Advent 3

Do they know it’s Christmastime?
A time of warmth, well meaning cheer.
Rose-tinted smiling oxen
Air-brushed angels who gently flap and sing.

Do they know it’s Christmastime?
Did they get the memo?
We crave soft focus, wide-angled perfection;
A baby that doesn’t cry;
Oxen that don’t smell;
A poultice of platitudes to ease our troubled soul.

Do they know it’s Christmastime?
What place then for a ranting ragged loon?
Screaming, spittle streaming and vehemently venting
Camel clad costume secured with leather loops,
Lunching on locusts and chomping on honeycomb.
This throwback to ancestral, prophetic piety,
Out of time, out of place and out of luck,
Our ears are stopped and locked.
We won’t hear his haranguing
We are safe and secure in our seclusion
Self-absorbed, self-absolved in our own scene.
No room for discomfort, only soft sheen.

Do they know it’s Christmastime?
This miraculous man, born in scintillating circumstances
This child of faithful folk, following God’s call.
This child now grown, who calls us home
Ranting and raving about the one who’s saving sinners
This one to come, greater and more worthy.
This sledgehammer call to repentance which shatters hardened hearts
Which calls for winding roads to become parallel paths of righteousness.
John the baptiser, realiser of the prophetic past.

This is Christmas.
A seismic shift in humanity’s permanent perspective.
The hungry fed,
The rejected accepted
The sinner embraced and welcomed home.