Son of man You called Yourself!

Though Son of God You are

Son of Adam You became

Outrageously claiming our identity

Laying no blame

Embracing our sordid history

Shocking in Your refusal

To stand separate from our misery

 

You, who are the spoken Word,

Creation’s unmatched sound

Breaking violently into the awkward silence

Upending the presumed pattern

Turning the universe upside down

Among us, with us, one of us

Sleeping, eating, laughing, weeping

Did you forget we are little more than dust?

 

Like a thunderous declaration

Your shout shook the heavens

Declaring Your allegiance to Adam’s seed

Terrifying in Your resolve

To merge Yourself with our humanity

So absolutely, no way back

Sealing Your fate at our hands

Fully occupying the depth of our lack

 

Too disturbing it is for us

That You would choose to be a son of man

Upsetting all our proper decorum

Where God is God and man is man

Each in his own exclusive forum

You, dissatisfied with such an arrangement

Invading our lost space, becoming flesh

Daring us look You full in the Face

 

A God who sits aloof and safe

Not sullying His hands with our filth

Or destroying His reputation with our company

This we can bear

But a God who willingly joins our fatal condition

Washes our feet, weeps at our dilemma

Subjects Himself to our suffering

For this we have no words, nor story, nor tradition

 

Son of Man You called Yourself!

What God is this Who pours Himself

So brazenly into our depravity

Kissing our dirt-strewn faces

Uninfected by our self-inflicted plague?

What manner of Love is so resolved

To save us from ourselves

That we must either walk away…

Or kneeling, name You Son of God?

Copyright Cheryl McGrath, Bread for the Bride, 2013