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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.

1 Corinthians 6:12–20

The reading from 1 Corinthians this week at first glance seems not to have much to do with abolition — but perhaps there is a liberating truth under the (difficult) surface.

First, though, it is important to name the harm done by this passage, and particularly its problematic treatment of sex workers. Paul filters what it means in practice for our spirits to be united to the Lord (6:17) through his particular cultural and personal opinions about sexual ethics. (Thanks to Rev. Lura Groen for this insight.)

But nonetheless his emphasis on bodies is instructive. Bodies do not only have to do with sex, but with the importance of material realities. If our bodies are made members of Christ (6:15) then the liberation of Christ is intended for our bodies, not only for our souls. This is an essential insight in resistance against the carceral state which derives its power from perceived control over bodies — both physical and social ones. Perhaps the most central concept in doing Christian theology for abolition is that we should not unite our bodies to the carceral state, but that instead we should live out in practice now, with our physical bodies and social bodies, the liberation that we believe Christ has already accomplished for our souls and for the entire creation at the end of history. As Wesley Spears-Newsome wrote last week, we should understand ourselves entirely baptized, not reserving some part of us for the service of empire — or of prisons. 

Paul does not only use the language of sex here in relation to bodies, but also the language of food: “[You say] ‘food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.’” We might paraphrase that, in light of our concern for abolition, in terms of justice: “You say ‘the prison is meant for justice, and justice for the prison’ — and God will destroy both one and the other.” But in truth “God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.” The reality of resurrection life is the reality of a justice which leaves no place for prisons, neither here nor in the world to come. God has raised us, our physical and social bodies, to the new life of union with the risen body of Christ. We are members of the liberated social reality of Christ’s body.

A final important concept in an abolitionist reading of this passage is the idea in 6:20 of being “bought with a price,” a reference (as Lee Griffith and André Trocmé have written at length) to God’s role as the “kinsman-redeemer” for God’s people, the one who pays the ransom to liberate them from captivity. God, as kinsman-redeemer, pays the bond to free every one of God’s people. We are “not our own” to rededicate ourselves to carcerality, but are instead committed to the work of abolition that God has started in us. I want to also call out here that this language of bondage, that we are “not our own” in relation to God, remains problematic! But again, I hope that perhaps there is a liberating truth to be uncovered under Paul’s perspective. What I would emphasize here is our own personal commitment to the liberation God has given us, and to the idea of God’s paying of ransom for us as a liberation that has real concrete consequences for how we act. The way we “glorify God in our bodies,” the way we construct our material realities toward liberation, is a response to the liberation accomplished by God who “bought us with a price.”

God has made liberation real, but we are the ones with bodies to put it into practice. The way we use our bodies and the way we construct our social bodies make bodily present the promise of abolition begun by God.

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

Mark 1:4–11

“John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” (Mark 1:4-5)

On this Sunday every year, I recall a parable about soldiers and baptism. 

Once there was an emperor who demanded all his soldiers be baptized in a peculiar fashion. The emperor wanted the favor of God, but he also wanted to wage war against his neighbors. Knowing deep down that these desires were incompatible, the emperor told the priests to baptize his soldiers by full immersion—except for their sword hands. In doing so, the soldiers of his great empire could commit the emperor’s misdeeds with the only part of their body not pledged to God. 

This story probably doesn’t have any historical grounding, but as a parable it strikes me as painfully true. Despite warnings that we cannot serve two masters and admonishments to cut off our hands if they cause us to sin, many Christians still go about their lives as if their sword hands had not been baptized. 

Abolition Lectionary contributors come from a variety of Christian traditions with different theologies and practices of baptism. In my Baptist congregation, we baptize like they do in the parable—but we make sure your sword hand goes under the water, too. Like John’s baptism in today’s Gospel reading, our baptismal rites involve renunciation and repentance. Borrowing from sibling traditions, we have baptismal candidates renounce “the powers of evil and death” before they can be baptized. We emphasize that your life as a Christian demands full loyalty and accountability to God, not just in part but the whole. 

In conversations about the abolition of police and prisons, many Christians act as if they believe repentance and a total loyalty to God are unnecessary. Someone must do the work of policing our communities and keeping prisoners away from the rest of us, the line of reasoning goes. Someone must be baptized in all but their sword hand so the rest of us can live peaceably. 

That’s not how John the Baptist puts it, though. That’s not how Jesus’ baptism goes. When Jesus undergoes his baptism, the heavens tear apart and a beatific vision occurs. This event launches a ministry that ends in death perpetrated by law enforcement. Nowhere do any of the Gospels endorse a piecemeal approach to our baptisms. Nowhere does it say that our baptismal vows only apply some of the time.

One of the first axioms of conversations about abolition (and any Christian ethic!) is that discussions should take place in terms of our loyalty to God, not in terms of ‘practical’ or utilitarian solutions. When considering abolition in the context of baptism this week, ask yourself: which is more important to you and your community—your baptism or your commitment to prisons and police?

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.

Ephesians 1:3–14

In Ephesians 1, Paul lays out a template for the rest of his letter. The vision in Ephesians 1 is a grand telling of how they (we) fit into the glory of Christ, and what that means for them (us). 

Paul says that God “with all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

It is no accident that Paul specifies what is being gathered up, and that all things in heaven and on earth are set forth in Christ, for good pleasure. We must then consider, what does it mean for the plan to be set forth in Christ? What is the plan for the fullness of time? What happens when God gathers up? 

And, rather than bluntly tell you how to connect this to abolition, I want to challenge you to see and envision this yourself. I want you to use your imagination. Actually take the time to answer these, maybe in a notebook or journal or with words yourself right now. 

If God’s plan is set forth in Christ, what do we see in the life and mission of Jesus that relates to today? Is it solely a spiritual salvation, for a select few? Or is it an expansive vision of all people being saved, not in their ethereal soul alone, but in all of their being?

God’s plan is for the fullness of time. Does this mean God’s plan is meant for today as well, not just for an “end time” to come? 

How can God gather up all things? And, if all things are gathered up in God, how can God’s people ever cast anything out as not of God?

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

Luke 2:22–40

And a sword will pierce your own soul too.

One of Australia’s greatest contributions to Christmas is the Paul Kelly song, How to Make Gravy. The song, for those unfamiliar, is sung in the voice of Joe who is in prison and calling a man named Dan. Joe is apologising for missing the family’s Christmas celebrations and asks Dan to pass messages on to his kids and partner. It is a heartbreaking song with a good beat and touching specificity, capturing the pain caused to one’s self and loved ones when folks are removed from their families and communities by isolation and imprisonment. 

Simeon rejoices in the sight of Jesus, Israel’s Messiah. Having taken Jesus in his arms and praised God for the gift of getting to see, so late in life, the salvation of his people, he turns to the child’s parents and offers them a blessing. He then directs his attention to Mary, offering a sobering word: ‘a sword will pierce your own soul too.’ 

So far in Luke, Mary has been filled with great hope for the future her son will bring and the work her God will accomplish. Consider the opening to the Magnificat: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.’ Simeon, though, alerts Mary to the fact (one she is likely aware of but is possibly trying to avoid out of understandable fear) that Jesus’ mission to (in Mary’s words) bring down the powerful, lift the lowly, send the rich away empty and fill the hungry with good things will not be unopposed: the powerful are generally uninclined to give over their thrones. Proclaiming release to the captives (Luke 4) is received as good news by many… just not the captors. Jesus’ ministry makes enemies and provokes the ire of the violent machinations of the State, and it ends with his death on a cross – where nails pierce hand and foot, spear pierces side, and Mary – in living to see such an end for her beloved son – a sword pierces her own soul too.  

Mary then, in this moment as at the foot of the cross, stands as a figure for all mothers (and beyond that all who parent, nurture, and raise) who have had to witness violence wrought on their children by oppressive governments, violent policing, and unjust sentencing and imprisonment. All mothers who have seen their children die on the street at the hands of police, who have lost years waiting for their child to return from a prison too far away for them to visit, who have felt the pang of looking at an empty chair at the table on Christmas lunch. By the power of the Spirit, Mary is there, present and grieving in those moments, present and standing strong when mothers lament, protest, and rage against deaths in custody and miscarriages of justice. Her soul is pierced with (and thus tied to) all mothers (and more) who have felt the stab of this unkind sword of woe. Just as Jesus was not spared the violence of inhumane systems of justice and powers bent on suppressing the call of true justice (and thus can be said to stand in true solidarity with the world’s suffering) so too the mother of our Lord was not spared the hurt of seeing her beloved boy brutalised, removed, and extinguished. There might be comfort in this, maybe hope too; it might not be enough everyday, but hopefully, a little more at Christmas. 

If I dare, I’ll attempt to extend this connection more broadly, (though without wanting to conflate the general with the specific) this year, swords of varying degrees will pierce the sides of many family members who are unable to be together on Christmas due to COVID restrictions. Who have not seen or held beloved children, siblings, or parents in almost a calendar year. We too may draw comfort from the understanding presence of Mary and her son. But more than this, perhaps the character of this Christmas provides us an opportunity to develop further empathy for those who COVID or no would have been kept from loved ones. Provides us an opportunity to practice a more pointed remembrance for those who are in prison as if we were there with them (Heb 13:3). Perhaps this year can further set us on the course of abolition so that the many Joe’s of the world can feel the warmth of family and friends as they make the Christmas gravy. 

Christmas has long been recognised as a mixed season – grief and joy intermingling in ways far too messy to predict – and this year will intensify the bluer feelings. Yet Scripture offers consolation: even the first Christmas season was marked with frustration amidst the joy of arrival, fear amidst the hope of redemption, grief amidst the blossoming of a new future, but this did not stop the work that God was and is and will do in the life and love of Jesus – a boy nurtured by a mother whose soul was pierced by Rome’s sword but whose spirit rejoiced in Israel’s God. 

Liam Miller (he/him/his) 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, New South Wales, Australia. He also hosts the Love Rinse Repeat podcast where he interviews theologians, ministers, artists, and activists.

Luke 2:1–20

“Because there was no room for them at the inn.”

An abolitionist perspective forces us to recognize prisons and policing not as a necessary consequence of trying to build safe communities, but instead as a social construction intended to draw boundaries around those who are worthy of compassion and a place in an accountable human society, and those who are excluded. The logic of prisons and police is the logic of “no room at the inn”: 

• no room to hold in our communities those who have done harm as they fumble toward accountability, but only to banish them and lock them up; 
• no room for those who are criminalized by the intentional acts of those in power to define harmless acts as crimes in ways driven by racial inequity and anti-Blackness; 
• no room for entire communities that have been subjected to what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “organized abandonment,” considered unworthy of investment but only to be threats to be policed. Prisons and policing are about who counts as a community member, and who is considered “social pollution” (Rima Vesely-Flad’s term), subject to exclusion and control.

This is the story into which Jesus is born at Christmas. Christmas is the story of those who are turned away from shelter, from love, from community, because there is no room for them at the inn. The story of Christmas begins with this fact: the light shines in the darkness, but the world does not know it. How often, as a society, do we close our hearts, our country, our communities, our homes, and leave the Holy Family with no room at the inn?

But this is not the end of the Christmas story. Because the Christmas story tells us that God makes a way. When there is no room at the inn, God is born into the world in a stable and laid in a manger. When people would not receive Mother Mary and her holy child, the animals brought gifts. We sing that favorite old carol “The Friendly Beasts:”

                        Jesus our brother, kind and good

                        Was humbly laid in a stable rude

                        And the friendly beasts around him stood

                        Jesus our brother, kind and good

                        Thus every beast by some glad spell

                        In the stable dark was glad to tell

                        Of the gift he gave Emmanuel

                        The gift he gave Emmanuel.

In the story of this hymn, every animal offers the baby Jesus a gift: the cow the manger to cradle his head, the dove a song to sing him to sleep.

When human justice and community fail, God makes another way.

But this is the judgment against the ways of our world: when we ignore the way God is making and look for safety in structures that exclude and criminalize, we miss Jesus.

There’s a beautiful story by Ray Bradbury in The Illustrated Man, called “The Man.” In it, a starship captain arrives on a faraway planet – but the people there are not interested in him, because a far more important man, a miraculous healer bringing peace, has just been there. At first the captain is skeptical that anything so good could be true. But when he is finally convinced that the coming of “the Man” has been real, he demands to know where he went, and how he can catch up with him. Refusing to stay behind in the healed community of peace he has found, he gets back in his spaceship, determined to catch up to “the Man.” But as one of the bystanders says after the captain leaves:

“Poor man, he’s gone. And he’ll go on, planet after planet, seeking and seeking, and always and always he will be an hour late, or a half hour late, or ten minutes late, or a minute late. And finally he will miss out by only a few seconds. And when he has visited three hundred worlds and is seventy or eighty years old he will miss out by only a fraction of a second, and then a smaller fraction of a second. And he will go on and on, thinking to find that very thing which he left behind here, on this planet, in this city—” [The Illustrated Man, p. 52]

We are always too late. There is no room for the holy child Jesus in the inn of our hearts. 

But God makes another way. God’s way is the way of that healed community of peace left behind by the Man. God’s way is the way of abolition: the way that does not look up to heaven, or beyond the sea for the word of God, but recognizes that “the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart” (Deut. 30:14). The presence and peace of God occur when we live out God’s justice in our own communities of reconciliation. The hard work of community accountability for harm — of restorative, compassionate accountability — which allows us to imagine a world without prisons is the work where God becomes present to us. 

And, God promises, he is present as well, in a special way, with those who are oppressed: with those who are poor, homeless, or imprisoned (Matt. 25:31–46). Abolition derives from our recognition of the reality that Jesus comes among us as a prisoner. Jesus is closest to those who are imprisoned, criminalized, excluded, and constructed as socially polluted. If we look to the communities of solidarity being built for liberation — in prisons and more broadly in our punitive and carceral society — we will find him there.

If we look for Jesus within the confines of communities that exclude, we will always be too late, and we will always miss him. But if we look for him among those seeking liberation— 

If we look for him in the work of abolitionist accountability and reconciliation in healed communities—

Then we will surely find him there, because that is where he dwells, God with us. 

Jesus is born in us, born among us, born on the side of those who are left outside, because God has made another way of liberation—because there was no room for them at the inn.

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