Month: February 2020

This is the first Lenten post in our continuing series of meditations on readings from the Revised Common Lectionary.

As we enter into Lent, the Old Testament lesson tells the story of the fall of humankind in the garden of Eden, and the epistle brings the response to that from the letter to the Romans:

5:15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.

5:16 And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.

The beauty of this passage is the all-encompassing nature of Christ’s free gift of forgiveness: the gift of justification rather than condemnation.

Our current criminal legal system is a system of condemnation. The fact that the only response we can envision to crime and harm is one of punishment and prisons is an effect of the “one man’s trespass”—it is a feature of a fallen reality. Judgment itself, following the one trespass, has been perverted in our reality and our understanding, so that judgment is seen as something always to do with punishment.

But the promise of Christ is that the free gift turns judgment into justification. This does not mean that those who do harm are left unaccountable, or that no amends are made! It means that our view of judgment and justice should be one rooted in love and restoration.

Fleming Rutledge translates the term “justification” as “rectification,” making right. Our current paradigm for “criminal justice” does not make space for rectification, but replaces it with retribution and punishment. Yet the promise of the free gift of grace is the promise that the appropriate, godly, redeemed response to crime and harm is a response of rectification: of making the situation as right as possible. The story of the gospel, the rectification promised by God and effected by Christ, is about the transformation of our conception of justice from being primarily about punishment to being primarily about restoration.

Prisons, in other words, are an effect of the fall of humankind. Prisons are one of the many brokennesses of our reality from which Christ came to redeem us. Prisons, in other words, cannot be redeemed in the service of justice. Rather, in the kingdom of God that is already appearing around us, they are being abolished so that human justice can be redeemed, transformed and rectified into the healing, compassionate reality intended by God. The free gift of Christ is the end of retribution and incarceration!

by Rev. Wilson Pruitt

Psalm 99:4 Mighty King. lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.

What is the limit of the justice of God? Too often, the church in the world is presented as navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of Realism and Idealism, but this is a deeply unfaithful dichotomy. And I mean ‘unfaithful’ in the literal sense of “lacking faith.” Is the justice of God limited by the Overton Window of our political institutions? This is one of the first responses to any language of prison abolition. The theological and biblical account is clear throughout. No biblical author ever writes in favor of chains. What is left is the limit of the Christian imagination of God’s justice and for too long the limit has been narrow. People have not seen God as a lover of justice for all but for some. We can see this contrast between limited justice verses expansive justice with Matthew’s account of the transfiguration. 

Matthew 17:1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.

Matthew 17:2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.

Matthew 17:3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.

Matthew 17:4 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

Peter misses the point. Peter wants to stay on the mountain. He thinks the vision is for him. Should we stay on the mountain or go back down? Are visions of God offered for the select few or all? Is justice offered for few or for all? Christian Abolition is a claim of faith about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that God’s justice demands the chains be broken and that human notions of justice are passing away. Even the justice Paul describes in Romans 13 that is often held up to justify state authority is positioned next to the Justice of God. Authority comes from God, as all things come from God, but Paul is not telling the Church in Rome to be complacent or blindly follow but to “get rid of the actions that belong to the darkness and put on the weapons of light” (Romans 13:12b). Chains are an action of darkness. Freedom and reconciliation are weapons of light. 

Matthew 17:7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” 

We do not need to fear being faithful. We need not fear stretching God’s justice beyond the limits of current human institutions. Instead, we should be afraid of being unfaithful to the fullness of God’s justice and love.

This is part of our series of meditations on the texts of the Revised Common Lectionary.

The gospel lesson appointed for this week dives into some of the difficult teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. From an abolitionist point of view, perhaps most immediately striking is the discussion of prisons in 5:25: “Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison.”

We certainly do not need to read into this an acceptance of the necessity of prisons on Jesus’ part. He is not saying, “If you do wrong, you should be thrown into prison.”

Instead, what Jesus is doing here is presenting a sort of “two kingdoms” cosmology: he is offering a vision of a new way of being in community characterized by reconciliation, and contrasting it to the earthly, fallen system of addressing harm with imprisonment and punishment.

It is true that this is a hard teaching, however we read it. But perhaps its sting is that Jesus promises us that we will get what we ask for, and will be measured by the values we practice. 

If we aim to build the community of reconciliation, then we will live in a community characterized by inclusion and peace. But if we refuse to take part in the new community of reconciliation and accountability that he is describing, but instead insist on relying on prisons and punishment to address harm, then we will be “given up” to the powers of the world, in the form of the community of vengeance and punishment that we have built for ourselves. Compare this to 1 Corinthians 5:5, and the idea that a member of the church doing continuous harm should be given up to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Our Christian communities are places of reconciliation, but when we insist on nevertheless building structural systems of punishment and incarceration, we run the risk of becoming liable to them ourselves.

What this can show the church, perhaps, is an insight of transformative justice communities, who have by necessity found ways to do justice independently of the criminal-punishment system that has failed them: we must build structures of accountability and reconciliation that are in line with our values, rather than accepting the dominant values of our punitive culture. The church should not accept the necessity of prisons, policing, and punishment as a stand-in for justice. Rather, we should name those, as Jesus does, as tools of the dominant powers of this world, which are captive to sin. We should seek, instead, to establish a community of accountability and reconciliation, and to understand our lives and our communities to be governed by the logic of the kingdom of heaven, not the logic of this world.

Editor’s note: Today’s Lectionary post, on Isaiah 58:1-9 and Matthew 5:13-20, is written by guest contributor Rev. Wilson Pruitt.

58:3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.

58:4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.

58:5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?

58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

Who should fast and why? The fast Isaiah speaks of is not for self-actualization. In fact, Isaiah transfigures fasting from an action of the self to act of societal transformation. Isaiah challenges the ways private fasts have been distorted in verse 5:

58:5 “Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?”

The prophet then shifts swiftly to a proclamation of abolition in verse 6: 

58:6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”

This is the heart of the matter. Christians have allegorized away the language of bonds and yokes in order to soften Isaiah’s call. And thus to use the  language of Jesus in the reading from Matthew 5, Christians have made the salt of the kingdom of heaven lose its flavor; we have put the bushel over the light. 

Matthew 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.

5:15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.

5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

The prophet’s call is clear, the consequence is tremendous but not impossible. The call is to transform society by loosing the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, and breaking every (single) yoke. This is the fast God chooses for us. This is how to shine. But sometimes, the darkness of a bushel basket provides more comfort than the exposure of light. To shine, to break chains, takes faith beyond the status quo. Faith in a world beyond the world we have today. Faith in a God whom we can trust: 

Isaiah 58:11 The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.

Rev. Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Austin, Texas.