Author: Hannah

This is part of our series of posts on texts from the Revised Common Lectionary, offering preaching topics and inspiration through intentionally abolitionist readings.

The book of Exodus is my very favorite in the Bible, particularly because of what it reveals about God’s nature: both through the revelation of God’s name and God’s response to the cries of God’s people in bondage, and through God’s longsuffering response in the wilderness.

The pattern, which we see in Exodus 17, goes like this: the people desire to turn back to Egypt, to give up on liberty because of the risk and danger it entails. And rather than punish them, God provides for them. Here, we see that in response to their crying out, God provides water from the rock.

Of course, this mercy is not an entirely consistent pattern in the texts. In Numbers 11, we see God (after providing food in response to the complaints of the Israelites!) send a plague upon them. And even in today’s story of Massah and Meribah, the associated psalm, Psalm 95, reminds us that God is not entirely merciful upon this generation:

95:8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,

95:9 when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.

95:10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.”

95:11 Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.”

Yet at the same time, in the telling of Exodus, God’s nature is clearly revealed: when the Israelites ask, “Is God among us or not?” God answers firmly: “Yes!” and meets their needs.

Perhaps there are two lessons here. The first is about the merciful nature of God, who does not respond to evil and unfaithfulness with abandonment, but always first with God’s own faithful provision.

The second is about the difficulty of claiming liberty, a challenge that the Israelites keep failing. How often do we, as we try to build a more just and liberated society, find ourselves falling back into reliance on patterns, systems, and attitudes of punishment and control, because we don’t know what else to do? And when we do that, where can we see God providing for us a new way forward, what we need to continue the gradual fight for the liberation of all?

Lenten blessings from Christians for Abolition!

During Lent our blog is continuing our series of meditations on lessons from the Revised Common Lectionary.

We also have a new devotional, Healing Justice and the Paschal Mystery. As Lent points us toward Holy Week and the narrative of Jesus’ passion, this devotional – built around the services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the Great Vigil of Easter – envisions Holy Week and the Passion narrative as a sort of restorative justice process, and considers ways you can use the liturgies of Holy Week to deepen your own practice and understanding of restorative justice. The five pages of this devotional are suitable for use during Holy Week or for ongoing study during the weeks of Lent.

This is part of our series of posts on the texts appointed for the Revised Common Lectionary readings.

by Rev. Wilson Pruitt

John 3:1 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.

John 3:2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

Nicodemus comes by night so as not to be seen. When we start to explore the full extent of God’s power of reconciliation, it can move against the wisdom of the world that often portrays itself as ‘christian.’ Nicodemus was a faithful Jew, a Pharisee, a student of Torah. He saw something amazing in Jesus, but he also knew that there were others in Jerusalem who would feel threatened by Jesus. 

The status quo always has its defenders. The status quo of criminal justice is literally filled with millions in this country who think that their ideology of good guys and bad guys is all that is saving our children from suffering. This does not even get into those who explicitly profit from the status quo system, but people whose ideology is trapped in this manichaean good vs. evil that cannot see how far God’s grace can go.

Jesus spoke in the public square the truth of God’s love. He was not ashamed of who he was or what God was doing. Yet he also met with those who had to come in the night. He did not berate Nicodemus for coming at night. Jesus welcomed him and explained the reality of new birth. He answered questions again and again, even to the point of the radical claim of John 3:16, a claim that the carceral state cannot abide. Some may come in the night. Some may come in the day, but God’s radical love and reconciling mercy is there for all, whether those currently in prison or those currently impersonating others. God’s mercy is there and we must offer it, in the night and the day.

This is the first Lenten post in our continuing series of meditations on readings from the Revised Common Lectionary.

As we enter into Lent, the Old Testament lesson tells the story of the fall of humankind in the garden of Eden, and the epistle brings the response to that from the letter to the Romans:

5:15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.

5:16 And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.

The beauty of this passage is the all-encompassing nature of Christ’s free gift of forgiveness: the gift of justification rather than condemnation.

Our current criminal legal system is a system of condemnation. The fact that the only response we can envision to crime and harm is one of punishment and prisons is an effect of the “one man’s trespass”—it is a feature of a fallen reality. Judgment itself, following the one trespass, has been perverted in our reality and our understanding, so that judgment is seen as something always to do with punishment.

But the promise of Christ is that the free gift turns judgment into justification. This does not mean that those who do harm are left unaccountable, or that no amends are made! It means that our view of judgment and justice should be one rooted in love and restoration.

Fleming Rutledge translates the term “justification” as “rectification,” making right. Our current paradigm for “criminal justice” does not make space for rectification, but replaces it with retribution and punishment. Yet the promise of the free gift of grace is the promise that the appropriate, godly, redeemed response to crime and harm is a response of rectification: of making the situation as right as possible. The story of the gospel, the rectification promised by God and effected by Christ, is about the transformation of our conception of justice from being primarily about punishment to being primarily about restoration.

Prisons, in other words, are an effect of the fall of humankind. Prisons are one of the many brokennesses of our reality from which Christ came to redeem us. Prisons, in other words, cannot be redeemed in the service of justice. Rather, in the kingdom of God that is already appearing around us, they are being abolished so that human justice can be redeemed, transformed and rectified into the healing, compassionate reality intended by God. The free gift of Christ is the end of retribution and incarceration!

by Rev. Wilson Pruitt

Psalm 99:4 Mighty King. lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.

What is the limit of the justice of God? Too often, the church in the world is presented as navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of Realism and Idealism, but this is a deeply unfaithful dichotomy. And I mean ‘unfaithful’ in the literal sense of “lacking faith.” Is the justice of God limited by the Overton Window of our political institutions? This is one of the first responses to any language of prison abolition. The theological and biblical account is clear throughout. No biblical author ever writes in favor of chains. What is left is the limit of the Christian imagination of God’s justice and for too long the limit has been narrow. People have not seen God as a lover of justice for all but for some. We can see this contrast between limited justice verses expansive justice with Matthew’s account of the transfiguration. 

Matthew 17:1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.

Matthew 17:2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.

Matthew 17:3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.

Matthew 17:4 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

Peter misses the point. Peter wants to stay on the mountain. He thinks the vision is for him. Should we stay on the mountain or go back down? Are visions of God offered for the select few or all? Is justice offered for few or for all? Christian Abolition is a claim of faith about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that God’s justice demands the chains be broken and that human notions of justice are passing away. Even the justice Paul describes in Romans 13 that is often held up to justify state authority is positioned next to the Justice of God. Authority comes from God, as all things come from God, but Paul is not telling the Church in Rome to be complacent or blindly follow but to “get rid of the actions that belong to the darkness and put on the weapons of light” (Romans 13:12b). Chains are an action of darkness. Freedom and reconciliation are weapons of light. 

Matthew 17:7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” 

We do not need to fear being faithful. We need not fear stretching God’s justice beyond the limits of current human institutions. Instead, we should be afraid of being unfaithful to the fullness of God’s justice and love.

This is part of our series of meditations on the texts of the Revised Common Lectionary.

The gospel lesson appointed for this week dives into some of the difficult teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. From an abolitionist point of view, perhaps most immediately striking is the discussion of prisons in 5:25: “Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison.”

We certainly do not need to read into this an acceptance of the necessity of prisons on Jesus’ part. He is not saying, “If you do wrong, you should be thrown into prison.”

Instead, what Jesus is doing here is presenting a sort of “two kingdoms” cosmology: he is offering a vision of a new way of being in community characterized by reconciliation, and contrasting it to the earthly, fallen system of addressing harm with imprisonment and punishment.

It is true that this is a hard teaching, however we read it. But perhaps its sting is that Jesus promises us that we will get what we ask for, and will be measured by the values we practice. 

If we aim to build the community of reconciliation, then we will live in a community characterized by inclusion and peace. But if we refuse to take part in the new community of reconciliation and accountability that he is describing, but instead insist on relying on prisons and punishment to address harm, then we will be “given up” to the powers of the world, in the form of the community of vengeance and punishment that we have built for ourselves. Compare this to 1 Corinthians 5:5, and the idea that a member of the church doing continuous harm should be given up to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Our Christian communities are places of reconciliation, but when we insist on nevertheless building structural systems of punishment and incarceration, we run the risk of becoming liable to them ourselves.

What this can show the church, perhaps, is an insight of transformative justice communities, who have by necessity found ways to do justice independently of the criminal-punishment system that has failed them: we must build structures of accountability and reconciliation that are in line with our values, rather than accepting the dominant values of our punitive culture. The church should not accept the necessity of prisons, policing, and punishment as a stand-in for justice. Rather, we should name those, as Jesus does, as tools of the dominant powers of this world, which are captive to sin. We should seek, instead, to establish a community of accountability and reconciliation, and to understand our lives and our communities to be governed by the logic of the kingdom of heaven, not the logic of this world.

Editor’s note: Today’s Lectionary post, on Isaiah 58:1-9 and Matthew 5:13-20, is written by guest contributor Rev. Wilson Pruitt.

58:3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.

58:4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.

58:5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?

58:6 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?

Who should fast and why? The fast Isaiah speaks of is not for self-actualization. In fact, Isaiah transfigures fasting from an action of the self to act of societal transformation. Isaiah challenges the ways private fasts have been distorted in verse 5:

58:5 “Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?”

The prophet then shifts swiftly to a proclamation of abolition in verse 6: 

58:6 “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?”

This is the heart of the matter. Christians have allegorized away the language of bonds and yokes in order to soften Isaiah’s call. And thus to use the  language of Jesus in the reading from Matthew 5, Christians have made the salt of the kingdom of heaven lose its flavor; we have put the bushel over the light. 

Matthew 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.

5:15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.

5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

The prophet’s call is clear, the consequence is tremendous but not impossible. The call is to transform society by loosing the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, and breaking every (single) yoke. This is the fast God chooses for us. This is how to shine. But sometimes, the darkness of a bushel basket provides more comfort than the exposure of light. To shine, to break chains, takes faith beyond the status quo. Faith in a world beyond the world we have today. Faith in a God whom we can trust: 

Isaiah 58:11 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.

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

Part of our series on abolitionist readings of texts from the Revised Common Lectionary frequently used in mainline churches.

Micah 6:8 is one of the most-commonly-quoted calls to justice in the Bible: “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

While the doing of justice is essential to the abolitionist project, the earlier verses in this passage make it even clearer the liberatory shape of the justice God proposes.

First, God rises up to “contend with Israel” (6:2): “O my people, what I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!” The root of his contention is Israel’s forgetfulness of their history: “For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery” (6:3).

As James H. Cone, among others, has written, the call to justice, and particularly to freedom, in Israel is a direct response to God’s act of liberation in the Exodus. The foundational act of freeing captives in the Exodus is determinative of what justice means now, for Israel.

This is the context of Micah’s call to us in 6:8, to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly: doing justice means continuing God’s work of Exodus, of setting captives free. By remembering God’s work and God’s story in Israel, we see the pattern of our own justice turned toward abolition.

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of meditations based on passages in the lectionary used by many mainline churches, intended as a prompt for preachers and an ongoing project of reading unexpected passages with abolitionist eyes.

4:13 He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali,

4:14 so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

4:15 “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles

4:16 the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

4:17 From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

This week’s lectionary readings present the great and familiar promise of Isaiah, “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” While the gospel lesson quotes only a portion of the passage—a promise of hope and redemption to those in the darkness of prisons and jails, to be sure—the Old Testament reading presents the full passage from Isaiah and makes its promise of freedom to prisoners even more explicit:

9:2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined.

9:3 You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder.

9:4 For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.

The yoke, the bar, the rod—all symbols of captivity and oppression—are broken. In the kingdom of God, prisoners are set free.

Last week’s reading presented to us the question of where Jesus was “staying;” of where he was abiding in our world—leading us to think of his presence with those most marginalized including the incarcerated.

This week’s passage, from the beginning of a different gospel, begins in the same place—here is where Jesus “made his home”—and then makes explicit that his dwelling or staying with those who are oppressed is not only for their comfort but for their freedom, by showing that his “making his home in the territory of Zebulun and Naphthali” is precisely fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy of their freedom from captivity.

It is from the position of solidarity, dwelling with those who sit in darkness, and towards the liberation of all the captives, that Jesus proclaims the nearness of the kingdom of God, and calls us all to repent of our support for structures of oppression, including those we cling to in the name of false “justice.” Jesus dwells in darkness to set the prisoners free.

The disciples said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.—John 1:38–39

One challenge for the abolitionist theological project is to develop our imaginations to “see” the language of liberation and abolition for prisoners throughout the whole arc of scripture.

To that end, and as a Christian in a liturgical tradition that uses a lectionary, where set texts are read each Sunday, this is the start of a series to provide meditations on selected lectionary texts, for study (and to help preachers) in advance of the coming Sunday.

(I say selected because I don’t think I can promise to get one up EVERY week – but I will do my best! The goal is to see abolition in as much of the lectionary as we can. And if you, a reader of this blog, have an idea for a meditation for this series, please contact me, at least a week in advance, and I’ll be happy to run it!)

In the Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for Sunday, January 19, 2020, we are faced with the disciples following Jesus, whom John the Baptist has just identified as the Lamb of God. Their first question to him is “Where are you staying?”

The concept of “staying” or “dwelling” already has great resonance in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, where we have just read that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” and that “the Spirit descended upon him and remained on him.” For the disciples to look for where Jesus is staying is not just a practical request but an opening of their eyes to see where God is abiding and illuminating the world.

What the abolitionist perspective brings to this story is an answer to the question “Where are you staying?”—we know that the place where God dwells is in the darkest places in our world, in the darkness with the captives, in our jails and prisons. God is present in and with everyone who is incarcerated, bringing liberating power to “those who sit in darkness” (Isaiah 9:2).

The disciples ask Jesus, “Where are you staying?” and Jesus responds, “Come and see.” Come and see the conditions in our prisons and jails, and be radicalized. Come and see the presence of God even in the midst of this horror, and find hope in God’s ongoing work against prisons. Come and see the place where God dwells in the midst of our prison nation.