My Advent

 

by Michael Nelms

 

… and on earth peace among those whom He favors!

And those He doesn’t?

From Modernity’s resurrection of Marcion on,

we live in the divorce of old and new,

children, perhaps, of both,

but singly raised now,

by the good and decent  parent.

 

The Old —

vengeful, angry, punitive,

at times seemingly drunk with rage,

thunder and lightning,

smoky, quaking mountains,

frightening the children

with His eye for an eye,

tooth for tooth

backwoods justice;

a jealous, demanding god,

commanding ancient desert insurgents

to invade, kill for holy cause.

 

The New–

forgiving, merciful, loving;

giving, forgiving again (and again, and again),

blessing, inviting,

“Peace be unto you.”

 

But what about the woes to unrepentant cities,[1]

And to those of us who are full now, and free to laugh?[2]

How is the Divine in Ai,[3]

divorced from the Divine above Chorazin’s sky?[4]

 

Where is the absence of vengeance for Ananias and Sapphira,[5]

or in the smoke of the great Whore?[6]

Love does not rejoice in others’ demise,[7]

Except, of course, when they had it coming to them.

How, tell me, does the New’s, “Do not be deceived;

God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow,”[8]

differ from the jealous, demanding, heavy-handed Old?

Have I fashioned an image of emotional gold?

A quiet Christ amid cattle who low,[9]

so tender, so mild,[10]

a guilt-ridden mother-Christ unwilling her fatherless child to offend or rile?

What about the moneychangers whose tables she overthrew,[11]

Or the fig tree in leaf cursed into eternal barrenness,[12]

Or the condemnation of the literary pious?[13]

Will not my dark sayings, whispers, secrets be exposed as well?[14]

Yes, Glory to God in the highest,

Cornelius is brought in, and Grace beyond borders swells, [15]

But the God who did not allow angels to keep their position,

Appears in Jude of no different disposition.[16]

 

Yes, a new commandment, Love, has been given,[17]

But the kind of love that does not always welcome?[18]

Perhaps like Marcion, Jefferson,

though more quietly, less consciously (and therefore forgiven),

I cut away by averted gaze the Old in the New,

unremember the estranged father with no visitation rights.

 

Holman Hunt’s Christ is my only real parent …

calmly, patiently, pleasantly,

knocking at my door,

coming for a cup of tea,

visiting the independent child,

for it’s all about me, now,

when I open the door —

as controlled as Hunt’s pastoral scene

where there is no great Whore,

nothing mean.

 

So come, Lord Jesus.