We Must Give Up On Violence
Advent 2A | Isaiah 11: 1-10, Matthew 3:1-12
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”
It is a promise. That the project isn’t done. We aren’t finished, over, dead. There is yet life in that old stump. A shoot, breaking through the fibrous ceiling — a cauterized cut can’t staunch this flow, God’s intentional grace, the will to create, renew, this ever-changing world. Like a blatant disregard for our own weak intentions, to control and dominate, exclude and devastate. It is, for us, no end so final as one God declares. And empires have no gods!
“He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;”
The Spirit of GOD rests with the Root of Jesse. He isn’t swayed by mighty forces and their will, their greed, but by the plight of the poor and the meek. It is God’s righteousness that stirs him, empowers him, to draw an end to suffering, to abuse. God’s righteousness that ends the wickedness and deprives the wicked of supremacy.
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