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.