Isaiah 11:1–10
If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Flight? Invisibility? Superspeed?
A few years ago, my then-partner definitively answered this for me: The power to create forests. Corporations are burning down the Amazon? Bam, forest. Developers want to build a new subdivision? Speak the word, forest appears. I have yet to find a better answer to this question.
But creating forests at whim is not just a reparative power. An invading army is about to attack your city? Poof, instant forest disorients the invaders. Trying to blockade an ICE detention center? Every time the trucks try to leave, more trees suddenly appear in front of them!
It’s hard to operate a carceral system if suddenly a forest is growing in the middle of it, and won’t stop. If roots begin to buckle the concrete and branches tear open the fences. If giant oaks suddenly tear through the ceiling of the police precinct.
While we don’t have the power to magically generate forests to confuse our enemies and set our people free, this famous passage from Isaiah invites us to imagine what might be growing out of seemingly-dead wood. The small shoots of hope grow, in a few short verses, into one with the power to bring righteousness to Earth, to judge for the poor and oppressed. All is not lost. In fact, all is about to be totally transformed. Children will live in safety. All of creation will find a new harmony. Out of these tiny green leaves, a whole new world is born.
Abolition seems impossible. So often, a new world feels not just far away, but totally beyond our reach. Thankfully, it is not our reach that matters. It is not up to our individual superpowers. It is our collective reaching that transforms this fragile new life into a new world. We make abolition possible.
Rev. Jay Bergen is a pastor at Germantown Mennonite Church in Philadelphia, and a volunteer organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI), a campaign fighting to end life sentences and heal communities across Pennsylvania.