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Isaiah 58:1–12, Psalm 112

If you celebrate Ash Wednesday in your church tradition, Isaiah 58:1-12 is likely a familiar text. It is a call to fasting, and it hits on many points that are relevant to traditional Lenten practices. But this isn’t just a text for Lent. It’s a text for ordinary times too because injustices permeate the world all year round. Even though Isaiah doesn’t use the word, this text is really a call to repentance. 

In this passage, the Prophet calls out religious people who perform their pious duties without changing their hearts and lives. The audience was full of people who followed the tradition of fasting from food, humbling themselves in prayer, and covering themselves in ashes (58:5). But those actions did not change their business practices: “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers. You fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist” (58:3-4). Isaiah accuses them of manipulating wages, exploiting workers, and abusing employees. They are creating poverty in their community, not helping to alleviate it.

So what is the solution? Through Isaiah, God commands listeners to “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke” (58:6). This text literally speaks about ending economic injustice, slave labor, and all forms of oppression. It is a call for abolition of prisons, jails, and all systems where people are bonded and yoked. It is a call for freedom from the oppression of corporations making profits off of sub-minimum-wage or wageless prison labor. It is a call for people who run those systems and benefit those systems to dismantle them. Later, Isaiah promises that God will bless, help, and answer the prayers of those who “remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil” (58:9). Isaiah, like most of the prophets, wants to disabuse us of the notion that we can live in right relationship with God without working toward just relationships with our neighbors. It’s not that we have to be sinless, but we cannot be complacent about the sins that we profit from. We cannot live as hypocrites.

Psalm 112 approaches similar themes a bit more subtly. The Psalmist tells us that “the righteous are merciful and full of compassion” (112:4). That’s precisely the problem that Isaiah points to in his prophecy. Abusive employers, jailers, and prison wardens are in the wrong because they lack mercy and compassion. They fail to see the enslaved and the incarcerated as children of God — made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27) — just like them. 

As Americans, we have a collective responsibility for the things our government does “for the people.” And America is notorious for trying to incarcerate our social problems away. We are doing the same thing as Isaiah’s audience. We are denying “criminals” of their basic human dignity. In the US, crimes are most correlated with poverty, institutional racism/oppression, and social trauma. And our laws often define “crime” in a way that often punishes people because they need mental, physical, psychological, and economic help. We lack mercy and compassion. We would rather lock people up and throw away the key than do the hard work of reconciliation and restitution. We would rather exact revenge than seek God’s definition of justice. And there is a whole caste of people who are the victims of this systemic, societal sin. One of the most important things a preacher can do is continue to remind people that we all deserve mercy and compassion. That is the moral and spiritual key to transforming the criminal-legal system into something that helps people more than it hurts.

The Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda is the rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Savannah, GA, and the Missioner for Racial Justice of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.

Psalm 15

In reading Psalm 15, the moral standards may at first seem insurmountable. It seems like the author is asking for perfection! If you grew up in a more conservative Reformed community, these texts may remind you of your total depravity, powerless but for a merciful God. We may be able to say that we have never taken a “bribe against the innocent,” but whom among us can say we “walk blamelessly”?

The good news is that this short psalm is not about trying to be perfect. It’s not even necessarily about God’s mercy available through confession of Christ as Lord. When the Israelite people worshiped God while traveling in the wilderness, no one actually abided in God’s tent, the Tabernacle. Similarly, while people lived in Jerusalem, “on your holy hill,” no one actually lived in the Temple. 

But who could enter into the Tent of Meeting? Who could come to visit the Temple on God’s holy mountain? Precisely those who had failed the tests of Psalm 15: Those who had become ritually unclean, had harmed their neighbors, had broken oaths. People came to offer grain and sacrifice animals and share the food with everyone else gathered there. In order to even just briefly abide in that holy place, you had to have something in your life that needed repair.

Who can gather in our sacred places today? Precisely those of us in need of mending the harm we have caused. God calls us to come together, to tithe our resources to nourish our communities and repair the broken places in our shared life. 

Psalm 15 is an abolitionist ecclesiology. It doesn’t ask for moral perfection. It asks instead for our imperfection, our failure, our dishonesty, our complicity in injustice. It asks for honesty about these things, and promises that it is precisely in being honest that we might be welcomed onto God’s holy mountain.

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.

1 Corinthians 1:10–18 and Matthew 4:12–23

The epistle and gospel passages have some interesting connections for an abolitionist preacher. The Gospel passage begins with the statement that John the Baptist had been arrested and Jesus withdrew to Galilee. This provides the contest for Jesus’ ministry, which is being characterized as “a region and shadow of death” where, due to Jesus’ message of repentance and healing, “light has dawned” (Mt 4:16). The backdrop of the first Epistle to the Corinthians is similarly dark. Paul is writing to a community mired in conflict, yet it is not “those who are perishing” who hear the good news of the cross’ message, but “us who are being saved,” (1 Cor 1:18). In our own world, which is mired in conflict and state oppression, how do we understand these two statements? 

Some more context for 1st Corinthians is helpful. Paul is clearly concerned about the people who understand themselves as being powerful and enlightened. He is writing to admonish them. Some nicely placed sarcastic jabs within the letter make that very clear. When he says “the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing” he is talking about people like that. People for whom the society is working too well, at the expense of those for whom it is not working at all. The fact that they don’t know that they are perishing leaves them in that condition. On the other hand, the cross, which proclaims good news to those who are suffering, is a message of hope to “us who are being saved by the power of God.” It is precisely the fact that they understand their condition–the need to be saved–that they are “being saved.” 

Our passage in Matthew speaks to that experience. Jesus’ gospel is a great light for those who understand they are in darkness. But what is the nature of this darkness? That is a very important question for the Abolitionist preacher and those languishing in prisons. Is the darkness a matter of individual guilt calling us to “repent” (Mt 4:17) or is it more like an illness, perpetuated by on-going life-long systemic and communal harm which one’s imprisonment is a deadly symptom of? Do we need repentance and forgiveness or a cure of “every disease and sickness” (Mt 4:23)? 

Both the Matthew passage and Epistle suggest it is a little of both, and within transformative justice practices we seek to do both. When harm is done we help people take accountability for the harm they caused and seek systemic and interpersonal solutions to heal systems and communities that are leading to the “symptom” of harm. The cross’ message is the power of God to those who are being saved, because it reminds us that we do not bear the weight of harm alone. God is present within it, calling us to repent (be accountable) and curing every disease (changing the contexts that lead to harm). If we can believe it, this is the path of salvation. It isn’t a one and done (we are “being saved,”), but if we continue to either refuse accountability, only point figures of judgment at others, and/or wallow in shame, the message of the cross will be foolishness… and we will continue to unwittingly perish.

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

John 1:29–42

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John the Baptist proclaimed as he saw Jesus coming toward him and his followers. The phrase became central to Christian worship, particularly in the Latin liturgical traditions. The Agnus Dei is part of the Roman Catholic Mass and many of the Protestant traditions whose worship evolved from it. Thousands of mass settings repeat this phrase in prayer and song, usually turning it into an intercession to “grant us peace.”

The Agnus Dei that originates in our Gospel passage for this week contains within it a paradigm of justice frequently unfamiliar to us. In the retributive frame, there are crimes (or sins) for which perpetrators must be punished. The solution to sin is to punish the sinner. Presumably, this retribution should “grant us peace.” The Agnus Dei and John 1:29 present a different form of peacemaking. 

Here God’s desire for the world does not come through retribution but through the Lamb of God (the agnus Dei). It is the Lamb of God who takes away sin and brings peace, not the punishment of the wrongdoer. Within the Agnus Dei we obviously do not receive a detailed plan of how justice, peace, and restoration are achieved, but what is clear is that retribution is not at the heart of this reshaping of the world. 

John the Baptist invited his disciples to take up the way of life described here when he urged them to follow Jesus. The evangelist John invites us to do the same in this Gospel. How can we claim to be a Gospel people if we place our hope in retribution (the motivating force of the carceral system)? How can we claim to follow Jesus when we hope for a punitive justice system to take away the sin of the world and grant us peace? 
As many of the Agnus Dei settings also ask: have mercy on us. God, have mercy on us for putting our faith, hope, and security in the hands of sources other than you. May we keep the Lamb of God at the center of our hope and work, rejecting retributive claims to our peace.

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

Isaiah 42:1–9

The text from Second Isaiah appointed for the feast of the Baptism of Christ leads to an Abolition Lectionary post that nearly writes itself: the promise of this text is that God has appointed God’s servant to “bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness” (v. 7). As Michael J. Chan writes, this text is one of the famous Servant Songs from Second Isaiah, and can be applied “to the whole world”: “The ministry of the servant is what it looks like when the Kingdom of God arrives anywhere, anytime–whether that by the 6th century BCE, the 1st century CE, or the 21st century CE. When the servant arrives, so do justice, light, and freedom.”

The text, in other words, provides one of the most explicit abolitionist promises in scripture: the servant appears in order to bring out prisoners. This promise is more than literal — freedom for prisoners is a metaphor for freedom from any kind of suffering and bondage, physical or spiritual — but it is not thereby less than literal. Spiritual freedom derives its power as an image from the concreteness of physical freedom. The freeing of prisoners is the work of God’s servant. (An excellent deeper explanation of this connection, and how freedom for prisoners became such a central biblical theme, is in Lee Griffith’s book The Fall of the Prison: excerpt.)

But perhaps the most poignant part of this passage is not its explicit emphasis on freedom, but is its image of what it looks like for God’s servant to “faithfully bring forth justice”: “a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench” (v. 3). I’m reminded of this heartbreaking interview Radley Balko conducted with criminal defense investigator Andrew Sowards. Sowards answers the question of how he works with people who have committed serious harm and violence:

“When you do mitigation, you look far back into these people’s lives. And it got to the point where I could read these mitigation reports and I could pinpoint the exact moment in some guy’s childhood when he was broken. You could isolate the precise event that changed him, that just froze him emotionally in that moment, that halted the maturation process. Before that event, this was some kid with all the innocence and potential of every other kid. And I swear I could often look into a client’s face and see that little kid, still frozen in there, just frozen in time.”

Even in cases of extremely serious harm, justice requires seeing people as “bruised reeds” not to be broken; “dimly burning wicks” not to be quenched. The justice of God is the work of healing and freedom in every circumstance.

Of course, cases of extreme violence such as those Sowards investigates are a tiny minority of those persecuted by the criminal legal system. In most cases, people are swept into a system that criminalizes them because of race or poverty or social location. Their own marginalization or trauma are used against them as the system piles injustice and trauma upon systemic injustice and trauma.

The contrast is clear. The prison-industrial complex breaks bruised reeds and quenches dimly burning wicks. The servant of God does justice faithfully and sets prisoners free. Jesus’ baptism shows his fidelity to that ongoing mission of servanthood to God.

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

#AbolitionLectionary is taking a break this week and we will be back next week for the season of Epiphany.

John 1:1–14

The prologue of John is our gospel lesson for Christmas day. John does not begin his account of Jesus with a story about his ancestry and birth, but of the birth of all creation. This is a midrash on the Genesis creation story and it also plays on Jewish wisdom tradition, in which the Logos–God’s wisdom proclaimed–is personified. God creates through God’s wise word. This is in stark contrast to other creation accounts in which the world is born out of violence between gods. For example, the Genesis account probably dates from the times of exile in Babylon, and in the Babylonian creation the world is created out of the slain blood and body of a god. Here John harkens back to how the Hebrew people’s Genesis creation story was a counter-story to Babylon’s. We are not born of blood or human desire and passion, but out of the word of God, light that transforms chaos and darkness. Furthermore, this Word does not abandon us to violence and suffering, but becomes flesh like us, intimately entering into violence to bring transformation through our relationship with God’s wisdom. 

For the abolitionist preacher this reassures us that the core of no-one’s nature is violence and when our lives are marred by violence the solution will arise out of wise, loving, relationship. The violence and suffering of the world will not be transformed by more bloodshed and passionate, fearful reactivity. We must seek wisdom born out of communication and relationship. We can trust that even in the most desperate situations the wisdom of God is with us, within us, working to shine a light on vulnerable, shame-filled places. Bringing the seeds of violence and places where we have been traumatized into the light breaks the cycles of violence which are enabled and exacerbated by the violence of the penal-justice system.

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

Matthew 1:18–25

Joseph thought he was doing the right thing. Matthew even portrayed his actions favorably, calling Joseph “righteous” (v. 19) and framing his actions as about Mary’s protection. Once he found out that Mary was pregnant, Joseph determined what he believed was the best path to keep him and Mary as safe and secure as possible. That is how Matthew framed it, at least. 

Joseph’s plans to “dismiss her quietly” may have avoided a public spectacle or shaming for him, but I have my doubts about what it would have done for Mary. Unless she were to find a way to end the pregnancy, which by all accounts Mary was not interested in doing, everything would inevitably become public. At that point, Mary would have been alone and subject to whatever “public disgrace” Joseph imagined they might be avoiding by their separation. 

We approach crime and punishment in the United States much like Joseph. The problem for Joseph was that he did not believe Mary and did not genuinely care for her long-term welfare. Similarly, when we care so much about the amorphous concept of ‘crime,’ we miss the point. At the root of ‘crime’ is an unbearable social condition. Until we address the social conditions which produce breaches in an already broken social contract, we won’t achieve our stated goals of a just society—no matter how “righteous” an outside observer might characterize us as Matthew sees Joseph. 

The other way we follow Joseph’s lead is in prisons themselves. Prisons seek to remove those labeled ‘criminals’ from public view. Much like Joseph attempted to remove Mary from public view rather than seek her welfare, we incarcerate those who suffer from our social ills whether they have truly committed injurious actions or not. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge’s solution to poverty and homelessness: “Are there no prisons?” Rather than expose ourselves to the “public disgrace” (that is, our own social sin) that resulted in the phenomenon of ‘crime,’ we hide people away in prisons, subject them to violence and degradation, and exploit their labor. All the while, like Joseph, we think we’re doing the right thing. 

All of this is not to say that the people who commit crimes are blameless and purely a result of social sin and structural evils. Some people do bad things, sure. Victims also need restoration and justice, of course. However, when we build our entire idea of justice around dismissal and the avoidance of any sort of reckoning with the social order, we miss the point entirely. We don’t get true justice from prisons. We don’t solve problems with prisons. At best, we avoid them.  

To his credit, when confronted by an angel of God, Joseph changes his mind. He’s willing to subject himself to the trials that come with welcoming Jesus into the world. According to Matthew, Joseph doesn’t hesitate. Now, when God confronts us with the evils of incarceration, we can only hope we do the same.

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

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.