He will Return

He Will Return

(Advent)

He will not return

to Eden.

Not to clean mornings.

Not to soil

that never learned blood.

The sword still burns.

Time does not reverse.

What was broken

stays broken

until it is healed.

He will not return

to innocence.

There is no undoing

of the long violence.

No erasing

of bodies used,

lands stripped.

He comes instead

to flesh that remembers.

To earth stamped flat

by boots,

by markets,

by graves.

He does not come

to make things

as they were.

He comes

the way he came.

Word

hammered into flesh.

Glory

wrapped in sweat and shit.

Heaven

forced down

into bone and blood.

Born crying.

Born breakable.

Born marked

for slaughter.

Incarnation

was not gentle.

Resurrection

does not tidy this.

It carries it

forward.

He will return

as the butchered Lamb.

Standing.

Slain.

Wounds still open.

Blood still speaking.

We will look

on the one

we have pierced.

Not from a distance

but close enough

to feel it.

And his love

will pierce us back.

Not to destroy

but to split us open

heart from lie

truth from fear.

He returns

to East of Eden places

wards thick with antiseptic and dread,

tents sagging under rain and waiting,

streets where grief

learned to smoke and swear.

He comes to judge

without spectacle.

With nearness.

Truth that stands

in front of us

and will not move.

What cannot return

is a world

without scars.

What returns

is a world

where scars

no longer rule.

The shroud

that smothers the nations

will be torn.

Death will gag.

Tears

salt,

spit,

and shame

will be wiped

by wounded hands.

The tree of life

is not behind us.

It tears up

through wrecked ground

roots cracking stone,

leaves pressed

onto open flesh

for the healing of the peoples.

He will return.

Not to take us

away.

Heaven

will press down

on earth.

The holy

will pitch a tent

among the unholy.

So stay awake.

Trim the wick.

Fill the lamp.

Keep the fire alive

when the dark

refuses to lift.

Because the light

will come

scarred,

bleeding,

burning with love

and the dark

will not be able

to hold it.

.-Rev’d Jon Swales