Month: March 2023

Numerous scholars have noted that Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem is an oppositional one. Pontious Pilate would have entered the city, as well, but elsewhere and with a different sort of fanfare. While Jesus did not enter Jerusalem with warhorses, chariots, and the might of the Roman Empire around him like Pilate, expectations were almost certainly high among those in the crowd. Matthew explicitly connects the procession with the restoration of the Jewish people after a prolonged period of exile, after all. 

In the text of Zechariah referenced by Matthew, we see a vision of a world that God is making right. God is toppling the empires of the day (Zech. 9:1-8). God is overturning hoarded wealth (vv. 3-4), arrogant and violent power (vv. 5-7), and the forces of slavery (v. 8). It’s hard not to think that Jesus is coming with the immediate power to overturn the social and political order right then and there. Only, that’s not exactly what happens is it? 

Instead, what we look toward in Holy Week, culminating in Easter, is the inversion of how we expect these powers to work, all bolstered by the defeat of sin and death. In that way, what Jesus accomplishes actually embodies the text from Zechariah quite well. After this litany of nations getting their just deserts, one might expect quite the retributive toll. Only, that’s not exactly what happens. 

Instead, we hear the promise of a king who is “righteous and victorious,” yes, but also “humble and riding on an ass (v. 9, CEB). He cuts off the chariot and the warhorse not just from Judah’s enemies, but from Ephraim and Jerusalem. “The bow used in battle will be cut off,” Zechariah vows (v. 10, CEB). The cycle of retribution and violence is broken, not continued. This promise is embodied in the defeat of sin and death at the end of this week, as well. The cycle is broken. Violence is not repeated. 

The breaking of this cycle of violence and retribution is central to a Christian theology of abolition. Police and especially prisons exist as perpetuators of these cycles of violence and retribution. We will never move beyond the social ills that our criminal justice system claims to address while we continue to perpetuate the violence at the center of crime. You cannot imprison a crime, but you can commit more injustice under the guise of doing so. 

This Palm Sunday, let’s acknowledge these cycles of harm, violence, and retribution. These are the things Jesus came to break. These are the cycles Zechariah said God wants broken. Let’s shatter them that we might live in the world God wants where the bows and chariots have no use to us. 

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

John 11:1-45

Just imagine. Imagine that new creation, that resurrection is actually possible. Imagine, even, that not only is resurrection possible, but God has already begun bringing about the restoration of the world, all of creation, and our invitation is to participate in this Missio Dei. 

Of course, this renewal can be hard to picture when we’re surrounded by systems of death and imprisonment. Perhaps as abolitionists, you and members of your faith community have been struggling against the ongoing expansion of policing and incarceration, and there are times when you feel discouraged. Oppressive forces have a way of making themselves seem inevitable; meanwhile, the damage they inflict causes so much pain and harm in our communities. We lament the death that surrounds us, as we should, and yet we do not grieve alone.

When Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha dies, his sisters and his community mourn the loss of someone they loved so dearly. When Jesus and his disciples eventually join them, Martha says to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (v. 21). She is hurt, and understandably so; when we suffer the grief of death, we want to cry out to God, “where were you?”  And yet Jesus has drawn near. He loved Lazarus and his sisters (v. 5), and he mourned with Mary and Martha, weeping over the death of his friend and their brother (vv.33-35). We are reminded that God is with us in our despair, and grieves alongside us. But despair is not the final word, and neither is death.

Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life” (v. 25). Resurrection is present now in Jesus. Restoration and renewal are here now. New creation is beginning now. Jesus calls out to Lazarus to come out from the tomb, and the man who was dead and still bears the cloth strips of one who was buried now walks. Jesus says, “Unbind him, and let him go” (v. 44). This is his word for us too. Our calling is the same: to work alongside Jesus as he unbinds the bound.

We are right to mourn the death that surrounds us, and to lament the injustice caused by systems of incarceration. God mourns with us. However, we continue to hope because God promises resurrection – this is the good news that the preacher must proclaim. And we are empowered to participate in God’s work of renewing the world. We continue to do the work, alongside Jesus, of unbinding the bound. This is our invitation, our calling.

In his book, The Spirituals and the Blues, James Cone quotes these lyrics from a Black Spiritual¹:

Children, we shall be free
When the Lord shall appear.
Give ease to the sick, give sight to the blind,
Enable the cripple to walk;
He’ll raise the dead from under the earth,
And give them permission to talk.

Just imagine.

Jed Tate is a United Methodist pastor in North Carolina.

[1] James Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, 34.

8 for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, 9 for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. 10 Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly, 13 but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14 for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Ephesians 5:8-14

A key part of the abolition movement is educating ourselves and others about the great injustices of the US criminal-legal system. There would be no need to abolish systems that work for everyone or that serve all of society well. That’s why we must “expose” the “unfruitful works of darkness” in the criminal-legal system (Ephesians 5:11).

The pervasive cultural narrative is that police, courts, and prisons are simply aimed at achieving “law and order.” In this narrative, police successfully investigate every significant crime, arrest the right person every time, and convict them swiftly — typically before the end of a 60-minute TV episode. The convicted criminal then receives the “just” punishment of incarceration to “pay their debt to society.” 

The problem with this narrative is that it isn’t true. The reality is far messier (at its best) and far more sinister (at its worst). Even the individuals in these systems who bring the best of intentions fail to get it right because the sinful systems are stacked against the accused. The truth is that, according to FBI data, police only make arrests on a fraction of all reported crimes, and less than half of reported violent crimes. Police and courts are demonstrably biased against Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people and against poor people. Convictions are sometimes rushed through using sloppy evidence and insufficient defense. And prisoners themselves experience horrible conditions in most carceral facilities, including economic exploitation, malnutrition, abuse from guards and other prisoners, torture such as solitary confinement, and even the death penalty. Ephesians tells us that “the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true,” and very little about the criminal-legal system fits that description (5:9).

Instead, the evils of the criminal-legal system are whitewashed with propaganda from the media, politicians of all stripes, and even religious leaders. But our calling is not to remain in the darkness; it is to step into the light of Christ, the light of the Holy Spirit. Again Ephesians says, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them” (5:11). As Christian abolitionists, it is our responsibility to expose what is evil in our midst. It’s our responsibility to share the stories of people who have been chewed up and spit out by prisons, police, and courts. It’s our responsibility to commit ourselves to “speaking the truth in love,” when it comes to abolishing these unjust systems (Ephesians 4:15).

The Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda is the rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Savannah, GA, and the Missioner for Racial Justice of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.

Romans 5:1-11

Christians have spilled untold gallons of ink on the concepts of justification and reconciliation in Romans and elsewhere in the New Testament, but rarely do they consider the implications of God’s mechanisms of justice for their own “justice systems.” You could go to any number of theologians for the former, so let’s focus on the latter. In the United States, our “justice system” has its basis in retributive justice, the kind where punishment is the response to wrongdoing. That is not the pattern described in the New Testament.

Instead of exacting punishment to get justice, which our current “justice system” attempts to do, God’s mechanism for justice in the New Testament is justification followed by reconciliation. The goal is not simply to punish anyone, but to reconcile enemies. The whole point of justification and reconciliation is the elimination of enmity for the sake of our collective salvation and liberation.

 How does that compare to our “justice system?” Our system doesn’t eliminate enmity; rather, it exacerbates it:

• The removal of someone from society via incarceration as a punishment results in disruption to family and community systems, many of which may have depended on the incarcerated individual.
• The individual incarcerated suffers from increased economic instability, inequality, and distress, particularly in regard to legal discrimination toward the incarcerated in housing and employment.
• Whether it is between incarcerated people or between staff and those incarcerated, prisons are sites of further brutalization and violence—they do not stop violence. No one is reconciled, just punished and victimized.

 Consider, too, that “levels of imprisonment increased fivefold since 1973, crime rates have not dropped proportionately during this period.”* The massive prison industrial complex we’ve built has not achieved significant crime reduction or gains in public safety. Our system simply reproduces violence and increases enmity between persons. If the goal of God’s justice is to eliminate enmity and provide reconciliation, as Paul suggests in Romans 5, why do Christians so readily concede to a “justice system” that does the opposite?

When preaching about these theological concepts, keep in mind their implications for social organization. While Paul is not laying out a model for civil society explicitly, you can’t believe one thing when it comes to your own reconciliation to God and something completely different and disconnected for our reconciliation to each other.

* =Todd Clear, Backfire: When Incarceration Increases Crime

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