Month: December 2022

#AbolitionLectionary is taking a break this week and we will be back next week for the season of Epiphany.

John 1:1–14

The prologue of John is our gospel lesson for Christmas day. John does not begin his account of Jesus with a story about his ancestry and birth, but of the birth of all creation. This is a midrash on the Genesis creation story and it also plays on Jewish wisdom tradition, in which the Logos–God’s wisdom proclaimed–is personified. God creates through God’s wise word. This is in stark contrast to other creation accounts in which the world is born out of violence between gods. For example, the Genesis account probably dates from the times of exile in Babylon, and in the Babylonian creation the world is created out of the slain blood and body of a god. Here John harkens back to how the Hebrew people’s Genesis creation story was a counter-story to Babylon’s. We are not born of blood or human desire and passion, but out of the word of God, light that transforms chaos and darkness. Furthermore, this Word does not abandon us to violence and suffering, but becomes flesh like us, intimately entering into violence to bring transformation through our relationship with God’s wisdom. 

For the abolitionist preacher this reassures us that the core of no-one’s nature is violence and when our lives are marred by violence the solution will arise out of wise, loving, relationship. The violence and suffering of the world will not be transformed by more bloodshed and passionate, fearful reactivity. We must seek wisdom born out of communication and relationship. We can trust that even in the most desperate situations the wisdom of God is with us, within us, working to shine a light on vulnerable, shame-filled places. Bringing the seeds of violence and places where we have been traumatized into the light breaks the cycles of violence which are enabled and exacerbated by the violence of the penal-justice system.

Sarah Lynne Gershon (she/her) is an MDiv/MTS student, DOC pastor, and lives at the Bloomington Catholic Worker. 

Matthew 1:18–25

Joseph thought he was doing the right thing. Matthew even portrayed his actions favorably, calling Joseph “righteous” (v. 19) and framing his actions as about Mary’s protection. Once he found out that Mary was pregnant, Joseph determined what he believed was the best path to keep him and Mary as safe and secure as possible. That is how Matthew framed it, at least. 

Joseph’s plans to “dismiss her quietly” may have avoided a public spectacle or shaming for him, but I have my doubts about what it would have done for Mary. Unless she were to find a way to end the pregnancy, which by all accounts Mary was not interested in doing, everything would inevitably become public. At that point, Mary would have been alone and subject to whatever “public disgrace” Joseph imagined they might be avoiding by their separation. 

We approach crime and punishment in the United States much like Joseph. The problem for Joseph was that he did not believe Mary and did not genuinely care for her long-term welfare. Similarly, when we care so much about the amorphous concept of ‘crime,’ we miss the point. At the root of ‘crime’ is an unbearable social condition. Until we address the social conditions which produce breaches in an already broken social contract, we won’t achieve our stated goals of a just society—no matter how “righteous” an outside observer might characterize us as Matthew sees Joseph. 

The other way we follow Joseph’s lead is in prisons themselves. Prisons seek to remove those labeled ‘criminals’ from public view. Much like Joseph attempted to remove Mary from public view rather than seek her welfare, we incarcerate those who suffer from our social ills whether they have truly committed injurious actions or not. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge’s solution to poverty and homelessness: “Are there no prisons?” Rather than expose ourselves to the “public disgrace” (that is, our own social sin) that resulted in the phenomenon of ‘crime,’ we hide people away in prisons, subject them to violence and degradation, and exploit their labor. All the while, like Joseph, we think we’re doing the right thing. 

All of this is not to say that the people who commit crimes are blameless and purely a result of social sin and structural evils. Some people do bad things, sure. Victims also need restoration and justice, of course. However, when we build our entire idea of justice around dismissal and the avoidance of any sort of reckoning with the social order, we miss the point entirely. We don’t get true justice from prisons. We don’t solve problems with prisons. At best, we avoid them.  

To his credit, when confronted by an angel of God, Joseph changes his mind. He’s willing to subject himself to the trials that come with welcoming Jesus into the world. According to Matthew, Joseph doesn’t hesitate. Now, when God confronts us with the evils of incarceration, we can only hope we do the same.

Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.

Matthew 11:2–11

The appointed reading for this Sunday gives us the voice of an incarcerated person: John the Baptist, asking for confirmation of Jesus’ identity from prison.

As Liza Anderson has written, John’s question to Jesus might seem like a “pointed challenge” — as Jesus’ response to John “alludes to Isaiah, noting that the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. However, it is a selective quotation, omitting the promise in Isaiah 42:7 about bringing prisoners out of the dungeons and freeing captives. Given that John asks the question while in prison, this is presumably the part that he is the most concerned with, and it’s hard to imagine that he would have been comforted by the reminder that Jesus was doing everything else in the messianic job description! ” Anderson suggests that one way the church has historically addressed this challenge is by recognizing that Jesus’ mission to free prisoners includes freeing the spirits in prison (1 Peter 3:19) and that “it was part of the vocation of John the Baptist to be the forerunner and proclaimer of Christ not only among the living but also among the dead — even though this was by its nature a vocation that required him to die.” John precedes Jesus into criminalization, incarceration, and death.

In any case, I think the challenge offered by John the Baptist from prison is essential as we think about the nature of Christ’s coming and mission. How are we, in this world, to know that Jesus is the promised messiah who makes all things new? The answer that Jesus gives does not rely on his descent from David or his divine nature, but on the fruit of the work itself. The confirmation of Jesus’ identity comes about in the community of healing and liberation he leaves behind.

I’ve written elsewhere about how the key question regarding the world to come is not “What must I do to gain eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16) but “What is the nature of the life to which we will be raised?” and that Jesus’ answer to John here gives the answer. The renewed community Jesus brings — one which, we believe, includes the promise of freedom for prisoners and forms of justice which heal rather than punishing — is a picture of the “eternal life” of the age to come. Jesus’ identity, the renewed community around him, and the expectation of eternal life coalesce in the work of liberation and healing itself. John’s voice reminds us that those who are incarcerated continue to advocate for and demand their own liberation and inclusion in healed, renewed communities, and those on the outside must listen and act in solidarity.

Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for Abolition.