Lent - Week Five
LIBERATION LECTIONARY
“I have been locked by the lawless. Handcuffed by the haters. Gagged by the greedy. And, if i know any thing at all, it’s that a wall is just a wall, and nothing more at all. It can be broken down.”
Assata Shakur, from “Affirmation”
“Self Portrait” by Russell Craig
Healing from Carceral Christianity
The “carceral state” is made up of all the things that oppress and isolate people, from police to jails. At school, this might look like police resource officers patrolling the halls, or being sent to detention. Getting free from the carceral state means becoming abolitionists. Abolition is when we work together to get rid of the idea that punishment is our best protection, and we make our world healthy for everyone by showing mercy to each other. Sometimes we use our religion to punish people instead of showing God’s mercy. We call this Carceral Christianity. Loving our neighbor the way Jesus taught love means standing up to anything that causes harm, so God calls us to be abolitionists who stand up to the carceral state in all its forms.
Daily Readings from Isaiah 53, and John 17
During the Season of Lent, the daily readings focus on the final teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of John, and the Suffering Servant prophetic prose from Isaiah’s second scroll.
Sunday: Isaiah 53. 9-10 They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
Monday: John 17.1-5 After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
Tuesday: John 17.6-9 “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.
Wednesday: John 17.10-13 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.
Thursday: John 17.14-19 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
Friday: John 17.20-24 “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Saturday: John 17.25-26 “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Reflection: Healing from Carceral Christianity
“ See it is I, the Lord, who created the craftsman who blows the fire of coals, and produces a tool fit for its purpose; I have also created the avenger to bring justice for the oppressed. No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper, and you shall silence every tongue that passes judgment against you. This is the heritage of the people of God, and their ultimate vindication from me, says the Lord.” Isaiah 54.16-17
Our churches, our lives, our society, and our world need to heal from the stranglehold of mass incarceration. Its deathly grip on our institutions has been hard to break. We know that our schools and our churches have heavily participated and invested in the carceral system. Collectively, we have sanctioned and supported investment in prisons, championed policies of law and order that abuse the law and disrupt order, we have blinded ourselves to a system of justice that is imbalanced and a perpetuator of harm, but mostly we have forgotten. We have forgotten that our faith is a faith of freedom. Christianity’s own story has been formed under the cloud of unjust and abusive imprisonment.
Our scriptures tell us of John the Baptist who was incarcerated and executed for his witness against the powers. They tell us of Jesus who was incarcerated and tried in a kangaroo court, criminally condemned without credible cause. Early Christians were persecuted for their witness and caged in prisons, and yet the full story of Christianity is that the God we serve has always proclaimed liberty to the captives. When faced with cages, we showed courage. We sang and prayed against the demonic systems of imprisonment until the doors were open. That spirit flowed from the cells of Paul and Silas to cells of Martin Luther King and Fannie Lou Hamer. We must preach an unbounded gospel, an unchained gospel. We need to answer the call of a gospel that is free of the delusion that we can purport to be free while we fill our jails with Black and brown bodies. We need to be healed from the sickness that tells us our communities are safer with piecemeal justice and solutions that fall short of our responsibility to care for all of God’s creation.
Rev. Aaron Rogers
Heroes of Healing through Abolition
Healing in the Bible: John the Baptist
Jesus called John, his cousin, the greatest prophet who was ever born. John was called the Baptizer, or the Baptist, because he performed a symbolic washing away of people’s mistakes and unhealthy viewpoints. John the Baptist spoke truth to people in power, and held kings accountable without fear. He was arrested and sentenced to death because the truth that he told was causing people to believe in God’s power above the power of their oppressive leaders. This work became a threat because John could not be controlled and his message was spreading. We can see healing in John’s story through the work of Jesus to keep calling leaders and rulers to accountability. He even challenged the leaders of the church in his time.
Healing in History: Assata Shakur
Assata Shakur by Katrina Ezeiyi
Assata is a freedom fighter and political activist. She held membership in the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army and fought tirelessly against police brutality and misconduct. After she was falsely accused of murder, she became the first woman to ever be included on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorist” list. She escaped incarceration, after being shot by the FBI, and lives in Cuba under political asylum. Healing justice in Assata’s story comes from her determination to abolish prisons and the power of police, and to never give up on her message - which is much like the message of John the Baptist. Assata teaches us that people in power cannot control or take away the power of the people.
from an article about incarcerated artists who make masterpieces from retooled