“Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’” Matthew 28:5-7, NRSV
The connection between Easter and abolition of state-sponsored violence is quite clear when you take the story at face value, as the angel describes it in Matthew. Jesus was a victim of both brief incarceration and speedy execution at the hands of the state. And yet, God repudiates that violence and overcomes it in the resurrection. God did not defeat death for us to keep doling it out through the prison industrial complex and other state-sponsored violence like police forces and executions. God did not defeat death for us to keep killing people.
One of my favorite aspects of Matthew’s telling of this event is that Jesus doesn’t wait at the tomb for everyone to catch up with what he’s doing. He has already gone ahead to Galilee. The disciples must play catchup. The movement of the Spirit is often like that, going ahead of where we are. God goes ahead of both our comfort and our comprehension.
That reality is vital when it comes to the abolitionist imagination. So often the retort to calls to “defund the police” or “abolish prisons” is that it’s not practical or even possible. But that’s not what imagination is for. That’s not where Jesus meets us. Jesus meets us ahead of where we are and beckons us forward. Jesus meets us in the place that we can only barely imagine right now. If we can’t even entertain the idea, we will never arrive. So, Jesus calls us to Galilee where death has been defeated, the state has lost its power, and a new world has begun.
This Easter, let’s get moving. Let’s go meet Jesus. For God did not defeat death for us to tolerate it further. God defeated death that we all might live.
Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.