Author: Hannah

Matthew 11:2–11

The appointed reading for this Sunday gives us the voice of an incarcerated person: John the Baptist, asking for confirmation of Jesus’ identity from prison.

As Liza Anderson has written, John’s question to Jesus might seem like a “pointed challenge” — as Jesus’ response to John “alludes to Isaiah, noting that the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. However, it is a selective quotation, omitting the promise in Isaiah 42:7 about bringing prisoners out of the dungeons and freeing captives. Given that John asks the question while in prison, this is presumably the part that he is the most concerned with, and it’s hard to imagine that he would have been comforted by the reminder that Jesus was doing everything else in the messianic job description! ” Anderson suggests that one way the church has historically addressed this challenge is by recognizing that Jesus’ mission to free prisoners includes freeing the spirits in prison (1 Peter 3:19) and that “it was part of the vocation of John the Baptist to be the forerunner and proclaimer of Christ not only among the living but also among the dead — even though this was by its nature a vocation that required him to die.” John precedes Jesus into criminalization, incarceration, and death.

In any case, I think the challenge offered by John the Baptist from prison is essential as we think about the nature of Christ’s coming and mission. How are we, in this world, to know that Jesus is the promised messiah who makes all things new? The answer that Jesus gives does not rely on his descent from David or his divine nature, but on the fruit of the work itself. The confirmation of Jesus’ identity comes about in the community of healing and liberation he leaves behind.

I’ve written elsewhere about how the key question regarding the world to come is not “What must I do to gain eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16) but “What is the nature of the life to which we will be raised?” and that Jesus’ answer to John here gives the answer. The renewed community Jesus brings — one which, we believe, includes the promise of freedom for prisoners and forms of justice which heal rather than punishing — is a picture of the “eternal life” of the age to come. Jesus’ identity, the renewed community around him, and the expectation of eternal life coalesce in the work of liberation and healing itself. John’s voice reminds us that those who are incarcerated continue to advocate for and demand their own liberation and inclusion in healed, renewed communities, and those on the outside must listen and act in solidarity.

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

Isaiah 11:1–10

If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Flight? Invisibility? Superspeed? 

A few years ago, my then-partner definitively answered this for me: The power to create forests. Corporations are burning down the Amazon? Bam, forest. Developers want to build a new subdivision? Speak the word, forest appears. I have yet to find a better answer to this question.

But creating forests at whim is not just a reparative power. An invading army is about to attack your city? Poof, instant forest disorients the invaders. Trying to blockade an ICE detention center? Every time the trucks try to leave, more trees suddenly appear in front of them!

It’s hard to operate a carceral system if suddenly a forest is growing in the middle of it, and won’t stop. If roots begin to buckle the concrete and branches tear open the fences. If giant oaks suddenly tear through the ceiling of the police precinct.

While we don’t have the power to magically generate forests to confuse our enemies and set our people free, this famous passage from Isaiah invites us to imagine what might be growing out of seemingly-dead wood. The small shoots of hope grow, in a few short verses, into one with the power to bring righteousness to Earth, to judge for the poor and oppressed. All is not lost. In fact, all is about to be totally transformed. Children will live in safety. All of creation will find a new harmony. Out of these tiny green leaves, a whole new world is born.

Abolition seems impossible. So often, a new world feels not just far away, but totally beyond our reach. Thankfully, it is not our reach that matters. It is not up to our individual superpowers. It is our collective reaching that transforms this fragile new life into a new world. We make abolition possible.

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 2:1–5, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36–44

This Sunday begins the season of Advent—a time of preparation and anticipation leading to the feast of Christmas. While typical Advent practices include soft candlelight, melodic carols, and clever calendars, the Scriptures leading up to Christmas are anything but soft and sweet and cheery. 

Advent scriptures are often apocalyptic and startling, pointing toward a future vastly different than the current reality. Dramatic contrasts, portents, tribulation, and admonishment are all the stuff of Advent Scriptures. They warn of changes to come—a revolution, really—as the Messiah enters the world in the form of a baby. That tiny, helpless, vulnerable baby will overthrow all systems of evil, bursting in from the heavenly realm to confront them from the inside. 

This week’s passages are no exception: weapons of war destroyed and turned into tools for abundance, waking up to a new reality, lightness overcoming darkness, and the sudden arrival of God’s reign, so abrupt and sweeping it is likened to the worst catastrophe the people of God have ever known. 

The Isaiah passage in particular sets forth God’s vision of a non-violent world in which God teaches the ways of peace and people joyfully seek a new way. The Psalm echoes this vision, singing of a Jerusalem that is intended to be a place of unity, praise, prosperity, and peace. In Romans, Christians are exhorted to “put on the armor of light,” pursuing peace and dignity in a world literally hell-bent on violence and degradation. 

Essentially, these Advent passages present us with a vision of abolition, of a world transformed so that all of Creation may live in peace and abundance. That transformation began abruptly with Jesus’ first breath and continues today. That transformation began from the inside, within humanity, from one who seemed utterly powerless throughout life and in his death. It started with direct confrontation of evil powers. 

Like Jesus, persons in prison and immigrant detention centers appear powerless to the world, but they are a formidable force in God’s ongoing mission of transformation and reconciliation. They are in direct, daily confrontation with systemic evil and know its weak spots. Working together, organizing for others’ dignity and liberation as well their own, they tap into divine power to dismantle oppressive structures so God’s peaceful reign can flourish. 

From the inside, among the vulnerable and “powerless,” grows a radically non-violent world. Advent challenges us to deepen our solidarity with those inside who are organizing for a peaceful future. Along with special observances and traditions in this season, our Advent practices can also include actively supporting and collaborating with imprisoned and detained persons for liberation. What would it look like if our Advent practices were as shocking as our Advent Scriptures? At the very least, we would catch glimmers of eternal hope that outshine all of the season’s candles and lights. 

Leeann Culbreath is an Episcopal priest, immigrant advocate, and band mom in south-central Georgia.

Colossians 1:11–20

What are the limits of salvation in Jesus Christ? What are the limits of Christ’s power?  Paul’s letter to the Colossians offers a maximalist perspective on the salvific power of Jesus Christ with beautiful language that is often overly spiritualized. We begin with how Jesus rescues us, redeems us and forgives us. Yet this power is never limited to invisible things.

The status quo loves to overly spiritualize Jesus. If Jesus only saves us in our hearts, Jesus has nothing to say to present structures of power, like the Prison Industrial Complex. Once the power of Jesus becomes material, the shadow of the cross starts to fall on the status quo.

Do Christians want the shadow of the cross to fall on status quo powers and structures of power? The less power Jesus has, the fewer ways that Christ’s followers are called to respond to structures of power and oppression in this world. It is easier to live an overly spiritualized life if it means you don’t need to take a stand on status quo structures of power.

If Christ’s redemption is total and Christ’s power is total, then Christ’s call on Christians to seek out justice in this world does not stop at the doors of our homes or the doors of our churches. This means that we should take courage from Christ as we seek the justice of God in this world. Christ’s power is not limited by the status quo, so Christians should not blindly accept it. We should strive for the reign of God here and now.

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

Isaiah 65:17–25, Luke 21:5–19

Sandwiched between All Saints and Reign of Christ, we have one more Sunday of Ordinary Time before Advent. Year C, however, is unwilling to wait for the changing of the calendars and dives right into some apocalyptic texts that serve us well as abolitionists and those of us who await the outcome of the US elections that occur this time of year. 

It’s tempting to look to the state for the just world we seek. When reproductive rights, access to the vote, marriage equality, and so much more hinge on the outcome of elections, we are right to be worried. So when we look past the state for our hopes for a world made right, we are not ignoring the stakes in a participatory democracy and we are not embracing some spiritual opiate to divert our attention from what’s right in front of our faces. To look beyond the state is to both acknowledge reality and put our faith and trust in God.

Both Isaiah 65 and Luke 21 present apocalyptic visions of a world made right through some kind of dramatic intervention. “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” the Isaiah text begins, marking the creation of a new cosmos (65:17). “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down,” Jesus says as he looks upon the Temple in Jerusalem (21:6). Both passages warn of trials that come before, but both also promise good to follow. “They shall not labor in vain,” Isaiah promises (65:23). “By your endurance you will gain your souls,” Jesus vows (21:19). 

Regardless of who wins what seat in the elections in the US this week, things will get worse before they get better for the cause of abolition. Republicans have run a successful closing campaign message on crime, animating racial prejudice and other forces counter to the message of an abolitionist Gospel. It will gain them power. In my home county, a sheriff primarily known for his former advocacy of the notorious 287(g) immigration program will likely return to office after being ousted some years earlier. It’s tempting to despair in moments like this that our work and our hope does not matter. 

We must look beyond the machinations of the state because the state will always disappoint us. By necessity, our strategic goals, policy priorities, and campaign objectives will always focus on the state because it is the chief perpetrator of carceral violence. Ultimately, however, our hope and our work must be grounded elsewhere. Mariame Kaba reminds us that our individual efforts “will lessen harm to be sure, but only building power among those most marginalized in society holds the possibility of radical transformation. And that’s an endless quest for justice. That’s a struggle rather than a goal. Only movements can build power. We need a movement for transformative justice.” [1]

Both the Isaiah and Luke texts this week point to transformation, but neither promise that it comes through purely worldly means. Both texts were written in the context of historical cataclysms, but they stubbornly kept to the work and kept their faith. We must trust in the realm God is making in our midst and the world that God will ultimately make. Our work will not be in vain, God will hear our cries, and justice will come even as we endure trials in the meantime.

[1]  Mariame Kaba, “Whether Darren Wilson is Indicted or Not, the Entire System is Guilty” in We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, 56.

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.

Job 19:23–27

As a pastor, I can get lost in the world of words. Preaching, praying, reading, emails, cards… if I’m not careful, my brain can leave the present moment behind and get caught up in trying to find the right thing to write or say. Ironically, the purpose of many of these words is to provide a sense of presence, to remind myself and my community of God’s presence and the power of being in the presence of God’s creation.

But all this pales in comparison to the power and presence that words hold for some of my incarcerated siblings. After all, it was words—the interpretation of laws, sentencing guidelines, etc.—that helped build their cages. It is words—the arguments of lawyers, the recommendations of counselors—that can open those same cages. And while they are caged it is words that so often sustain them: The hand-written cards from friends, the love passed through all-to-brief telephone calls or video visits, the encouragement of fellow incarcerated people, the worlds opened by the words of poets and philosophers. When Pennsylvania decided that all mail to prisons must be routed to a company in Florida and passed on as black-and-white photocopies, it was little wonder that people were outraged and took to the streets to demand the state stop serving as a go-between for our words to each other. 

Job cries out, “O that my words were written down!… O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!” He wants, no, he needs to know that his pleas for justice will be heard beyond the life of his sick and frail body. He knows that our words live lives beyond us, they have a power beyond our own. Some of the most searing and profound reflections on our humanity and on our divinity come from the mouths and the pens of people in Job’s position: The oppressed, the incarcerated, those who live face to face with their mortality. Incarcerated journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal writes that, “On death’s brink, men begin to see things they’ve perhaps never seen before…. Men on Phase II – men whose death warrants have been signed, men with a date to die – live each day with a clarity and a vibrancy they might have lacked in less pressured times.” (Death Blossoms, 101)

We do well to heed the sacred power of words, their power to harm and to heal. And we do well to heed the words of those living in pressured times, our incarcerated siblings and others who light lamps of hope in desolate places and who dare to imagine a world free from punishment and state-sanctioned violence.

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.

Luke 19:1–10

Jesus is closing in on Jerusalem when he encounters Zacchaeus, a wealthy tax collector, in a tree. Tax collectors were pariahs in Jewish society because they collected tariffs for the Roman Empire, the occupying force. They notoriously overcharged and exploited the poor. 

Though he was wealthy, Zacchaeus was outcast, and perhaps that is why no one makes space for him in the crowd so he can see “who Jesus was.” Zacchaeus runs and climbs a tree, which anticipates the cruel cross Jesus would soon encounter. As Jesus passes under the tree, he calls out to Zacchaeus by name, commands him to come down, and “voluntells” him to offer hospitality. 

Jesus’ command suggests that this is not a random, curious encounter, or just Jesus’ desperation to find a comfy bed for the night! In this last act public ministry in Luke, Jesus shows the crowd (and us) something about the nature of God and God’s reign—God is the liberator of all creation and is already realizing an inclusive liberatory reign through Jesus. 

Jesus could have dismissed Zacchaeus or continued the warnings about wealth that he issued in the previous chapter. Shockingly, though, he reaches out to him to draw him into relationship. This is a beautiful example of “calling in” instead of “calling out”—an important practice in abolition praxis. Jesus calls him in, humanizing him by using his name. This moment of human connection enables Zacchaeus to respond without defensiveness, and then to open up to change. Instead of calling out his sins in public, Jesus honors him and is even willing to share the intimacy of eating at table together.  

We who follow Jesus share in God’s inclusive ministry of liberation, seeking freedom for all harmed in systems oppression, which is everyone—the oppressed, oppressors, and those who passively participate in the system. Included in those harmed are non-human creatures, land, and ecosystems. In the famous words of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

Of course, the moment of “calling in” is only a starting point of the truth-telling, accountability, and transformation of relationships that are necessary for restorative justice and liberation. In this passage, we see Zacchaeus begin to move in this direction, acknowledging some wrongdoing and offering reparations.He seems to recognize that the loving, liberated life that Jesus offers is far better than all the riches he could amass. Whether he follows through or not is not the point of the passage, though; the point is that all belong in God’s dream of liberation, and relationships are the pathway into it. 

Leeann Culbreath is an Episcopal priest, immigrant advocate, and band mom in south-central Georgia.

Luke 18:9–14

Whenever Jesus meets or discusses tax collectors, the result is a paradigm of justice that differs profoundly from our own. Tax collectors are imperial collaborators, extortionists, traitors, thieves, and subjects of general derision in first century Palestine, particularly from the point of view of the Jewish people. And yet, tax collectors receive not the swift retribution many thought they deserved, but a far more transformational place in Jesus’ thought, including in this parable. 

Take tax collectors in Luke’s Gospel alone. Tax collectors are among the first to seek baptism from John (3:12-13). Levi is a tax collector who leaves his life behind and becomes one of the Twelve (5:27-31). In conflicts with religious leadership, the tax collectors remained faithful to the mission of God (7:24-30) and they come and listen to Jesus’ parables (15:1). And let us not forget Zacchaeus of children’s song fame: the tax collector who repents so fully that it results in significant reparations to those he has wronged. 

Jesus never condemns the tax collectors to retribution but instead invites them to transformation. Jesus (and John the Baptist) are quite clear about the injustice of tax collectors’ activities, which is both explicit in John’s teaching and implicit in the response tax collectors like Zaccheaus have to Jesus’ gospel. This paradigm of transformation and restoration, as opposed to retribution, is fundamental for abolition.  

Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie point out in an essay in Essence that our justice system is not set up for this kind of transformation. Discussing justice for Breonna Taylor, they write, “we want far more than what the system that killed Breonna Taylor can offer—because the system that killed her is not set up to provide justice for her family and loved ones.” While we must seek accountability for police wrongdoing, “arrests and prosecutions … have proven to be sources of violence not safety. We cannot claim the system must be dismantled because it is a danger to Black lives and at the same time legitimize it by turning to it for justice.” [1]

Jesus does not turn to systems of retributive punishment to right the wrongs of the tax collectors, including in this parable. Dr. Amy-Jill Levine speculates that the Pharisee’s proclamation is perhaps instrumental in the tax collector’s disposition toward God. “We might rather see the Pharisee as helping the tax collector,” she writes. “Just as the sin of one person impacts the community … so the merits of the righteous can benefit the community. … Jews who first heard this parable … may well have understood the Pharisee’s merit to have impacted the tax collector. This would be the parable’s shock: not only that the agent of Rome is justified but that the Pharisee’s own good works helped in that justification.” [2] We aren’t given the rest of the tax collector’s story, but we are witness to his first act of repentance and transformation. 

Jesus wants to see a world where people are transformed, not merely punished. Either that, or Jesus wants to see an end to the material circumstances that may have necessitated something we called a crime in the first place. In both cases, the response is not punitive, it’s restorative. The witness of the tax collectors demand a social vision beyond punishment, which is core to the abolitionist conviction. 

[1]  From “We Want More Justice for Breonna Taylor than the System that Killed Her Can Deliver” by Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie, originally appearing in the July 2020 issue of Essence and reprinted in We Do This ‘Til We Free Us. 

[2]  See her notes in The Jewish Annotated New Testament on this parable. 

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.

Luke 18:1–8

Jesus gives us a parable of an unjust judge in Luke 18. At first glance, we might think that the judge is going to be torn down by the end of the parable, but Jesus, instead, lifts him up.

It would be convenient, from an abolitionist perspective, to have Jesus directly exhort unjust judges to change their ways. Then, we could map the parable directly on to our legal system and point to how unjust judges need to change their ways today. But something else is going on here.

Jesus does not lift up the unjust judge as an example to which we should aspire. The unjust judge marks a reality to which we must face. Jesus, instead, lifts up the widow who comes back to the judge again and again. She doesn’t tear him down or remark about how ill-suited he is for his position. Instead she seeks justice. She asks, again and again, grant me justice.

We don’t know how long it took for the unjust judge to respond and finally be sick of her and grant her claim. It was probably a long time, yet she continued.

Jesus lifts up this parable as a call for us to seek justice from the God who is just and good. We are to seek justice continually, not just now and then. We are to seek justice until justice comes.

This parable offers us an example of how to seek justice. To seek it from God first of all. As well, to seek it from structures in this world that lack justice. This parable offers us encouragement to continue even when faced with an unjust judge, and that if our call is first to God, justice will be done.

Let us be encouraged in seeking prison abolition. Our goal is not to find the perfect judge on earth and use them to further our ends. Our goal is to seek justice with the just and the unjust of this world. To seek God’s righteousness faithfully and continually and to receive Christ’s encouragement in this. God is with us and God will hear us.

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

Jeremiah 29:1, 4–7

Jeremiah’s prophecies are both disturbing and inspiring. They remind us of how embedded we are to systems of injustice and idolatry, and how difficult it is to untangle and release ourselves from these webs of oppression. Jeremiah preaches through-out the reign of five Judean kings. The first king, Josiah, was a reformer. The Judean people had fallen away from God, adopting the customs and practices of the oppressive Assyrians while under their rule, but King Josiah recognized his people’s faithlessness, instituting and promoting reforms outlined in Deuteronomy. Though initially encouraged (see Jer. 11:1-8) Jeremiah viewed these reforms as too superficial, too little and too late. When King Josiah died, Judah fell back into idolatry. Subsequent kings would not work to uproot the oppressive, idolatrous systems in Judah and radically re-orient the Judeans towards a faithful covenantal relationship with God and one another. Jeremiah warned that this would lead to the total destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the rising Babylonian Empire, the death of thousands of people, and the exile of the Judah’s political and religious leaders into Babylon. Relatively powerless and poor or rich and powerful, it didn’t matter, all suffered–in part–due to the political and religious leaders unwillingness to call their people to repentance and enact systemic change. 

And yet, I write “in part,” because Babylon was just as complicit in oppression as the Judeans. Despite Jeremiah’s recognition that the overthrow of Jerusalem and exile was a result of Judah’s imitation of Assyria, and despite God’s providential use of Babylon, no one in this drama is faithful or justified. Jeremiah also preaches God’s condemnation against the Babylonians. This prompts Daniel Berrigan in his book Jeremiah: the World, the Wound of God to wonder what difference there really was between idolatrous Judah and Babylon, speculating that “perhaps… psychologically, spiritually, a form of exile was underway long before the Babylonians ‘came like a wolf on the fold,’” (Fortress Press: 1999, 107). If Judah was acting like Babylon they may as well be ruled by Babylonians… Which leads us to the verse in our lectionary today, often referred to as “a disturbing hope,” where the exiled Judeans are encouraged to humbly accept their defeat, their status as exiles, and settle in Babylon for at least a generation, even praying for the well-being of the city of exile. This would not have been a comforting word for political leaders who were actively planning their next revolt. 

For the abolitionist preacher this context needs to be supplied to understand how this can preach in our time. While the Judeans are certainly an oppressed people in relation to Babylon, they are a people whose minds have been shaped by Imperial rule. The leaders are scheming with other powerful nations. They might seek reform and speak “peace, peace,” but their words are empty when the people are not committed to repentance and repair. The rule of Babylon is more blatant oppression, but it isn’t altogether different. And yet, in the midst of all of this, the poor suffer under political and military maneuvering. God is ultimately putting an end to this violent farce when he encourages the exiled leaders to accept their fate. God will work to renew and vindicate Jerusalem in a new generation under humbled leadership. 

Though it would be a mistake to totally equate King Josiah’s reforms with current reformist policies, Jeremiah reminds us that reforms are not enough if they don’t transform the root of a problem. For abolitionist organizers, this relates to the need to totally reimagine what community care and justice look like. Jeremiah also reminds us that we must be willing to speak truth about political maneuvering that ultimately is using the oppressed for political gain. Consider, for example, leaders who will claim to be concerned about the well-being of prisoners as a pretext for building bigger jails or police reform that simply increases police budgets. Our naysaying to these reforms might, like Jeremiah’s word, feel overly strident and condemnatory, and our predictions of how these reforms will only lead to further violence and systematic oppression might feel as unreasonably dire as Jeremiah’s predictions sounded, but may his example embolden us as we preach against the systems of oppression and idolatry we are enmeshed in today.

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