December 20

Upon your walls, O Holy City, I have posted sentinels…
Go through, go through the gates;
prepare the way for the people…
They shall be called, “The Holy People, The Redeemed of God,”
and you shall be called, “Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken.”
Isaiah 62:6-12

Rev. Sarah Howell, Pastor, Green Street United Methodist Church (Winston-Salem, NC)

“Abolition is also creation. Creation of many worlds here and now (and still-to-come). Worlds that exist in and through the many cracks in the walls of our structures and societies… Abolition is therefore also about redirecting our collective capacities away from the carceral and toward producing and reproducing these other worlds already here and still to come.” – Rustbelt Abolition Radio, Tasting Abolition

 

When I first read this passage, it seemed at odds with abolition—watchmen on city walls? Right there in the first verse? But I remembered something a friend told me about how the image of a city is turned on its head in Revelation, which is itself a future vision of flourishing for the city. The New Jerusalem has walls, but they are made of gemstones, more decorative than protective. Those walls are peppered with gates that are always open. In the New Jerusalem, safety is not a concern; there is liberation that transcends security.

In this old Jerusalem, however, safety is still a need—and while we might interrogate the insularity of focus, it is there for a reason as empire threatens and besieges. What if these watchmen are not agents of the state, but members of a community keeping themselves safe?

We pray and watch and wait and work for the day when our cities have walls of jasper and rubies. In the meantime, we keep us safe. We open the gates to the people and welcome those in need of refuge. We trust—and we work to secure this trust—that one day those who have been deserted, abandoned, betrayed by the world will be sought out and uplifted by the divine.

Prayer

Arriving God, may this Advent
of hoping and preparing,
dreaming and longing,
teach us how to live in the already, but not yet. 
Keep us working for the future of love and justice
that is to come,
and making glimpses of that future
real in our midst. 
In the name of the One who is already present,
and always drawing near, we pray.  Amen.

Freedom Song

Music: “Standing Stone” by Melanie DeMore
Offered by: Lynice Pinkard and Erica Powell Wrencher