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Matthew 18:21–35

(Editor’s note: Apologies that last week’s post was skipped!)

This passage from Matthew marks the end of an entire chapter on accountability, restorative justice, and forgiveness (as Ched Myers and Elaine Ends note in their book Ambassadors of Reconciliation, vol. 1). The parable here provides a stark contrast between a culture of debt-holding and retribution and a culture of forgiveness and restoration.

As Luise Schottroff reminds us in her book on parables, it is important to resist the tendency to read parables like this one and place God in the role of the king, supporting a view of divine retribution — even when, as in this case, the final verse seems to imply it. Surely, in what Schottroff calls an “eschatological” reading of the parable, which is to say reading it from the perspective of a community waiting for divine vindication, the point is not that God will punish you if you are not forgiving enough! Instead, the stark language of the parable is expressing the utter gulf between a community dedicated to restoration and mercy and a community contributed to retribution. 

I am always hesitant to insist upon forgiveness as an ethical Christian imperative because of the ways that forgiveness language is weaponized against survivors of harm. But there are a number of actions and ways of being that fall under the term “forgiveness”: reconciliation, or restoration of relationship with someone; forgiveness in your own mind, that is, letting go of your own anger for your own sake regardless of how that affects how you relate to the other party; transactional forgiveness, that is, the willingness to accept restitution made to you without any further desire for relationship; and more. Each of these is different; none are required. But I wonder if underlying all of these is a commitment to what I might call mercy: a commitment to a kind of non-punitiveness or compassion, to what is often referred to in transformative justice/community accountability work as the recognition of the humanity of everyone involved (e.g. in this toolkit from CARA). It’s this way of being that I think this parable is calling the Christian community to — communally. 

The point of this parable is that a community structured around non-punitiveness and a community structured around debt payment and retribution are entirely unalike, and God calls Christians to experience and practice a commitment to mercy. The way that works out in any particular situation of harm depends on the harm, the needs of the survivors, and the willingness of those responsible to take accountability and make amends. (For a fantastic and complementary Jewish perspective on this topic, see Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s book On Repentance and Repair.) A commitment to mercy, though, opens new possibilities for creative and life-giving forms of non-punitive accountability in line with compassion and dignity for all people.

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

Romans 12:9–21

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. – Romans 12:21

Let’s start with the hard part. The next verse after this one is a troubling one: “Obey all earthly authorities.” And as usual we have been taught to misread this text.

Most early churches grew in the in-between spaces, cities full of war refugees and contested loyalties. Rome had its share of instability, but it also had the center of the imperial metropole and a landscape of local neighborhood governments that operated as a parallel form of collective decision-making. 

It is this parallel structure that Paul references in the next verse. Paul isn’t talking about Emperors. Paul’s call to harmony and noble action is a call to care for neighbors by building and supporting local leadership and community power.[1] 

Most early churches (certainly an anachronistic word) were a blend of Jews and “God-fearing” Gentiles. But the Romans were a predominantly-Gentile church adjusting to a returning marginalized Jewish community in their midst. Prior to Paul’s writing, most if not all of the Jewish people had been forcibly removed from Rome and only recently allowed to return. 

In the face of this, Paul asks that the church offer hospitality to strangers and the lowly amidst the temples of Roman wealth, to avoid the temptation to allyship with the forces of Empire.

“Bless those who persecute you” is not acquiescence. It is a radical call to have hope in the slow, patient work of building neighborhood power and turning the tide. Even in the belly of the beast, we can act with integrity, trusting that our God is moving within our work to bring vengeance and transformation. Another world is not only possible, “the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor.” (Romans 8:22). That is how we overcome evil with good.
[1] See this interview with scholar Robert Mason: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/law-order-and-romans-13/id1441649707?i=1000544881770

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 51:1-6

These verses in Isaiah can provide solace and encouragement for the abolitionist faith community. Those of us working toward freedom for people who are oppressed and imprisoned may find ourselves weary from the difficult struggles necessary for meaningful change in the world. Perhaps we mourn losses or suffer exhaustion or hear disheartening voices. Yet, the prophet turns our attention to the Lord who promises comfort, justice, and salvation.

“Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord.” These words spoke to God’s people who were exiled from their home. Now, their exile was ending, and yet they had lost so much. Surrounded by the wreckage of loss, they must have wondered how they could ever rebuild and restore. 

Here they are reminded though – and so are we – of God’s saving work in history. Where do we find hope in desperate times? We look to the stories of our ancestors, and see how God was blessing and empowering them. “Look to the rock from which you were hewn.” Learn from and find hope in the stories of those who taught you. See the different ways that God was working with and through them to plant gardens in deserts. God liberated before; God will liberate again.

Who might you look to? Whose story can you tell? Are there stories from people in your church (or their ancestors) that might help renew and energize the congregation in their work toward restorative and transformative justice? 

We engage with history to learn from history because God moves in history. The goal here, then, is not nostalgia, but education and inspiration. We look back as we step forward, holding onto God’s promises of justice as a light to the people (v. 4) and salvation that will be forever (v. 6). We remember the story thus far to help us find the courage to imagine and write the story to come.

God liberated before; God will liberate again.

Jed Tate is a United Methodist pastor in North Carolina.

Romans 11:1–2, 29–32

For a preacher, the complexity of the epistle to the Romans and the way it has been misinterpreted through an individualistic, spiritual, and anti-Jewish lens makes it difficult to preach a concise and compelling sermon. Furthermore, scholarship on Romans remains vast and diverse and Paul’s argumentation is confusing. He employs forms of rhetoric that are less familiar to us today and addresses social, religious, and political problems that are unique to his context. Nonetheless a central point emerges in this passage: God’s gifts are irrevocable. 

Without getting in the weeds, providing some context is necessary to unpack the force and contemporary application of that claim, and this discussion will largely emerge from Jewett’s Romans: A Short Commentary. Paul’s purpose in Romans is not purely theological. Looking to the end of Romans will help readers understand his goal. Paul believes he has been called to preach the good news of salvation and unity with Israel through Christ to the Gentiles (see also, Eisenbaum’s Paul Was Not a Christian) and he wants the support of the Roman churches. Conflict within and between churches stands in the way of that mission. These diverse conflicts are rooted in Imperial honor/shame social structures that lead members in various factions to judge and despise one another. Not only does that hurt the unity of the churches, but it makes them less interested in supporting Paul’s mission to Spanish barbarians, a group that the Romans would have little interest in unity with. In response to that bias, Paul, using extreme caricatures at times (like the one who only eats leafy vegetables in 14:2 for example), broadly addresses various forms of class, ethnic, and religious differences that suggest that God’s mercy and salvation through Christ is limited in any way. In particular Paul is concerned with social respectability and self-righteousness. An important point to make is that Paul is not concerned with individual salvation and belief. He is concerned with the collective superiority or condemnation of social groups, which are reified and heirarchialized under Empire and through the law. In this section though, we find the culmination of Paul’s grappling with a concern that is very personal to him as a Jewish Pharisee. Paul is in conflict with his fellow Jews regarding Jesus’ status as Messiah, the full inclusion of Gentiles as people of God through Christ, and the coming resurrection. Should Paul thus reject his Jewish kindred or does he continue to affirm God’s saving work through them, and God’s work even through this conflict and their differences? 

Paul is adamant about the latter. God’s gifts are irrevocable. God does not abandon God’s people. When we find ourselves in conflict with one another, we must remember the end of the story: resurrection and grace extended to all in Christ. When we are tempted to feel superior, we are reminded that all are bound up in disobedience, sin, and death. When we are tempted to despise others, we are reminded that God extends mercy, freedom, and justice to all. This faith does not lead Paul to disagree less with his Jewish family. It isn’t a call to conflict avoidance. It is a call, when faced with social and ideological realities that divide us, to discern when and how we struggle together without dehumanization or condemnation. The community organizing phrase “no permanent friends and no permanent enemies” comes to mind. 

For the abolitionist preacher, this is a call to conflict resolution and broad-based community organizing that holds the centrality of grace, the dignity and humanity of everyone involved, and the faith that God can bring about an end that is life-giving to all.

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

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” – Genesis 37:19-20

But they did not kill Joseph. They did not kill the dreamer. The dream did not die. 

The world was not kind to young Joseph, that boy with the rainbow dress, that one with the dreams that defied their lowly position. Being the favorite child of Jacob, who now goes by Israel, doesn’t help in the eyes of the brothers. They conspire to kill Joseph.

There is some act of kindness that changes the story—Reuben “delivered him out of their hands.” But this kindness is thwarted by Judah in his desire to profit off selling his sibling. The story takes another turn towards pain.

The road ahead will be rough. Enslavement, sexual harassment, and incarceration. Reuniting with family in the midst of a famine. The story will end in glory, but we’re a long way from that. And Joseph doesn’t know that. The brothers don’t know that. 

The dreamer does not die, and the dream does not die. 

This story reminds us that ultimately those who seek to kill freedom dreams will not succeed. Though dreamers may be killed, though they may undergo incredible pain and suffering, the dream of freedom survives. Though dreams may be forced underground, though we may think they are dead, God’s promise to us is that liberation is never dead. The struggle continues. Life continues. Do not give up on the dream of freedom. God hasn’t.

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.

Matthew 14:13-21

When considering Jesus’ feeding miracles, I often think about how his response to people’s poverty was sustenance. When Jesus saw that someone lacked, he provided. This response is the character of God in stories throughout Jewish and Christian Scriptures. To confront lack is to respond with plenty.

So much of what undergirds the prison industrial complex in the United States is a completely different response. The reaction our systems have to poverty is often criminalization.

The connection between incarceration and the housing crisis is one example. You can be arrested essentially for being unhoused. After incarceration, you could find little support and wind up unhoused. You might choose jail to get a roof over your head. In some places, they’ll arrest you for helping unhoused people.

The reaction of our justice system is to perpetuate injustice, to meet lack with more lack. It’s the opposite of what Jesus does in the feeding miracles. How could our world be different if our legal systems acted like Jesus and met people’s lack with plenty? What would your community look like if, instead of passing laws to penalize lack, they passed policies and ordinances that gave people what they need?

Right now, our response not just to crime but to social need is incarceration. Jesus demands something different from us. In Mark and Luke’s versions of this story, when Jesus observes the lack and need of the people around him, Jesus turns to the disciples and simply commands them, “You give them something to eat.” If we stood next to Jesus as he looked on the prison industrial complex today, what would he say to us?

Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.

Romans 8:26-39

In Romans 8:26-39, Paul continues to encourage his readers to patiently endure the labor pains of liberation that Hannah Bowman reflected on in last week’s Abolition Lectionary post. Here Paul encourages them by emphasizing God’s providence and foreknowledge. In Romans 8:28 he writes, “We know that God works all things together for good for the ones who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Paul states that God “knows them in advance” (NRSVue, this is translated as “predestined” in other translations) and has called them according to God’s purpose. The passage culminates with Paul’s exhortation to trust in God’s love for “nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created,” (Romans 8:38-30). 

God’s power and foreknowledge has been appropriated to uphold systems of control when used against the marginalized by the powerful, but the thrust of Paul’s argument in Romans is to criticize systems that rely on rules and punishments as ultimately death-dealing powers opposed to God’s work in Christ. He criticizes gentile Christ-followers who appropriate and misapply Jewish law to malign and marginalize other Christians in their community (see Eisebaum’s Paul was Not a Christian). He exhorts believers to uproot Roman class systems that divide Christian communities into the strong and weak (see Mcknight’s Reading Romans Backwards). Ultimately Paul is proposing a different understanding of justice that stands with the executed and oppressed in pursuit of liberation for all (see Keesmaat and Walsh’s Romans Disarmed as well as Mark Lewis Taylor’s Executed God). Consequently it is a misunderstanding of Paul’s argument to conclude that those God “foreknew” and call are working for anything less than “justification and life for all” (lest we forget Romans 5:18). 

God’s foreknowledge and power can be understood as a kind of control, but it is better understood as the kind of utopic vision that Mariame Kaba writes about when she states that “every vision is a map,” (We Do This ‘Till We Free Us). Likewise, many early Christian theologians interpreted our condition and constructed ethics based on eschatological beliefs about what God is calling us towards. Utopic visions and ethics based on telos become oppressive as control-methods, but they are tools of liberation when they inspire us to question the inevitability of the punitive systems we are embedded in and give us the courage and patience to endure the suffering that comes with demanding change. It is only then that our faith in God’s providence can become the basis of our hope in the abolition of prisons and policing and the triumph of a justice system that separates no person from the love of God or neighbor.

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

Romans 8:12–25

This passage from Romans promises the liberation of creation. In the promise that the creation will be set free from “bondage to decay” and will “obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (8:21) we see the abolition of death-dealing systems and powers such as policing and incarceration. Ruth Wilson Gilmore reminds us that abolition requires “changing everything.” Changing everything is the picture painted in this passage of the creation that is being renewed — although the form of renewal we see right now is that of the struggle for justice we are engaged in, “groaning in labor pains” (8:22). The acts of resistance by which incarcerated and criminalized people stand up for their own dignity, by which allies support them, and by which we all demand better systems of communal care rather than criminalization and “organized abandonment” are the labor pains of new creation. The renewal of creation encompasses more than prison-industrial complex abolition, but it does not encompass less. The abolitionist struggle is a making-real and visible of the labor pains of the new creation.

Renewal is not yet accomplished. Abolition puts us in the business of “hoping for what we do not see” (8:25). But what does it mean to wait for it with patience (8:25)?

Surely it does not mean that we cease our striving. Justice delayed is justice denied! Our patience is not a willingness to wait for the world to catch up with the demands of justice. Instead I wonder if patience here goes back to the Latin root of the word, suffering (like the Passion of Jesus). We hope for what we don’t see with the willingness to endure the suffering that is part of the labor pains.

I’ve given birth twice. My experience of the nature of labor pains is that yes, while they cause great pain, they are also unstoppable. The process proceeds whether you are ready to endure it or not. As we hope for the world we don’t yet see, I hope our patience takes the form of enduring that unstoppable force. As we participate in the building of a world without police or prisons, we are sharing in the unstoppable labor of God; we are groaning as we suffer under state violence and in solidarity with those targeted by state violence but all our groaning is part of an unstoppable wave of liberation. And our endurance makes us willing to stay in solidarity, to remain committed, to keep demanding a better world of accountability and care rather than becoming resigned to death-dealing systems of control and punishment.

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

Psalm 119:105-112

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

The effects of the law in this section of Psalm 119 are intriguing (or at least should be!) to a society that claims to be governed by the “rule of law.” The Psalmist holds on to the law as a source of life and sustenance. They bring joy and serve as the inheritance that the Psalmist passes on. The role of Torah is complex in both Jewish and Christian circles, but the picture the Psalmist presents is clear: law should bring life for the psalmist and their community. 

The “rule of law” does not frequently serve this purpose in our system of retributive justice. Following the law does not intrinsically bring you life and quite often it is used to bring about death, both for offenders and for those who exist at its whims. In the United States, from the beginning law was constructed to accrue advantage for some people at the expense of others—most obviously in the enshrinement of slavery. The legacy of such origins endures to this day, bringing life rather than bringing death. 

For some, the first step toward PIC abolition is looking at the effects the law has now. When you live comfortably and, for the most part, don’t interact with the legal system, you don’t see these effects. But once you see them, you can’t unsee them. The laws we have make it expensive to be poor, keep people yolked to their incarceration long after release, and shield law enforcement from the laws they are supposed to enforce. Where Torah is meant to bring life to its followers, our laws so often do the opposite. 

Abolition has an expressive goal that is quite clear and singular in our case, but it is connected to so much else that doesn’t work in our world. When preaching about the life that comes from the imperatives of our Scriptures, pastors should point out the ways in which the laws of the state that we actually follow fall short of God’s will for us. It’s those laws that create the systems we want to abolish and for some, the journey to becoming an abolitionist starts there. 

Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.

Zechariah 9:9-12

As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.

Zechariah 9:11

In the latter portion of Zechariah, most likely a later addition written under the threat or rule of the Greeks, we see a clear portrait of the “demilitarized dominion” of God (David L. Petersen’s words from the New Oxford Annotated Bible). Presented is a common image in prophetic literature of God destroying the weapons of war used to govern the present age and pronounce God’s rule in the age to come. Matthew later connects this specific passage to the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, linking this newly disarmed world to the purposes of his ministry. 

Zechariah rejects a few critical things in this passage: weapons of war (chariots, war horses, battle bows) and incarceration. The specific form of incarceration referenced here is likely related to military prisoners given the references to war. Freedom for these captives of opposing nations from imperial powers represents liberation for the whole of Zechariah’s people. At the same time, the prisoners could refer to exiles as deportation was a repeated trauma of the Jewish people at the hands of larger Ancient Near Eastern empires. 

For our purposes, we need not see Zechariah’s promise of an end to incarceration so narrowly. The prison industrial complex of the United States specifically is a mechanism of these same dominating powers that plagued Zechariah’s time. Our systems of incarceration wield deportation as a weapon just as ancient empires did. The internal policing of Americans often looks like militarized occupation, especially in times of protest and resistance to police brutality. Prisons are very much the “waterless pit” (v. 11, NRSV) of the country, resulting in intense pain and future marginalization in our social structures. 

God promises freedom from these powers and we ought to declare that freedom from our pulpits. We must declare God’s intentions for these institutions to pass away and be replaced by the kingdom of peace promised in Zechariah. 

Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.