Isaiah 42:1–9
The text from Second Isaiah appointed for the feast of the Baptism of Christ leads to an Abolition Lectionary post that nearly writes itself: the promise of this text is that God has appointed God’s servant to “bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness” (v. 7). As Michael J. Chan writes, this text is one of the famous Servant Songs from Second Isaiah, and can be applied “to the whole world”: “The ministry of the servant is what it looks like when the Kingdom of God arrives anywhere, anytime–whether that by the 6th century BCE, the 1st century CE, or the 21st century CE. When the servant arrives, so do justice, light, and freedom.”
The text, in other words, provides one of the most explicit abolitionist promises in scripture: the servant appears in order to bring out prisoners. This promise is more than literal — freedom for prisoners is a metaphor for freedom from any kind of suffering and bondage, physical or spiritual — but it is not thereby less than literal. Spiritual freedom derives its power as an image from the concreteness of physical freedom. The freeing of prisoners is the work of God’s servant. (An excellent deeper explanation of this connection, and how freedom for prisoners became such a central biblical theme, is in Lee Griffith’s book The Fall of the Prison: excerpt.)
But perhaps the most poignant part of this passage is not its explicit emphasis on freedom, but is its image of what it looks like for God’s servant to “faithfully bring forth justice”: “a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench” (v. 3). I’m reminded of this heartbreaking interview Radley Balko conducted with criminal defense investigator Andrew Sowards. Sowards answers the question of how he works with people who have committed serious harm and violence:
“When you do mitigation, you look far back into these people’s lives. And it got to the point where I could read these mitigation reports and I could pinpoint the exact moment in some guy’s childhood when he was broken. You could isolate the precise event that changed him, that just froze him emotionally in that moment, that halted the maturation process. Before that event, this was some kid with all the innocence and potential of every other kid. And I swear I could often look into a client’s face and see that little kid, still frozen in there, just frozen in time.”
Even in cases of extremely serious harm, justice requires seeing people as “bruised reeds” not to be broken; “dimly burning wicks” not to be quenched. The justice of God is the work of healing and freedom in every circumstance.
Of course, cases of extreme violence such as those Sowards investigates are a tiny minority of those persecuted by the criminal legal system. In most cases, people are swept into a system that criminalizes them because of race or poverty or social location. Their own marginalization or trauma are used against them as the system piles injustice and trauma upon systemic injustice and trauma.
The contrast is clear. The prison-industrial complex breaks bruised reeds and quenches dimly burning wicks. The servant of God does justice faithfully and sets prisoners free. Jesus’ baptism shows his fidelity to that ongoing mission of servanthood to God.
Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons.