Acts 16:16-34
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
October 11, 2020
It’s an ancient story, and it’s a story for today. It’s a story of economic exploitation, as a young girl—enslaved– is compelled to use her gifts to make her owners rich. It’s a story of corruption, as wealthy people use the power of government to protect their interests. It’s a story of fake news, including a powerless girl who sees the truth clearly and powerful men who twist it to promote hate and violence. It’s a story of injustice—innocent people thrown into prison because they threaten the status quo. It’s a story of people caught in a system that dehumanizes everyone: the jailer fears for his life even as he holds the keys to the prison door.
Layer upon layer of exploitation, lies, violence and injustice. Prison wall inside prison wall inside prison wall. In the midst of all these layers and walls, Paul and Silas sing and pray. Suddenly the foundations of the prison are shaken, the doors fly open, the chains unfasten. As they sing and pray, the Spirit of God blows through the scene, more powerful than the powers that built the prison, more powerful than the lies, the greed, the fear and the injustice that lock people away.
When we read stories of Jesus’ dramatic healings in the gospels, we are tempted to distance ourselves by putting Jesus on a pedestal: “Jesus has that power, but we’re just ordinary people.” This reading, though, is from the Acts of the Apostle, which tells the story of the early church, the first communities trying to figure out what it means follow Jesus. Acts refuses to let us off the hook. Paul and Silas are like us—ordinary, deeply flawed human beings. If God’s Spirit can work through them to bring freedom and healing, then God’s spirit can work through us to tear down prison walls.
For ten years in a row, I coordinated a group of Framingham clergy who offered a Good Friday worship service at MCI-Framingham, the state prison for women. It was a powerful way to remember Jesus’ crucifixion. It was jarring to feel the reverberation of metal doors slamming behind us. It was heart-breaking to hear stories of pain and isolation. It was inspiring to bear witness to the ways the Spirit is not constrained by walls and barbed wire and slamming doors. Each year, I was uplifted by the choir that sang—songs of joy on a somber day, songs of trust sung by women who have experienced betrayal upon betrayal, songs of hope in a place that reeks of despair. Each year, I was moved by our time of prayer, as women came forward for anointing. When we asked what they wanted to pray for, it was almost always for their children—that they might be happy, that they might know how much their mothers loved them, that there might be hope for family to be restored.
Each year, as we sang and prayed, I thought of Paul and Silas singing and praying in their prison. Surely, the Holy Spirit was at work in those Good Friday services, as the choir sang their conviction that barbed wire cannot imprison their spirits, as prayers broke through the walls, connecting mothers and children through the perseverance of love. Surely the work of the Spirit in those services was real. And it was not complete, for when we left, the doors slammed behind us and the prison walls were still standing.
The group that gathered in that chapel reflected broader realities about who is imprisoned in our nation. The women were disproportionately African-American and Latinx. Most were mothers. Many struggled with addictions. Most had experienced significant physical or sexual abuse, or some kind of traumatic event. Almost all of them were poor. The vast majority had committed non-violent crimes.
This year we didn’t hold a Good Friday service. The prison—and our lives—were in COVID-19 lock-down. Soon after our canceled service, at the invitation of a member of our Board of Wider Mission, I had an opportunity for a very different kind of connection with the women at MCI.
On two Sundays in May, including Mothers’ Day, Families for Justice as Healing, an organization we support through our Wider Mission giving, held rolling car rallies. The rallies called attention to the dangers COVID-19 was posing for inmates and corrections officers at MCI-Framingham. The close quarters of prison life make social distancing almost impossible; prisons were some of the first hot spots of the virus. Families for Justice as Healing was advocating for compassionate release, pointing out that keeping people incarcerated during a pandemic could amount to a death sentence.
More than fifty car-loads gathered on those two Sundays. We drove in a long caravan around the prison. When we came near the buildings where women lived, we honked and shouted our support. We could hear women shouting back to us through the open windows. In a time that was even more isolating and traumatizing than typical prison life, they heard our message: you are not forgotten. You are not alone. I wonder if the prison walls shook, just a little bit.
I was grateful to add our car horn to the cacophony of caring. I was also grateful to learn more about Families for Justice as Healing. The organization was founded and is led by women with first-hand experience of the prison system. Some have been incarcerated; others have experienced the impact of a loved one’s incarceration on their families. They advocate for women and girls in prison, assuring them they are not alone. They advocate for more human conditions, recently focusing on a bill to end the excessive costs of making phone calls to family members.
They are not satisfied, though, with shaking the prison walls here and there. They believe the walls can and should be torn town. They point to the ways families are torn apart when a mother is incarcerated—and how that creates a downward spiral of poverty and despair. They ask how adding the trauma of incarceration to lives already shaped by trauma serves the community. They challenge us to redefine justice not as punishment but as restoration for everyone involved. They call us to free ourselves from a narrow vision of what is possible and imagine a society without prisons.
Right now, they have a very concrete focus to their re-imagining. MCI-Framingham will close soon, as the buildings are so old they cannot be renovated. Money is already being allocated to build a new women’s prison in our state. Stop, they are saying. Wait! We know incarceration does harm to individuals, devastates families and destroys communities. “What could we do with that money instead?” they ask. We can address the root causes of crime, they argue, by providing treatment for addiction, healing of trauma, job training and support for struggling families.
In July, Families for Justice as Healing held a virtual program called People Not Prisons, in which they lifted up this vision. They described the harm incarceration does. They highlighted alternatives we already know work. I was inspired. I was also aware of the voices of doubt stirring inside me. What about violent offenders? What about victims of crime? Can we really eliminate prisons?
Those are important questions, and they need to be part of the conversation. What I realized, though, was how focusing on them was leading me to discount the experience of people with first-hand knowledge, to short-circuit my own imagination and to want to make the vision smaller. It became clear that I needed to bracket my doubts and listen more deeply. I needed to honor the process of reimagining. I needed to trust the Holy Spirit’s power to work through human imagination to tear down wall we assume need to be there.
The stories in the Bible are dramatic—so dramatic we are tempted to spiritualize them, interpreting them strictly as metaphor. We are tempted to say that it is enough to shake the walls a little bit, through singing and praying and even a little horn-honking. When we give in to that temptation, we make our faith a little bit smaller. In our call to worship today, we quoted Jesus quoting the prophet Isaiah—“God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives.” In our reading from Acts, we hear a story of that vision coming to fruition: prisoners–and the jailer– set free by the power of the Holy Spirit. What would it mean for us to trust that the Holy Spirit is as powerful now as it was in the first century? Might we dare to trust that the Spirit can work through human beings to re-imagine prison walls torn down, families reunited, trauma transformed, and community restored?
As I was typing the first draft of this sermon into the computer, a pop-up notification distracted me. It led me to an email invitation to a UCC Super Saturday virtual workshop on October 31st, called Creating Beloved Community. Two groups will be presenting their vision; one of them is Families for Justice as Healing. Wow! Talk about the Spirit at work, challenging me to listen more, calling me to invite you to join me. There is much work to be done. It begins, by the grace of God, with listening deeply. As we listen, we will be moved, by the power of God, to act boldly.
Singing and praying, honking and shouting, listening and re-imagining: may the Spirit work through us in all these ways and more. Amen.