The RMS Office of the Bishop in partnership with leaders across the synod has created a community discussion guide to engage challenging topics as people of faith. Each week we will share a personal reflection on that week's featured social statement.
Hope and God's Justice
The Rev. Terry Schjang
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope."
[Jer. 29: 12]
These words of promise are spoken by the prophet Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon. He speaks to them in letters from afar in Jerusalem because he cannot be with them physically. Rather than telling them to pray to get back home to Jerusalem as fast as they can, he encourages them to pray for those who hold them captive, to continue to worship, to understand they are in this for what will feel like too long to bear, and to remember who they are: beloved children of God.
This is our starting point inside Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. Whether it is a woman’s first experience with incarceration or her seventh; whether she’s been down for six months or sixteen years, living inside the walls of barbed wire estranged from the activities of our communities outside, feels like exile.
The cries of “how long LORD?” go largely unheard except by their sisters who have the presence of mind to listen, and by someone called by the Spirit to listen and respond with Christ’s promise. It is a promise the women hear clearly through the words of the prophet, Jeremiah, as he tells other exiles to amend their ways and their doings because God has a plan for them for a future with hope. No one benefits within the system of incarceration if there is no hope.
From my perspective as one called to serve this vulnerable community, hope begins with encouraging the incarcerated to hear Christ speaking to them. Christ promises them they too are beloved. They too belong to community.
Christ has a plan for them. They have a purpose in life. They are much more than a number or the worst thing they ever did in their life. They belong to God, and God has a plan for them.
There is hope.
As pastor and chaplain inside this prison, I often encourage the women to not only hear the promise of hope for themselves, but to acknowledge that we’re all leveled at the cross. This means that instead of mirroring the attitude of society outside that too often declares one’s self-worth according to our own accomplishments or lack of public misdeeds, we, as a faith community, encourage everyone to understand one’s self-worth in terms of the cross.
It is at the cross that we understand who God is and that the cross forms us all as sisters and brothers equally in Christ. All, regardless of on what side of a wall we reside, are siblings at the foot of the cross.
This is God’s justice; not an eternity of gnashing of teeth behind barbed wire. Mercy, kindness and a humble walk together is justice in God’s court. In the words of Brian McLaren, “We make the road by walking”, and I will add the word, “together”. We, as a church, have fallen short of the common life together we confess when we fail to acknowledge our sisters and brothers behind bars.
“Togetherness” is where the church has fallen short in her principles and orientation toward justice. We are called to visit the prisoner (Matthew 25:36) and yet so many of us who call ourselves people of faith openly say, “well, they did something bad, didn’t they? They deserve to be in prison. Why should they be given anything besides food and shelter?”
I can’t count the number of times people have said to me, “you have the worst call in the entire church. Couldn’t you get anything better?” Even now, these voices leave me speechless.
Which leads me to my final point, the importance of encouraging all who have been affected by the current system of incarceration to find their voice. My own sense of call is to walk with incarcerated women, whether or not they were wrongly or rightly convicted, encouraging them to find their voice. This includes expressing their remorse to their victims, repentance, sharing their grief and sorrow with their parents and children, and praying with their incarcerated sisters to give them hope along the way. The walk is long-- a proverbial 70 years.
Much still needs to be addressed systemically in the criminal justice system. This reflection doesn’t even begin to address the cultural injustice of the imbalance of incarcerated persons along the racial and less educated divide. It doesn’t begin to address the misuse of incarceration for the mentally ill and the drug addicted. It doesn’t begin to address the culture of domestic violence against women that lands women in prison for crimes others committed against their children.
Instead, this reflection will begin and end with the vision of hope as God encourages us to hear, that we along with our siblings behind barbed wire, are all experiencing some sort of feeling of exile from life as we think we would design it if we were God. But we are not God. I walk into the prison in these days of COVID 19, and the women walking their laps in the yard to get some exercise and sunshine shout out, “Hi, Pastor Terry. Come walk with me!” They know shouting across the yard is against the prison rules. The officers in the yard look at me and shake their finger at me. Then they smile and motion for me to go walk with my sisters.
There is hope. The system is changing. The church needs to hear the cries of the people and join in the walk. We are not all the same. Still, we are all called to walk together according to our ability and talents.
“Then when you call upon me and come to pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart. I will let you find me, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (Jer. 29:12-14)
May it be so.
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