Month: November 2022

Isaiah 11:1–10

If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Flight? Invisibility? Superspeed? 

A few years ago, my then-partner definitively answered this for me: The power to create forests. Corporations are burning down the Amazon? Bam, forest. Developers want to build a new subdivision? Speak the word, forest appears. I have yet to find a better answer to this question.

But creating forests at whim is not just a reparative power. An invading army is about to attack your city? Poof, instant forest disorients the invaders. Trying to blockade an ICE detention center? Every time the trucks try to leave, more trees suddenly appear in front of them!

It’s hard to operate a carceral system if suddenly a forest is growing in the middle of it, and won’t stop. If roots begin to buckle the concrete and branches tear open the fences. If giant oaks suddenly tear through the ceiling of the police precinct.

While we don’t have the power to magically generate forests to confuse our enemies and set our people free, this famous passage from Isaiah invites us to imagine what might be growing out of seemingly-dead wood. The small shoots of hope grow, in a few short verses, into one with the power to bring righteousness to Earth, to judge for the poor and oppressed. All is not lost. In fact, all is about to be totally transformed. Children will live in safety. All of creation will find a new harmony. Out of these tiny green leaves, a whole new world is born.

Abolition seems impossible. So often, a new world feels not just far away, but totally beyond our reach. Thankfully, it is not our reach that matters. It is not up to our individual superpowers. It is our collective reaching that transforms this fragile new life into a new world. We make abolition possible.

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.

Isaiah 2:1–5, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36–44

This Sunday begins the season of Advent—a time of preparation and anticipation leading to the feast of Christmas. While typical Advent practices include soft candlelight, melodic carols, and clever calendars, the Scriptures leading up to Christmas are anything but soft and sweet and cheery. 

Advent scriptures are often apocalyptic and startling, pointing toward a future vastly different than the current reality. Dramatic contrasts, portents, tribulation, and admonishment are all the stuff of Advent Scriptures. They warn of changes to come—a revolution, really—as the Messiah enters the world in the form of a baby. That tiny, helpless, vulnerable baby will overthrow all systems of evil, bursting in from the heavenly realm to confront them from the inside. 

This week’s passages are no exception: weapons of war destroyed and turned into tools for abundance, waking up to a new reality, lightness overcoming darkness, and the sudden arrival of God’s reign, so abrupt and sweeping it is likened to the worst catastrophe the people of God have ever known. 

The Isaiah passage in particular sets forth God’s vision of a non-violent world in which God teaches the ways of peace and people joyfully seek a new way. The Psalm echoes this vision, singing of a Jerusalem that is intended to be a place of unity, praise, prosperity, and peace. In Romans, Christians are exhorted to “put on the armor of light,” pursuing peace and dignity in a world literally hell-bent on violence and degradation. 

Essentially, these Advent passages present us with a vision of abolition, of a world transformed so that all of Creation may live in peace and abundance. That transformation began abruptly with Jesus’ first breath and continues today. That transformation began from the inside, within humanity, from one who seemed utterly powerless throughout life and in his death. It started with direct confrontation of evil powers. 

Like Jesus, persons in prison and immigrant detention centers appear powerless to the world, but they are a formidable force in God’s ongoing mission of transformation and reconciliation. They are in direct, daily confrontation with systemic evil and know its weak spots. Working together, organizing for others’ dignity and liberation as well their own, they tap into divine power to dismantle oppressive structures so God’s peaceful reign can flourish. 

From the inside, among the vulnerable and “powerless,” grows a radically non-violent world. Advent challenges us to deepen our solidarity with those inside who are organizing for a peaceful future. Along with special observances and traditions in this season, our Advent practices can also include actively supporting and collaborating with imprisoned and detained persons for liberation. What would it look like if our Advent practices were as shocking as our Advent Scriptures? At the very least, we would catch glimmers of eternal hope that outshine all of the season’s candles and lights. 

Leeann Culbreath is an Episcopal priest, immigrant advocate, and band mom in south-central Georgia.

Colossians 1:11–20

What are the limits of salvation in Jesus Christ? What are the limits of Christ’s power?  Paul’s letter to the Colossians offers a maximalist perspective on the salvific power of Jesus Christ with beautiful language that is often overly spiritualized. We begin with how Jesus rescues us, redeems us and forgives us. Yet this power is never limited to invisible things.

The status quo loves to overly spiritualize Jesus. If Jesus only saves us in our hearts, Jesus has nothing to say to present structures of power, like the Prison Industrial Complex. Once the power of Jesus becomes material, the shadow of the cross starts to fall on the status quo.

Do Christians want the shadow of the cross to fall on status quo powers and structures of power? The less power Jesus has, the fewer ways that Christ’s followers are called to respond to structures of power and oppression in this world. It is easier to live an overly spiritualized life if it means you don’t need to take a stand on status quo structures of power.

If Christ’s redemption is total and Christ’s power is total, then Christ’s call on Christians to seek out justice in this world does not stop at the doors of our homes or the doors of our churches. This means that we should take courage from Christ as we seek the justice of God in this world. Christ’s power is not limited by the status quo, so Christians should not blindly accept it. We should strive for the reign of God here and now.

Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Spicewood, TX.

Isaiah 65:17–25, Luke 21:5–19

Sandwiched between All Saints and Reign of Christ, we have one more Sunday of Ordinary Time before Advent. Year C, however, is unwilling to wait for the changing of the calendars and dives right into some apocalyptic texts that serve us well as abolitionists and those of us who await the outcome of the US elections that occur this time of year. 

It’s tempting to look to the state for the just world we seek. When reproductive rights, access to the vote, marriage equality, and so much more hinge on the outcome of elections, we are right to be worried. So when we look past the state for our hopes for a world made right, we are not ignoring the stakes in a participatory democracy and we are not embracing some spiritual opiate to divert our attention from what’s right in front of our faces. To look beyond the state is to both acknowledge reality and put our faith and trust in God.

Both Isaiah 65 and Luke 21 present apocalyptic visions of a world made right through some kind of dramatic intervention. “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” the Isaiah text begins, marking the creation of a new cosmos (65:17). “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down,” Jesus says as he looks upon the Temple in Jerusalem (21:6). Both passages warn of trials that come before, but both also promise good to follow. “They shall not labor in vain,” Isaiah promises (65:23). “By your endurance you will gain your souls,” Jesus vows (21:19). 

Regardless of who wins what seat in the elections in the US this week, things will get worse before they get better for the cause of abolition. Republicans have run a successful closing campaign message on crime, animating racial prejudice and other forces counter to the message of an abolitionist Gospel. It will gain them power. In my home county, a sheriff primarily known for his former advocacy of the notorious 287(g) immigration program will likely return to office after being ousted some years earlier. It’s tempting to despair in moments like this that our work and our hope does not matter. 

We must look beyond the machinations of the state because the state will always disappoint us. By necessity, our strategic goals, policy priorities, and campaign objectives will always focus on the state because it is the chief perpetrator of carceral violence. Ultimately, however, our hope and our work must be grounded elsewhere. Mariame Kaba reminds us that our individual efforts “will lessen harm to be sure, but only building power among those most marginalized in society holds the possibility of radical transformation. And that’s an endless quest for justice. That’s a struggle rather than a goal. Only movements can build power. We need a movement for transformative justice.” [1]

Both the Isaiah and Luke texts this week point to transformation, but neither promise that it comes through purely worldly means. Both texts were written in the context of historical cataclysms, but they stubbornly kept to the work and kept their faith. We must trust in the realm God is making in our midst and the world that God will ultimately make. Our work will not be in vain, God will hear our cries, and justice will come even as we endure trials in the meantime.

[1]  Mariame Kaba, “Whether Darren Wilson is Indicted or Not, the Entire System is Guilty” in We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, 56.

Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his)is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina. You can find more of his work at wespearsnewsome.com.

Job 19:23–27

As a pastor, I can get lost in the world of words. Preaching, praying, reading, emails, cards… if I’m not careful, my brain can leave the present moment behind and get caught up in trying to find the right thing to write or say. Ironically, the purpose of many of these words is to provide a sense of presence, to remind myself and my community of God’s presence and the power of being in the presence of God’s creation.

But all this pales in comparison to the power and presence that words hold for some of my incarcerated siblings. After all, it was words—the interpretation of laws, sentencing guidelines, etc.—that helped build their cages. It is words—the arguments of lawyers, the recommendations of counselors—that can open those same cages. And while they are caged it is words that so often sustain them: The hand-written cards from friends, the love passed through all-to-brief telephone calls or video visits, the encouragement of fellow incarcerated people, the worlds opened by the words of poets and philosophers. When Pennsylvania decided that all mail to prisons must be routed to a company in Florida and passed on as black-and-white photocopies, it was little wonder that people were outraged and took to the streets to demand the state stop serving as a go-between for our words to each other. 

Job cries out, “O that my words were written down!… O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!” He wants, no, he needs to know that his pleas for justice will be heard beyond the life of his sick and frail body. He knows that our words live lives beyond us, they have a power beyond our own. Some of the most searing and profound reflections on our humanity and on our divinity come from the mouths and the pens of people in Job’s position: The oppressed, the incarcerated, those who live face to face with their mortality. Incarcerated journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal writes that, “On death’s brink, men begin to see things they’ve perhaps never seen before…. Men on Phase II – men whose death warrants have been signed, men with a date to die – live each day with a clarity and a vibrancy they might have lacked in less pressured times.” (Death Blossoms, 101)

We do well to heed the sacred power of words, their power to harm and to heal. And we do well to heed the words of those living in pressured times, our incarcerated siblings and others who light lamps of hope in desolate places and who dare to imagine a world free from punishment and state-sanctioned violence.

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.