Month: August 2023

Romans 12:9–21

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. – Romans 12:21

Let’s start with the hard part. The next verse after this one is a troubling one: “Obey all earthly authorities.” And as usual we have been taught to misread this text.

Most early churches grew in the in-between spaces, cities full of war refugees and contested loyalties. Rome had its share of instability, but it also had the center of the imperial metropole and a landscape of local neighborhood governments that operated as a parallel form of collective decision-making. 

It is this parallel structure that Paul references in the next verse. Paul isn’t talking about Emperors. Paul’s call to harmony and noble action is a call to care for neighbors by building and supporting local leadership and community power.[1] 

Most early churches (certainly an anachronistic word) were a blend of Jews and “God-fearing” Gentiles. But the Romans were a predominantly-Gentile church adjusting to a returning marginalized Jewish community in their midst. Prior to Paul’s writing, most if not all of the Jewish people had been forcibly removed from Rome and only recently allowed to return. 

In the face of this, Paul asks that the church offer hospitality to strangers and the lowly amidst the temples of Roman wealth, to avoid the temptation to allyship with the forces of Empire.

“Bless those who persecute you” is not acquiescence. It is a radical call to have hope in the slow, patient work of building neighborhood power and turning the tide. Even in the belly of the beast, we can act with integrity, trusting that our God is moving within our work to bring vengeance and transformation. Another world is not only possible, “the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor.” (Romans 8:22). That is how we overcome evil with good.
[1] See this interview with scholar Robert Mason: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/law-order-and-romans-13/id1441649707?i=1000544881770

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 51:1-6

These verses in Isaiah can provide solace and encouragement for the abolitionist faith community. Those of us working toward freedom for people who are oppressed and imprisoned may find ourselves weary from the difficult struggles necessary for meaningful change in the world. Perhaps we mourn losses or suffer exhaustion or hear disheartening voices. Yet, the prophet turns our attention to the Lord who promises comfort, justice, and salvation.

“Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord.” These words spoke to God’s people who were exiled from their home. Now, their exile was ending, and yet they had lost so much. Surrounded by the wreckage of loss, they must have wondered how they could ever rebuild and restore. 

Here they are reminded though – and so are we – of God’s saving work in history. Where do we find hope in desperate times? We look to the stories of our ancestors, and see how God was blessing and empowering them. “Look to the rock from which you were hewn.” Learn from and find hope in the stories of those who taught you. See the different ways that God was working with and through them to plant gardens in deserts. God liberated before; God will liberate again.

Who might you look to? Whose story can you tell? Are there stories from people in your church (or their ancestors) that might help renew and energize the congregation in their work toward restorative and transformative justice? 

We engage with history to learn from history because God moves in history. The goal here, then, is not nostalgia, but education and inspiration. We look back as we step forward, holding onto God’s promises of justice as a light to the people (v. 4) and salvation that will be forever (v. 6). We remember the story thus far to help us find the courage to imagine and write the story to come.

God liberated before; God will liberate again.

Jed Tate is a United Methodist pastor in North Carolina.

Romans 11:1–2, 29–32

For a preacher, the complexity of the epistle to the Romans and the way it has been misinterpreted through an individualistic, spiritual, and anti-Jewish lens makes it difficult to preach a concise and compelling sermon. Furthermore, scholarship on Romans remains vast and diverse and Paul’s argumentation is confusing. He employs forms of rhetoric that are less familiar to us today and addresses social, religious, and political problems that are unique to his context. Nonetheless a central point emerges in this passage: God’s gifts are irrevocable. 

Without getting in the weeds, providing some context is necessary to unpack the force and contemporary application of that claim, and this discussion will largely emerge from Jewett’s Romans: A Short Commentary. Paul’s purpose in Romans is not purely theological. Looking to the end of Romans will help readers understand his goal. Paul believes he has been called to preach the good news of salvation and unity with Israel through Christ to the Gentiles (see also, Eisenbaum’s Paul Was Not a Christian) and he wants the support of the Roman churches. Conflict within and between churches stands in the way of that mission. These diverse conflicts are rooted in Imperial honor/shame social structures that lead members in various factions to judge and despise one another. Not only does that hurt the unity of the churches, but it makes them less interested in supporting Paul’s mission to Spanish barbarians, a group that the Romans would have little interest in unity with. In response to that bias, Paul, using extreme caricatures at times (like the one who only eats leafy vegetables in 14:2 for example), broadly addresses various forms of class, ethnic, and religious differences that suggest that God’s mercy and salvation through Christ is limited in any way. In particular Paul is concerned with social respectability and self-righteousness. An important point to make is that Paul is not concerned with individual salvation and belief. He is concerned with the collective superiority or condemnation of social groups, which are reified and heirarchialized under Empire and through the law. In this section though, we find the culmination of Paul’s grappling with a concern that is very personal to him as a Jewish Pharisee. Paul is in conflict with his fellow Jews regarding Jesus’ status as Messiah, the full inclusion of Gentiles as people of God through Christ, and the coming resurrection. Should Paul thus reject his Jewish kindred or does he continue to affirm God’s saving work through them, and God’s work even through this conflict and their differences? 

Paul is adamant about the latter. God’s gifts are irrevocable. God does not abandon God’s people. When we find ourselves in conflict with one another, we must remember the end of the story: resurrection and grace extended to all in Christ. When we are tempted to feel superior, we are reminded that all are bound up in disobedience, sin, and death. When we are tempted to despise others, we are reminded that God extends mercy, freedom, and justice to all. This faith does not lead Paul to disagree less with his Jewish family. It isn’t a call to conflict avoidance. It is a call, when faced with social and ideological realities that divide us, to discern when and how we struggle together without dehumanization or condemnation. The community organizing phrase “no permanent friends and no permanent enemies” comes to mind. 

For the abolitionist preacher, this is a call to conflict resolution and broad-based community organizing that holds the centrality of grace, the dignity and humanity of everyone involved, and the faith that God can bring about an end that is life-giving to all.

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

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” – Genesis 37:19-20

But they did not kill Joseph. They did not kill the dreamer. The dream did not die. 

The world was not kind to young Joseph, that boy with the rainbow dress, that one with the dreams that defied their lowly position. Being the favorite child of Jacob, who now goes by Israel, doesn’t help in the eyes of the brothers. They conspire to kill Joseph.

There is some act of kindness that changes the story—Reuben “delivered him out of their hands.” But this kindness is thwarted by Judah in his desire to profit off selling his sibling. The story takes another turn towards pain.

The road ahead will be rough. Enslavement, sexual harassment, and incarceration. Reuniting with family in the midst of a famine. The story will end in glory, but we’re a long way from that. And Joseph doesn’t know that. The brothers don’t know that. 

The dreamer does not die, and the dream does not die. 

This story reminds us that ultimately those who seek to kill freedom dreams will not succeed. Though dreamers may be killed, though they may undergo incredible pain and suffering, the dream of freedom survives. Though dreams may be forced underground, though we may think they are dead, God’s promise to us is that liberation is never dead. The struggle continues. Life continues. Do not give up on the dream of freedom. God hasn’t.

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.

Matthew 14:13-21

When considering Jesus’ feeding miracles, I often think about how his response to people’s poverty was sustenance. When Jesus saw that someone lacked, he provided. This response is the character of God in stories throughout Jewish and Christian Scriptures. To confront lack is to respond with plenty.

So much of what undergirds the prison industrial complex in the United States is a completely different response. The reaction our systems have to poverty is often criminalization.

The connection between incarceration and the housing crisis is one example. You can be arrested essentially for being unhoused. After incarceration, you could find little support and wind up unhoused. You might choose jail to get a roof over your head. In some places, they’ll arrest you for helping unhoused people.

The reaction of our justice system is to perpetuate injustice, to meet lack with more lack. It’s the opposite of what Jesus does in the feeding miracles. How could our world be different if our legal systems acted like Jesus and met people’s lack with plenty? What would your community look like if, instead of passing laws to penalize lack, they passed policies and ordinances that gave people what they need?

Right now, our response not just to crime but to social need is incarceration. Jesus demands something different from us. In Mark and Luke’s versions of this story, when Jesus observes the lack and need of the people around him, Jesus turns to the disciples and simply commands them, “You give them something to eat.” If we stood next to Jesus as he looked on the prison industrial complex today, what would he say to us?

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