If you know me, you know that the Acts of the Apostles is my favorite book in the Bible. I know it has a complicated history, I know that its stories can trouble and disturb us, but what piece of our Scripture is that not true for? I love Acts precisely because it is the story of people stumbling but continuing to move forward, continuing to grow and change by the power of God’s spirit. And no story better encapsulates how people change than this famous story of Saul’s transformation on the Road to Damascus.
Saul starts this story as a contract bounty hunter, an eager participant in state violence. A few chapters earlier, the story goes out of its way to tell us that he holds the coats for those who lynched Stephen. In the NRSV, Saul is described in this story as “still breathing threats and murder against the disiples of the Lord.”
The writer isn’t interested in Saul’s childhood traumas, how structures of colonialism limit his agency, or anything we might seek out in a story of transformation. He enjoys this work. He volunteers to serve a no-knock warrant in another jurisdiction. Many of us know a cop or a prison CO like this: The one who takes joy in smashing up the encampment, the one quick to write someone up and throw them in the hole. That person who makes us go, “Maybe some people are actually evil?”
But don’t underestimate Jesus. He knocks Paul down and tells him straight: “I’m the one you’re looking for.” And it is in the blinding light of confrontation that Saul begins his transformation.
The struggle for freedom requires conflict (it’s a struggle, after all). I’m a tender-hearted, white middle-class Midwesterner, and I really wish we could all grow and heal without conflict and confrontation. And alas, this story is not the last time Paul will be pushed to grow. The rest of Acts is full of fights, many of them physical. But here, in this dramatic showdown in the street, he begins to change.
The poet Cecilia Llompart writes, “all growth is an argument for more light.” Paul isn’t done growing here, but the fact that he can change is the Spirit’s argument for the disciples of the Lord to not give up on him.
It’s easy to give up on our enemies. But don’t underestimate Jesus. All growth is an argument for more light.
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.
Testimony has a central function within the Christian faith. One of the more curious aspects of Christianization in the Late Ancient period was moving from stories of heroes to stories of martyrs. Instead of tales about Theseus or Achilles, stories of Perpetua & Felicitas and others were shared and spread. A martyr is a witness. Someone who testifies about an event. This legal language of witness and testimony was present in the use of martyr in the ancient world as it is today. The book of acts will show Stephen the Protomartyr and his death in Acts 7, but in Acts 5 we have Peter giving a testimony in front of the Sanhedrin. Peter declares clearly, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”
There is a tricky balance to be had between obedience to God and human authority. Many claim to speak for God, even if they say opposite things. Just because someone claims to speak for God, doesn’t make what they say true. How we can discern this is found a few verses later in the words of Gamaliel: “Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”
Or, in the words of Jesus, a good tree bears good fruit. What is the fruit of the claims people make? We have seen the fruit of the Prison Industrial Complex. We have seen an inability to step down from the carceral state. We have seen families continued to be torn apart and generations ravaged by the ill-effects of this system. Peter stands to speak of Jesus and the power of God. In speaking up, in testifying for prison abolition, we can speak with the full breadth of Scripture as well as the claim of Jesus. A good tree will bear good fruit. Society has let bad trees grow for too long. We need to plant more of the good trees of dignity, reconciliation, and hope.
Rev. Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Spicewood, TX.
Much of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians addresses concerns and controversies that were likely brought to Paul in a letter from the Christ-followers in Corinth. Many scholars argue that Paul is addressing ideologically based social hierarchy rooted in Greco-Roman philosophies which divide the Corinthians into “weak” and “strong” classes. Throughout the letter Paul sarcastically admonishes the “strong” and identifies with the “weak,” using and upending the hierarchical logic.[1] The penultimate chapter addresses a concern Paul is bringing to the strong; he has heard that they deny the bodily resurrection of Christ. Here Paul again both appeals to and upends the Greco-Roman philosophies held by the Corinthians in a couple ways that might be interesting to the abolitionist. First, Paul begins this section with language that admonishes the Corinthian “strong” and endears him to the “weak.” In verse 12 he writes, “So if the message that is preached says that Christ has been raised from the dead, then how can some of you say, ‘There’s no resurrection of the dead’?” (CEB). The term “resurrection of the dead” might be better translated as “raising of the corpses.” This phrase would have offended the sensibilities of the well-educated, philosophically nuanced “strong.” It would have been familiar and more easily accepted by the “weak” who may have sincerely relayed stories about risen corpses and had concerns about suffering bodily in this life and the after-life. According to Martin, philosophies acceptable to the strong might have argued that there is no life after death or that the soul was liberated from the body. Populist beliefs on the other hand, “betrayed a fear of death… a belief that death was somehow unnatural and undesirable.”[2] Paul begins by unequivocally affirming the concerns of the weak, using imagery (the raising of corpses) that would offend the strong’s sensibilities. Paul affirms the problem of death, which certainly was a more salient concern for lower-class “weak” Corinthians. The well-educated philosophers would have seen this fear of death as a maladjustment. They believed people should accept death as a natural part of life: leading to a release from worldly concerns and an end to suffering. The people who were looked down on in Greco-Roman hierarchy found the persistent specter of death insufferable and not remedied by its completion. Paul sided with these people. Abolitionists must do the same, unequivocally affirming the concerns and hopes of those suffering under mass incarceration and the specter of death represented by prison and policing. Later in chapter 15 Paul describes the resurrected body in a way that would be intelligible to the strong, but not before admonishing them and clearly aligning himself with the weak. The second thing Paul does is articulate a view of salvation that is cosmic and participatory. Salvation from Paul’s perspective cannot be understood as individual moral or intellectual achievement. Salvation is accomplished by the destruction of powers and principalities that are governed by sin and death. In his letter to the Romans Paul is clear that while law (ethical and social norms that govern relationships) is not bad in itself, it perpetuates sin when it is enforced by the threat of death.[3] Paul hints at this same idea in 15:46, though it is not as well developed and argued in this earlier letter. Those who were less connected to the ongoing threat of death might be able to function in such a system, but they are left “in sin” just as much as the ones who are, as Daniel Oodshorn puts it, “left for dead.”[4] The strong in 1 Corinthians judged the weak’s plight as an individual (or social group based) constitutional, moral or intellectual failure rather than an indictment of the whole social and political system, which is governed by death. Paul insists that the whole system needs to be transformed by Christ’s death and resurrection. This removes the threat of death and power of sin, not by affirming or using death, but by overcoming it. This opens the possibility for people to enter into spaces vulnerable to death without either fearing or affirming the violence death represents. Only in this way can we commune with one another in a life giving way: first by communing with Christ (overcoming fear of death in vulnerable solidarity with those who are “left for dead,” yet live) and then by becoming the “Christic body” that extends this communion to others.[5] It is placing faith in and participating in the life of Christ that the whole world is saved. Likewise, the abolitionist interpreter will note that there is a right and wrong way to talk about overcoming the fear of death. The wrong way, represented by the Corinthian strong, overcomes “fear of death” by some kind of personal intellectual and moral achievement that accepts death (or even lauds it). This can be likened to a particularly insidious form of CBT therapy offered in many prisons and re-entry programs called “Moral Reconation Therapy.” MRT insists that the problems leading to incarceration lie solely within the prisoner. The system does not need to change, just the individual’s beliefs. For example they say, “Suffering and unhappiness are to be expected sometimes right? WRONG. Unhappiness was and is a part of your life because you choose it,” (caps and bold are theirs).[6] The right way, represented by Paul’s cosmic vision, is to see that there is, altogether, a system perpetuating suffering and unhappiness, our embeddedness in that system, and the possibility of putting our faith in another way that is neither governed by the system’s threat of violence nor affirms it. We are liberated from death-dealing systems when we participate in relationships that show us how to communally overcome such systems even while we are still living within them. This is the work of abolition and building new systems of transformative justice. This is also what Jesus’ death and resurrection accomplished from Paul’s perspective. Christ’s resurrection provides the confidence we need to participate in the vulnerable, salvific relationships of the “christic body.” This confidence is not in one’s own personal salvation, but in the transformation of the entire cosmos, where our loving, life-giving God becomes “all in all.”
Sarah Lynne Gershon (she/her) is an MDiv/MTS student, DOC pastor, and lives at the Bloomington Catholic Worker.
[1] See Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
[3] See Theodore Jennings, Outlaw Justice: The Messianic Politics of Paul, Cultural Memory in the Present, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2013) for more about how Paul understands Christ’s relationship with the law.
[4] Daniel Oudshoorn, Pauline Eschatology: The Apocalyptic Rupture of Eternal Imperialism, Paul and the Uprising of the Dead, V. 2, (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020) 134.
[5] See Yung Suk Kim, Christ’s Body in Corinth: The Politics of a Metaphor, Paul in Critical Contexts, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008) for more insight into how I’m using the term “christic body.”
[6] Gregory Little and Kenneth Robinson, How to Escape Your Prison: A Moral Reconation Workbook, Memphis, TN: Eagle Wing Books, 2016), 2.
As we approach Holy Week, I want to share again the Holy Week devotional, Healing Justice and the Paschal Mystery, which combines Holy Week liturgies with ideas from restorative justice practice.
Luke’s Passion narrative presents a number of powerful contrasts: Jesus’s way of self-giving service as opposed to the self-serving actions of those who hold power, Jesus’s way of anti-violence as opposed to the brutality of those who inflict pain, Jesus’s way of forgiveness as opposed to condemnation. Judith Jones explains that, “The whole story emphasizes the dramatic contrast between the kingdom of God and the authorities of this world.” [1] The abolitionist preacher might choose to focus on any one of these themes; however, I think one of the most poignant illustrations of this distinction is depicted in 23:39-43.
Jesus has been condemned by the state to capital punishment, public execution on a cross, and yet even as Jesus suffers the anguish of crucifixion, he offers grace to his neighbor. While leaders and soldiers and even one of the criminals crucified beside Jesus deride and mock him, another criminal proclaims Jesus’s innocence and, seemingly, his lordship. This man confesses and repents, asking Jesus, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus responds to the man alongside whom he hangs on a cross, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” In this singular exchange, Luke describes repentance, forgiveness, and restoration. The state has inflicted its mockery of justice upon the body of Jesus, and yet Jesus embodies the grace-filled justice of God, which redeems and renews. The horrors of incarceration and execution are on display, and yet so too is the grace of Jesus Christ.
One invitation of Passion Sunday, I believe, is to enter into the pain and darkness of Christ crucified while looking for and holding onto the and yet. Powers and principalities imprison, abuse, and execute, and yet Jesus teaches us another way, his way of grace. Our “justice” systems condemn and kill people who are often innocent, and yet Christ offers restoration and renewal to all who repent. This contrast should challenge those of us who participate in unjust systems while offering hope to those of us who suffer because of them.
Dominique DuBois Gilliard writes in Rethinking Incarceration that “Christianity revolves around Jesus, a falsely convicted criminal who was falsely charged, punitively convicted, mercilessly tortured, and unjustly sentenced to death. Given this, I would think the church would understand the necessity of thinking more restoratively about criminal justice.” [2] Additionally, Gilliard says the church is called to “pursue a justice system that builds community, affirms human dignity, and seeks God’s shalom.” [3] What are some examples of ways in which our faith communities are living out this calling? Or, how might we begin to imagine new ways our churches could participate in God’s work of renewal and restoration?
This Sunday, as we look to Christ crucified, how might we be transformed by his grace? We stand in the shadow of the cross, and yet we have hope because the cross is not the end of the story. How might we respond?
Jed Tate is a United Methodist pastor in North Carolina.
