1 Samuel 8:4–20, Mark 3:20–25
The people call for a king in 1 Samuel. The people call to be ruled. Samuel lets them know what the cost is going to be and yet they still call for a king. They are jealous of the other nations. The king will take but they don’t mind. The king will order about but they don’t mind. We have a king in this land in the prison industrial complex. We have a king in this punitive idea of justice. We are ruled and the church says ‘thank you’ to King Justice for the privilege of being ruled. The church has been complicit because it wants to be like other groups. The church has been complicit because we take the status quo more seriously than the words of the prophets. The Bible exists to justify our place in society. When it challenges that position, it is just meddling.
We are a divided society. We have divided ourselves. We have pushed others outside the bounds of society and labeled them and branded them with the finality of permanent records. We have ceased to listen to the God who breaks chains and longed to be respectable to powerful of this world. In Mark, people accuse Jesus of being possessed because he is ministering to folks who have been cast out of society. Instead of questioning their own structures of power, they question Jesus, but he turns it back in their face. Satan does not cast out Satan because a house divided will not stand.
Lincoln uses this language to talk about the United States before the Civil War. He says, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
Similarly, the church’s complicity with the prison industrial complex will not dissolve it. We will either oppose and destroy that evil, or we will oppose and destroy the Scriptures and the God revealed therein. Will bind the strongman, the lord of this world, the deceiver who deceives us into thinking justice is only found in the pain of others or retribution? Or will we have faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who defeated death on the cross and came to set the captives free?
Rev. Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Spicewood, TX.