Hands outstretch to those we love
and those we don’t know how to meet.

We pray and march
placards in hand –
words extracted from
the Sunday bulletin:
Love Your Neighbor…
Welcome Everyone…
Resist Evil with Good…
Love Your Enemy….

For times like this, perhaps,
the church was made.

For times like this, perhaps,
we were made as well.