Invitation Missed

We look for you and did not find you,
We cried out to you and you did not hear.
You sent messages when we asked for the Messenger,
Cool water when we prayed for fire.

Your watchers looked but did not see me,
Because they looked for a Lamb and I came as a Lion,
A child but I came as an Everlasting Father,
A sower but I came as a Reaper.

Behold there he is!
Twice a cedar, walking in the hills,
Skin bronze, face flint, eyes fire!
Crowned with seven horns of eyes,
The winnowing fork in his hand!

Did you gird yourself as a man?
No you melted like a woman.*
Because you fear the fork.
How else will seed be made for planting?
Do you think only of bread for eating?
You turned away because of your shameful chaff,
but see, son, you could be rid of it.

*This is neither a Biblical nor correct image of a woman, but rather a problematic ultra-receptive and overly-effeminate stereotype in misogynistic culture expressed in a spiritual posture in the church that emphasizes emotion and familiar spirits in complete subjection to systems of control over the freedom of identity in covenant by principle, reason, and obedience. For more on this, see the commentary.

Written in the aftermath of an event celebrating the 500-year Anniversary of the beginning of the Radical Reformation in Zurich Switzerland. See What Invitation Was Missed? for a Systematics Commentary.