Reimagining Justice in the Age of Mass Incarceration | Opening Eucharist, March 5, 2018
Sermon preached by the Reverend Mike Kinman, Rector of All Saints Church, Pasadena
Repeat after me.
You. Can’t. Stop. The Revolution.
Louder.
You. Can’t. Stop. The Revolution.
Together
You. Can’t. Stop. The Revolution.
You. Can’t. Stop. The Revolution.
You. Can’t. Stop. The Revolution.
You. Can’t. Stop. The Revolution.
Amen.
I just have one question for you this morning?
Are you ready for a revolution?
I can’t hear you. Are you ready for a revolution?
One more time – Are you ready for a revolution?
Excellent. Because we need to be clear that the title of this conference – Reimagining Justice in the Age of Mass Incarceration — is not an invitation to nibble around the edges. The very task of reimagining justice says that the way we approach justice needs revolutionary reimagining and in fact what we call justice is in fact not justice at all.
It is not justice when the imprisonment rate for African American women is twice that of white women.
It is not justice when African Americans and Latinx people make up approximately 32% of the U.S. population but comprise 56% of all incarcerated people.
It is not justice when we strip communities of poverty of most economic opportunities and then criminalize the economic opportunities that are left.
It is not justice when we take power away from communities of color and poverty and then sell fear to white people and power to people of color in the form of a gun and then beyond the realms of sensibility protect the rights of the white person to have the gun and shoot and kill black and brown people whether they are armed or not just because they might have a gun.
It is not justice when you have to declare your previous convictions on a job application and are never allowed to get the chance to put those convictions in context in a face-to-face conversation with an employer.
It is not justice when the cruelest and most unconstitutional of punishments, the death penalty, not only is a part of our system but is basically used as a tool of slow genocide for the poor, people of color and people of reduced mental capacity.
It is not justice when the people making billions of dollars off the prison systems are the ones literally handing the legislators the wording of the laws that create more prisoners so they can build more prisons so they can make more money.
What we have is not justice and so we are here to reimagine justice and that is a bold enterprise. That is a revolution. Overthrowing injustice and reimagining justice is a revolution of love.
And that’s OK. Because we are a revolutionary people. People of faith are revolutionaries.
The Bhagavad Gita, one of the sacred texts of the Hindu faith, is a conversation between Arjuna and Krishna that takes place in the middle of a battle and it is about a revolution – a reimagining of how liberation can be attained.
In Torah, God hears the cries of the people on account of their taskmasters and God comes down to deliver the people out of captivity and God comes to Moses.
And does God tell Moses to write a strongly worded letter to Pharaoh asking for reforms and better conditions?
Does God tell Moses to, as my sister Elle Dowd says, to go back to Egypt, be the best slave he can be, get to know Pharaoh better, try to see it from his perspective and work to change the system slowly and respectably from the inside?
NO. God tells Moses – tell old Pharaoh LET MY PEOPLE GO!
And in the Gospel reading we just heard, Jesus went to the synagogue and opened up the scroll to the prophet Isaiah. To a prophet of deliverance from captivity. To a prophet of a reimagining of justice. And Jesus read:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he did the first century version of the mic drop. He rolled up the scroll gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And it was one of those “uh-oh” moments in the synagogue. You know those moments where the congregation is saying “that preacher didn’t just go there, did she?” And they could see from the look on Jesus’ face that oh yeah, Jesus just went there.
Because the scripture Jesus read is a revolutionary text. In the midst of a system where the poor bear a greater and greater burden to fund the excess of the rich. In the midst of a system where the state and the so-called legal system controlled by the wealthy property owners took away the tools from people to prosper for themselves, took their leaders out of their communities and destabilized their families, subjected them to the trauma of destabilized communities and state violence without any tools for healing and then incarcerated and even executed them when they stepped out of line
– not that any of that sounds familiar to us –
in the midst of that system, Jesus says we are going to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom – not better conditions, not a few cents more an hour in wages, not less oppressive visiting policies but FREEDOM for the prisoners, setting the oppressed free. And then, in a world where paralyzing debt is every bit as much of a life sentence as time behind bars, Jesus says we are going to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of Jubilee, the year of mercy. The year of forgiveness. The year of compassion. The year where we prevent the rich from getting too rich at the expense of the poor. The year where we remember that before anything we are sisters and brothers and gender nonconforming siblings and that we are all bound together by the love of God. Payday loans. The bail economy. We comin. We comin. We comin for y’all.
Oh yeah, Jesus went there. And the people’s eyes got wide, ‘cause they know talk like that means trouble. And jesus drops the mic and they thought he was done. They were glad he was done, but Jesus saved the best for last because after he dropped the mic, he threw down the gauntlet and said to the people:
TODAY this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
Jesus said to the people the question that is before us today: “Are you ready for a revolution?”
So why a revolution? Why can’t this just be about reform?
Because mass incarceration and the systemic racism, patriarchy, misogyny, classism, and everything else that is behind it is a system. This is not about a few bad apples. This is not about tweaks here and there. This is about a system of slavery and God and Moses knew there is only one thing you do when you are confronted with a system of slavery and that is you say “let my people go.”
Slavery, oppression – these are all systems. And there are some truths that we learn about systems.
Truth #1 – Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it is getting. And it does that because it is working for someone.
Truth #2 – Systems resist change. If change is forced upon them they will adapt and try to get the results a different way.
Truth #3 – We are all co-creators and co-sustainers of the systems we are in. We have different amounts of power in the system, but through our use of power or our acquiescence to power, all of us are continually co-creating the system we are in.
Let’s take this system of mass incarceration. It has its roots in the American economic system. The American economic system – which is not unique to America, by the way — was designed to generate the maximum profit for the people who have power – in this case, white property owners. And the way you create the maximum profit is you get the most you can for the lowest cost.
My ancestors came to this country and killed or imprisoned the people who lived here and took their land without payment. They kidnapped millions of black bodies from Africa and tortured labor out of them without remuneration and in so doing built a cotton-driven economy on stolen land off an unpaid labor force that skyrocketed America to the top of the global economic heap. Then they went to other countries around the world, made deals with oppressors, and removed the resources from those countries at ridiculously low cost to fuel innovation and the creation of incredible wealth while destroying local economies and devastating local communities.
You all do know that the Hunger Games is a parable, right? And that we are the Capitol?
As much as we like to talk about American ingenuity, it’s not about American ingenuity. It’s actually pretty easy to make money when you don’t have to pay for some of the big ticket items like land, resources and labor.
It was a system perfectly designed to achieve the results it was getting – making this country and the people in power incredibly wealthy and powerfully on a global scale. And when change was forced upon it, the system adapted. After the Emancipation Proclamation we found different ways to sustain the level of production without substantially increasing the cost of labor. Slavery became convict leasing, which became Jim Crow, which became low-paid, no-benefits, living under fear of deportation, undocumented labor – and – wait for it – the school to prison pipeline, the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration of people of color.
Now this is nothing new nor is it anything unique. This is the global economic system and it is at least as old as our scripture. It has evolved. There are more personal freedoms built in. As always, there are powerful illusions of freedom and enough joy and fulfillment built into the system to keep those who are enslaved in control and enough stability and fear built into the system to keep those who are enslaved either content or resigned to their fate.
The compulsion of the whip has been replaced by economic compulsion and control is maintained by guns and drugs and policing systems and payday loans and substandard, underfunded education systems, but the increasing gap between rich and poor, between white and black and brown in this nation and in the world, the relentless worship of GDP and economic growth that is ecologically, economically and morally unsustainable tells us that it’s the same old song.
Reforms are fine. Reforms are needed. Reforms help real people who need real help right now. AND – we must not fool ourselves that this system is not broken – it is perfectly designed to get the results it is getting, that as we reform it this system will adapt and get those same results a different way and that as long as we play that game – and there are good, human reasons for us to be playing the game that are about helping real people who need real help right now – but as long as we play that game we are continuing to co-create the system that Jesus came to overthrow.
So this is about revolution. This is about literally reimagining and recreating justice. And a system that is perfectly designed to get results that are unjust. A system that is expert at adapting and reinventing its unjust self. A system that has co-opted all of us into being co-creators and co-sustainers of this will not like the idea of revolution one bit. We will be told we are naïve and impractical. We will be told that we are divisive and reverse-racist – whatever that means. We will be told that we are putting lives in danger – which of course means white lives because black and brown lives are in danger 24/7/365. Our injustice system will not go quietly into that great night. Our injustice system will not welcome revolution.
We know this from experience and we know this from the Gospel.
We ended the Gospel reading this morning with the hero shot. Jesus saying “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Cut. That’s really cool. But let’s look at the director’s cut of that scene. Let’s look at what happened next. First they spoke well of him. Because words of revolution can be exciting. As Benjamin Franklin said in 1776, rebellion, revolution is always legal in the first person, such as “our revolution,” it is only in the third person “their revolution” that it is illegal. Jesus was speaking of “our revolution” and it got their adrenaline flowing. Then they began to think of the consequences and then they began to murmur against Jesus, “who does he think he is?” Then Jesus said “Oh, and by the way, we will be led in this revolution by the people you think are beneath you. You will be led in this revolution by the young and the queer, by the women and the poor, by people of color and people whom security has been instructed to keep out of your boardrooms.”
And then the people got angry. And “all in the synagogue were filled with rage.” And they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff.
So as we gather to Reimagine Justice – let’s go into that process with our eyes and ears wide open and let’s really do just that. Let’s not just think about reform but let’s realize that what we are committing ourselves to is a revolutionary act – and one that will not be popular. Let’s realize that what we are committing ourselves to is a revolution of love and that it will be led by the power of the poor, the women, the queer, the black, the brown, the marginalized, the oppressed – the revolution of love that will topple mass incarceration will be led by the prisoners and the system that is keeping them in prison will not want to hear what they have to say and it is the job and joy of the rest of us to amplify their voices and make room for them to claim their power. And there will be lots of people who will not be happy about that.
But even though it is Lent, I am going to end this sermon with an Alleluia. Because I thank God. Because God is all about the revolution. And the promise our faith gives us is that if we put ourselves out there, God will deliver. If we stand before Pharaoh, God will set the people free. If we pick up our cross and follow Jesus, this scripture will be fulfilled through us in our hearing.
So I ask you one more time:
Are you ready for a revolution?
Are you ready for a revolution of love over hate?
Are you ready for a revolution of justice over injustice?
Are you ready for a revolution of liberation over mass incarceration?
Then stand as you are able and let’s get going. Let’s get going firm in the conviction that if we reimagine justice. If we are ready for a revolution of love, there will be a revolution of love because as the young people on the streets are teaching us.
You. Can’t. Stop. The Revolution.
You. Can’t. Stop. The Revolution.
You. Can’t. Stop. The Revolution.
You. Can’t. Stop. The Revolution. Alleluia. Amen.
