Raphael Warnock: Isaiah 40:5 Means We Need LGBTQ Perspectives To See The Glory Of God

Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock gives a novel interpretation of Isaiah 40:5 during Tuskegee University's 2020 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation.

TRANSCRIPT: In God's spiritual geography, there is equity. There is integrity. There is possibility. Then, finally, he says, "all flesh shall see it together." There is inclusivity. "All flesh shall see it together." What a great line. "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." Dr. Gray, when I read this line, I used to think that it meant that because God's glory is so great, that because God's glory is so magnificent and so sublime, that when it shows up, doesn't matter who you are or where you are, you cannot help but see it. "All flesh shall see God's glory."

That's one way of looking at it. That's all right, but in recent days I've come to see it differently. I think the prophet is actually teaching us *how* to see the glory of God. I think the prophet is not saying to us that God's glory is so grand and so powerful that all flesh will have to see it together. I think the Prophet is telling us that God's glory is so great and so grand and so magnificent that it takes all flesh in order to see it, that the only way to see God's glory is for us to get together.

Men can't understand it without women. White sisters and brothers cannot understand it without black sisters and brothers. That's why someone has said, when Patrick Henry said "give me liberty or give me death," I wonder what he would have said if his slave had said, "Me too." That is the continuing project of all flesh, seeing it together. Men thought they understood it until women came up and stood up in the suffrage movement and said, "Me too." Those of us who are of able bodies, we thought we understood it before sisters and brothers who are differently abled stood up through the American Disabilities Act and said, "Me too! Give us access."

And that's what I hear our LGBTQ sisters and brothers standing up saying to those of us who are straight and heterosexual, that you don't know what it's like to live in my body, to have my experience. And they're standing up in their own way and saying, "me too," and before you shut them down, recognize that there are some things you can only see from certain perspectives. It takes all flesh to see what God is up to in the world.

Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0egqeZD7R-g

WPC on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WokePreacherTV
WPC on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wokepreacherclips
WPC on Gab: https://www.gab.com/wokepreacherclips/