Gathering the Dispersed Children of God

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death. Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples. John 11:45-54

The Dispersed Children of God

They sent our ancestors on long walks
took us away from our homes and land
called us less than human and in need
of civilization and reform.

In ancient times governments and rulers
displaced people for the riches of land
sent them away to foreign hostile places
and made them eat the grass of sorrow.

The religious and political leaders
feared the power of the homeless teacher
the one who made the blind to see
and brought a young man back from death.

They came to turtle island and feared also
the tender relationship with this land
how we honored and revered the source of life
that they wanted to subdue and destroy.

They brought us bible and the Jesus story
and we believed the healing and the light
and they bundled our children away from us
to teach them how to be rulers like them.

But the rabbi savior did not walk with us
to then let us go our way alone
he came to gather us back together
to bring us to our homelands again.