Luke 12:13–21
Edited 7/25: By a scheduling mixup, this was actually the post for Proper 13, 7/31. I’m reposting it with that date as well. Thanks for understanding! —Hannah
The opening of this gospel passage shows someone asking Jesus to judge a family dispute over money, to which Jesus responds: “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”
This response points to an important lesson for abolitionists: we have the resources to resolve conflicts in our own communities. Jesus, the one who is shown in apocalyptic texts as the judge of the world, refuses to take on the authority of a judge, refusing to take the resolution of conflict away from a community.
Sociologist Nils Christie describes conflict as “property of a community” — by which he means that communities have the right and responsibility to engage in conflict and grow stronger by working productively and constructively through it. As Christie points out, one of the dynamics behind our reliance on police and prisons is a desire to avoid conflict by “outsourcing” it to professionals: rather than engage in the hard work of resolving differences or solving problems together in our community, we call the police. We look for what Mariame Kaba calls “Somewhere Else” to put “bad people” (see Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law, Prison By Any Other Name) rather than recognizing that harm occurs within our communities and that we can and must address it by transforming conditions in our communities.
(Of course, it is essential to note that this is NEVER to imply that victims of abuse are required to engage in a process with their abuser, which dynamics of abuse would make unsafe. Conflicts are property of a COMMUNITY and the responsibility is on the community to build safe spaces for survivors while providing pathways to accountability for abusers.)
This desire to outsource conflict is why housed people support cities using violence to make unhoused people invisible, so they don’t face discomfort. It is why protestors against state violence are called to be “peaceful” (which usually doesn’t mean peaceful but non-disruptive) in order not to provoke conflict. It is why churches are often afraid to take controversial stances, such as explicit support of abolition, if it might provoke conflict within a congregation. Reclaiming our right to conflict is essential to building an abolitionist world. Learning to be in conflict well is essential to build healthy communities.
The rest of this passage condemns greed and wealth. This should remind us as abolitionists that policing exists for the protection of private property, not for community safety. Part of building our ability to engage in healthy conflict within our communities is questioning our underlying assumptions about property and wealth, and the capitalist structures that immiserate so many people. Turning away from the idolatry of wealth — being willing to risk our own property for the sake of the needs of others — and building our communal capacity to handle conflict will help us build an abolitionist world.
Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for Abolition.