Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5
Melissa began her sermon on this first Sunday of Advent by sharing a rendition of Down by the Riverside by Rosetta Tharpe.
In the Isaiah passage, God paints a picture for Isaiah of a world where tools of war become obsolete. That is a pretty bold vision for people locked into a city waiting for starvation to overtake them. And it is a bold vision for people starving for freedom in cotton and tobacco fields under whip and chain. Ain’t gonna study war no more.
Spirituals, like the ones we heard today, refused to let suffering be the last word. They offered vision, an imagination for a world that no longer required war, because God’s expansive flood changed every nation it swept along.
For all of us who prop up our lives with the safety afforded by nuclear threats and the stock market and police brutality and oil reserves, for us the roaring of the flood may sound like the end of the world. It turns out that’s just not true. This is just the beginning.
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