Sunday, December 3, 2017

Scandalous But True - Scandal, God was Born series: Christian Lindbeck

Unbelievable shame -
audacious claims -
stupendous stories -
swallowed and
banked on
by millions!

Scandalous...
yet true.

A Jewish family
of the house of David -
lineage intact.
A virgin teen
encountering
an actual angel
with astounding news. 
Her curious mind alert
in spite of quaking knees,
she blurts the obvious: "how?"
and receives
a mystery for answer.
Instead of insisting 
on diagrams and proofs,
she bows her head
accepting
the mysterious scandal;
so much teeters
upon her answer.

Why her?
Why her people?
An unexpected choice
from an
unpredictable God
who will not be boxed in.

God is a lover 
of irony -
choosing to be born
into a Jewish
peasant family
at a time when Romans
held pomp and power
and Jews were
merely dust between their toes.
But it's not as though
he didn't warn us
using an entire Testament
to allude and foreshadow
his plan.
From a woman (promised
from day one),
will come the seed
that will rescue us all
from the bite of the
Serpent.

One man 
from a particular people,
calls together
all people.
Instead of "the Other"
defining the group 
we are part of,
it only illuminates
another lovely branch
of this multi-faceted
world he created.

We are his
before we are families,
ethnicities and
nations.

Scandalous...but true.