Author: Hannah

Jeremiah 31:31–34

Today’s reading from the prophet Jeremiah promises a “new covenant,” one “not like the covenant with our ancestors, which they broke.”

The promise of the new covenant to Jeremiah is of a closer relationship than God has ever had before with God’s people. It is also, explicitly, the promise of a covenant different than the Deuteronomic one. Why the difference?

Reading this through the lens of accountability over punishment suggests an interpretation of the difference: a renewed understanding of the covenant in terms of restoration and accountability instead of punishment.

The Deuteronomic history in the Bible (Deuteronomy, Judges, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings) shows the cycle of covenant-breaking, punishment, and return. This cycle points to the complexity of accountability: the dialectic of punishment and return is an attempt, perhaps, to convey the difficulties of building spaces for accountability; the pain of taking accountability, even in a non-punitive context; the fundamental disruption of power relations that comes with holding space for accountability. In the Deuteronomic history, bad kings are overthrown — and that’s good! But at the same time, the Deuteronomic portrayal of God shows us a God who still relies on retribution, even if that punishment is aimed toward restoration. I am not saying we should entertain  the anti-Jewish claim that “the Old Testament God is retributive and the New Testament God is not” or anything like that. Indeed, we must reject such claims! Rather the Deuteronomic portrayal of justice is an approximation of God’s justice, an approximation of the hard but life-giving and restorative work of accountability, and the (still Old Testament!) promise to Jeremiah is part of refining that approximation toward a better understanding.

Perhaps this refinement is one way in which the new covenant promised to Jeremiah is different. In the new covenant, God tells Jeremiah, “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest”; “I will forgive their iniquity”; “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” The image here is of a new way of practicing accountability to the covenant. 

No longer will punishment be part of an attempt to approximate accountability, God tells us. Instead, we can imagine accountability free of punishment. No longer will exclusion be an attempt to approximate justice: instead, God’s commitment to us and our commitment to one another in community will be the basis of accountability work because “we shall all know God.” The promise that God’s law shall be written on our hearts is an image of the kind of personal transformation that is ultimately the goal of accountability work: to become the kind of person who won’t do the same harm again. This sort of accountability work is close to the Jewish concept of teshuvah, as Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg explains.

What do we learn if we interpret the new covenant as a new way of imagining accountability and justice — not as a rejection of what came before, but as a realistic assessment of the ways in which it approximated justice, and a corrective to bring us closer and closer to a non-punitive understanding of accountability? How might we live out that accountability, and be partakers of the new covenant, today?

Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons.

Ephesians 2:1–10

Our past does not define our future. As Paul says in one of the readings for this Sunday: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9). But as a church and as individual Christians, we must grapple with how far we think grace goes.

Is grace just a Sunday morning thing? Is grace just a ‘people who look like me’ thing? Is grace just for people who don’t do really terrible things? I mean, Jesus eats with sinners, but he doesn’t eat with “rapists or child molesters,” right? We may think that grace has to stop somewhere. The limits we put on grace are the exact same limits we put on God. If we think grace must stop somewhere, we must imagine the stoppage of God’s love. It is easier to see the work of grace in individual cases than in a system. As the saying goes that was attributed to Stalin, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.” The carceral state has turned us all Stalinists of sorts. Churches can have campaigns for individuals. Can let individuals give testimonies about God’s love and grace. Church’s can start half-way houses on small scales and work to helping people “turn their life around.”

If we leave grace to the individual and to the great personal anecdotes, we point to a deep lack of faith in God’s transforming power. Grace is not just offered to the deserving. In fact, were grace only for the deserving, it would not be grace. It would just be works, which is where a lot of Christians end up. Works-righteousness really is the backbone of the Prison Industrial Complex. “People need to work. People need punishment. Society needs restitution.” As Paul would say: by no means. Let us live into God’s grace and be unafraid to work towards systems that acknowledge the possibility of transformation and that grace and mercy is not offered to a few but to all. 

Rev. Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Spicewood, TX.

Exodus 20:1–17

As we continue our time in Lent, with many of us marking a year in isolation due to the pandemic, our attention turns to the ten commandments in Exodus 20. While it’s easy to skip past the second verse of this section, the commandments must all be read in the light of this declaration.

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

This setting, the God who brings people out of slavery, is the setting for what follows. These are not random and arbitrary rules, nor are they codes that provide a personal path to individual righteousness. These are commandments for those who follow the God that brings people out of the house of slavery. (And what else can prisons be described as except a house of slavery?)

Growing up, I was taught that the commandments could be bifurcated into two categories: relationship with God; and relationships with others. As I got older, and was taught better, I came to see that these are false bifurcations, and that relationship with God flows into relationship with others flows into relationship with God and on and on. Jesus expresses this when he tells the crowd that “what you do for the least of these, you do for me.” 

As abolitionists, we look at these commandments, all commandments, through the lens of the God who liberates. Standing on the shoulders of James Cone, Gustavo Gutierrez, and many others who have formed liberation theology, we insist that the good news of the Gospel is the liberation of the oppressed, and how we treat others is how we treat God, who places Godself with the oppressed. 

“God is taking sides with those who are voiceless and weak, and he is empowering them to know that they were not made for slavery, not made for exploitation, but was made for freedom, just like everybody else in the world,” James Cone said in an NPR interview describing Black Liberation Theology. 

When we read the ten commandments, keep first the idea that these are commandments from God, the liberator. 

Mitchell Atencio (he/him/his) is a discalced writer and photographer based in Washington, D.C.

Mark 8:31–38

“Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him…”

When Jesus shares with his disciples that the Messiah will suffer in solidarity with the guilty and the criminalized, Peter finds it unimaginable. How often do we find the concept of abolition unimaginable? How often do we find ourselves unable to imagine that real, material liberation and abolition in concrete terms, not just spiritual ones, might be God’s plan? When we doubt the possibility of abolition or find ourselves unable to see outside the carceral structures we’ve constructed, are we “setting our minds not on divine things but human things?”

The answers to these questions are not obvious — this is an application of a specific text about Jesus’ life to our current situation, which requires us to wrestle with the text and its applicability. But abolition forces us to consider such unsettling questions and new interpretations of familiar biblical texts. (That is, after all, the point of this series!) Abolition forces us to ask whether the human responses we have to violence and harm are really consistent with God’s desire for justice among us. Abolition is the work of unsettling our assumptions.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore says that “abolition requires that we change only one thing, which is everything.” There is nothing in our society which isn’t open to questioning — to unsettling — in light of abolitionist convictions. Every part of our lives, from economic and political systems to interpersonal relationships, requires analysis and critique and repentance in order for us to build a world without prisons.

Such a radical re-visioning of how we live our lives is frightening. It may require that we give up every cherished understanding we’ve held in the past. Abolition changes us. But this text from Mark also provides us with a promise about such change. Jesus says: “Those who want to save their life with lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” If we try to hold on to the structures and values that have brought us to the deadly status quo of mass incarceration, we will give up the possibility of new life and new ways of being offered by abolition. But if we are willing to question everything — if we are willing to give up old unjust security out of secure faith in the new work of abolition God is bringing about — then, perhaps we will discover in the liberation of all the new and abundant life promised by Jesus.

Following Jesus requires only that we offer up everything. Abolition requires only that we change everything. Freedom is on the other side.

Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons.

Mark 1:9–15

Mark gets to the point. We don’t have a lot of elaborate stories filled with symbolism. In this text, Jesus is baptized, tempted, and starts to preach. The first sermon he gives: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news. The word for repentance here, metanoia, is often translated as conversion elsewhere in the gospels.

On this first Sunday in Lent, we must lift up the centrality of repentance to faith. Repentance is an act of faith. Repentance and conversion are centrally about admitting that the path I am on right now is not the right path. I need to change directions. 

Who is the audience of Jesus’s first sermon? The people of Galilee, in one, but that is not very precise. Mark does give a specific location. Galilee is enormous. It is not a very important place. It was a region with a mix of Jewish and Pagan cultures. It would not seem to be the starting place of the kingdom of heaven on earth, but this is where Jesus begins. The kingdom of heaven is near. Repent, and believe in the Gospel. 

We must also read this sermon as speaking to our society today. Society is made up of people and the decisions we make as a people. We need to repent as a society of the kingdom of sin we have built with the carceral state. Like those folks in Galilee, we must admit that the path we are on as a society is leading us to destruction. We need to turn around. We need to repent. As a church, we need to repent of our support of destructive institutions. We must repent of false ideas of justice that negate the humanity of others. It takes faith. As a church, we can show the world what we believe, but we actually have to believe that it is true. We have to believe that the kingdom of heaven is near. We have to believe that new life is possible.

Rev. Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Spicewood, TX.

Isaiah 58:1–12

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? (Isaiah 58:6)

Our Lenten disciplines are often private and closed off from the world. There’s a good reason for that, I suppose. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them,” Jesus says, according to Matthew, “for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1) The most public we get with our Lenten observance is that someone may notice the ashes on our forehead or that we’re abstaining from one food or another according to our tradition or private discipline. Purple drapery, vestments, and paraments declare that Lent has come in the church; but outside of the sanctuary, the world takes little notice.

Isaiah has some blunt things to say about that kind of spiritual discipline in the passage we often read on Ash Wednesday. “Shout out, do not hold back!” Isaiah says, “Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.” (Isaiah 58:1)

We must name with a loud and clear voice the sins of our institutions. Some examples from the United States (from the Sentencing Project):

• Half of the people in federal prisons are serving time for a drug offense. We’ve decided that we should try to destroy the lives of people over drugs by frequently decimating their chances at future employment, stripping them of their right to vote temporarily or permanently, and subjected them to the violence of the prison system.
• We’ve looked at a system that does unspeakable violence to the incarcerated and great damage to their lives after incarceration and over the past 40 years concluded that we should increase incarceration 500%.
• States spend over $60,900,000,000 on prisons every year. We’ve chosen incarceration as a solution to social problems rather than provision, reconciliation, or restoration. How many people could have been fed, educated, or cared for with that money?

Our past Lenten fasts have not changed these facts or made Christians people who want to change these trends, for the most part. “Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist,” Isaiah continues. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard from on high.” (v. 4) The United States has only become more carceral and retributive over the past several decades. So, in what kind of fast should we engage?

“Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (v. 6) This Lent, consider making your fast one from injustice. Change the way you spend your money so you aren’t benefiting the private prison complex. Join a prison ministry focused on the liberation of people from incarceration (be careful and discerning here as there are many non-liberationist prison ministries). Work with or buy from businesses that hire formerly incarcerated individuals, or hire them yourself if you’re among the employer class (and pay a living wage, while you’re at it). Write your legislators. Form relationships with those suffering incarceration or post-incarceration, embracing them as members of your community.

A significant thing you could do is make it a discipline to spread the Gospel of abolition in your church, whether you are a minister or a lay person. Use the resources from Christians for the Abolition of Prisons in your Sunday School classes, Bible studies, small groups, or whatever you call your discipleship gatherings at church. The resources page is full of great podcasts, articles, and other materials to make this process easy. If you can’t get a ministry of your church on board, do it in your own prayer life and refuse to be quiet about it to your peers. “Shout out, do not hold back!” as Isaiah says.

Make this Lent one not of private piety, but vocal righteousness. If we do, Isaiah promises great things: “The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” (v. 11)

Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his)is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina. You can find more of his work at wespearsnewsome.com.

2 Kings 2:1–12, Mark 9:2–9

It’s so hard to say goodbye. Elisha is extending this moment like he’s farewelling a loved one. First he agrees to say goodbye at the house, then abandons that rational plan to drive with them to the airport. At the airport drop off looks busy so they park and he decides to at least wait through booking, okay, why not through security… well at this point you’re in the airport so you may as well wait with them at the gate, parting ways only at the final, final, final call for boarding before walking back through the crowds of happy reunions, ugly crying on your way to pay $42 for parking.

A more somber analogy that came to mind is the Spike Lee film 25^th Hour, which centres on the final day in the life of Monty (Edward Norton) before he goes to jail to serve a seven-year sentence. The difficulty of parting ways, of being disappeared from the lives of friends and loved ones is painfully meditated upon – and even at the end, the possibility of a non-goodbye lies on the table, tantalizing the audience who know (in their own ways small and large) the pain of separation.

There’s both beauty and tragedy in the moment of Elijah’s departure – the dazzling, holy flame and wondrous chariots are a sight the likes of which we will never see, and yet, the pain of being separated from someone so significant to our lives that the only thing we would want from them in parting is a double sense of their spirit is something we all will or have experienced.

‘As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.’ So repeats Elisha across this journey – and yet, despite his faithfulness and determination, they are indeed parted. There are some who are taken from our lives – be it by death, imprisonment, or other less catagorisable forms of separation. And the pang of that can tear not just our clothes but our hearts in two.

Meditating on the longing and loss of Elisha assists us in approaching what the disciples might have felt during the transfiguration of Jesus.

The scene with Jesus strongly resembles that between Elijah and Elisha (a resemblance made all the more explicit by the presence of Elijah next to Jesus at the moment of his dazzling radiance). The disciples, faithful Jews as they were, would know the Elijah/Elisha story well, and so it is fathomable that in their minds they think this moment is going to end the same way – Jesus taken up to heaven in holy movement. And so, we can read their offer to build dwellings as their own way of seeking to stay a little longer with the one they love. Let us build dwelling places so that ‘As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, you will not leave us.’

But despite their suggestion, a cloud overshadows and out of that numinous darkness they hear the voice of God. Then, suddenly, they look around and no one is with them any more, but only Jesus… I think it is so striking that it is phrased this way. Rather than “when they looked around they saw Jesus, but the others had gone”, Mark leads off with the absence (no one is there) and this allows us to live a moment in this absence before the conciliatory reassurance that Jesus is there. Because in that moment, that pause, the disciples look and see no one with them, and it appears that they were right in their hunch that they, like Elisha, are about to be left alone, torn asunder from their master and friend. In this moment, the voices of prophets past might sting their ears, ‘Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?’

It is a perfectly reasonable thing to believe has happened – Jesus, their friend and master, Jesus a prophet of Israel, lifted from earth to be spared from death – a fate befitting his wonder and might, befitting this man attested by God. And yet, the story does not end that way. “No one was with them any more, but only Jesus”. Jesus is not taken. Jesus remains. Jesus stays. As the Lord lives, and as they live, Jesus will not leave them.

Instead, Jesus sets off again down the mountain, disciples in tow, back to the crowds. Not taken up to heaven, but journeying back down to earth – to its troubles, squabbles, hurting, forsaking, and death.

Now, those who know their gospels you might be thinking that this point, ‘isn’t this just a prolongment?’ Isn’t this just like Elijah allowing Elisha to walk a little farther down the road with him before the end? Isn’t Jesus still going to ascend to the Father at the end of this story?

I think the key point of emphasis is that the road to the ascension runs through Calvary. The transfiguration event marks the end of the season of Epiphany as we prepare to enter Lent, to enter the 40 days of preparation before the cross of Easter. Jesus is not taken, does not depart, until he has gone all the way through. By that I mean Jesus is not swept out of this mortal realm before tasting the sting of death. Jesus goes all the way with us: swallowed by death, only to defeat it.

In this way, Jesus is Elisha. He is the one who chooses to continue to walk with us always a little further: ‘As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.’ That is the word of Jesus’ promise; that is the power of his death. However far we walk, Jesus walks too until the day we are taken by God. And then, given that Jesus is the beloved Son, the Eternal Word, the Second Person of the Trinity – being taken by God is still no departure from Christ – from God to God we go, from God to God we are not left.

That Jesus does not depart on that mountain but instead descends back into the mess of human life, that he descends to the point of death, even death on a cross, that he descends even unto the pits of hell to release its prisoners, that is our good news and hope that we will not be left however far we descend. People can be disappeared into all kinds of prisons, detention centres, and camps, but not Jesus, not he who remains, he who descends. Jesus, our eternal Elisha, tarries with us always a little longer. We do not have to extend the goodbye, clinging to the hem of his garment to remain in his company. Even in the most desolate and lonely places in our lives and societies, even when we are finally laid to rest, when no one is with us anymore, Jesus remains. As the Lord lives, he will not leave you. Amen.

Liam Miller is an ordained Minister of the Word in the Uniting Church in Australia. He currently serves as a New Growth Minister on Darkinjung land/Toukley, NSW. He also hosts the Love Rinse Repeat podcast where he interviews theologians, ministers, artists, activists

Isaiah 40:21–31

It would be great to live in a society without prisons, but… It would be great to support people who are struggling, but… Forgiveness is great, but… I would love to give that person money, but…

The ‘yes, but’ it is the continual scourge of the church’s engagement with the world. Ideals can be preached on Sunday but the reality of crime and profit must be faced on Monday. The ‘yes, but’ is about maintaining the status quo, it is also about who is Lord. Isaiah has some words for us this week. And the words of the prophet seem a direct response to any ‘yes, but…’ we could think of. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?”(41:21)

Who are we protecting by maintaining the status quo as a society? As Bob Dylan said, “you’re gonna have to serve somebody/Well it may be the Devil/Or it may be the Lord/But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Abolition comes down to the question: “who do you serve?” Isaiah asks if we have known or heard? The prophet goes on:

 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. (40:22-23)

The rulers of this world are brought to nothing by the God of all creation. Do we believe in the God of all creation to step out in faith by advocating and working towards the liberation of all? But even in taking that step, we are not alone. God “gives power to the faint,” (40:28) and in the struggle for abolition, it is common to feel faint staring at the prison-industrial complex. God “strengthens the powerless,” (40:28) and boy do I feel powerless sometimes in Texas when looking at our prisons and government and common misconceptions of Justice. 

Honestly, though, most activities in life are tiring and I feel faint chasing my kids up the hill. I can tire myself out working for my own wants and needs, or I can listen to Isaiah, strive towards justice, and remember that “those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (40:31)

We don’t have to say “yes, but…” to God or to justice. We can boldly say yes, and we will run together with the Lord.

Rev. Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Spicewood, Texas.

Deuteronomy 18:15–20 and Mark 1:21–28

In comparing two of this week’s readings, we notice something about the character of God, a character that — if emulated by the church — will lead to abolition. 

In Mark, 1:21-28, the power and authority of Jesus is put on full display. This authority was obvious to the synagogue’s attendees based on his teaching alone, Mark notes that “he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Again, Jesus as God’s prophet is put on full display as he heals one who is demon possessed. 

In this interaction we can see what God meant when, in Deuteronomy, he told the Israelites that he would raise up a prophet from their own people. God’s promise, that prophets would come and that some would evidently have his authority while others — either those who presumed to speak in his name or those who spoke in other’s name — would die.

Turning back to Mark, we see that the demon also recognizes Christ as God’s prophet. “I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus then rebukes the demon and casts him out of the person. But it’s the demon’s phrase before this that should catch our eye and juxtapose itself with God in Deuteronomy. 

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”

The demon accuses God of being a destroyer. But turn to Deuteronomy, 

“Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable.” 

Here, in the Old Testament where anti-Semitism has driven Christians to often accuse God of being violent and destructve, God declares that accountability will be had. This is in contrast with destruction. Accountability does not destroy individuals, it instead restores and elevates them. This is a vision of abolition. Punishment and carceral systems can not fulfill the vision of God, which is a vision of accountability. 

Lastly, God’s warning that those who do not heed the prophet will be held accountable is a restraint on those of us who would feel a white-hot rage at those systems and those who perpetuate them. Don’t forget that Godself will be holding them — and us — accountable. When we feel a desire for vengeance and want to destroy those who advance such inequalities, God wants to bring them to account and build a better world for all.

Mitchell Atencio (he/him/his) is a discalced writer and photographer based in Arizona.

Psalm 62

In Psalm 62:5-12, the Psalmist dually interprets God as a refuge and a hope, and as one with a power to complete God’s work.

The work of abolition is not our work joined by God, it is God’s work joined by us. For those on the outside, and especially for those whose lives have not been touched by the carceral system, we need to remember that this is God’s work, we simply join in. This means that we ought to be especially careful not to see ourselves as doing charity work, or as bringers of salvation, because that power belongs to God. And, as Jesus makes clear in Matthew 25, God is first found in those outcast and downtrodden by our society. 

When this Psalm refers to God as a refuge, rock, and fortress, they are calling us to see God as the primary source for this work. Not theory, not theology, but God, the everlasting power and might that repays all according to their work. 

And lest we miss this as a warning and caution, the Psalm exhorts the reader to “put no confidence in extortion, and set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.” This warning is not just for individuals, but for systems and communities. This is a warning for our racial capitalist systems, where riches are built off extortion and oppression. 

Mitchell Atencio (he/him/his) is a discalced writer and photographer based in Arizona.