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The theme for this Church and the Criminal Justice System Sunday is "Forsaken". The texts are, from the Prophet Isaiah: "I have provided you as a lighthouse to the nations, to make a start at bringing people into the open, into light-opening blind eyes, releasing prisoners from forsaken dungeons, emptying all the dark prison cells!" From the Gospel of Luke: "Jesus said, 'God's Spirit has chosen me to preach the message of Good News to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, announcing "This is God's year to act!" And, from Psalm 138: "Though I walk in the midst of trouble…your steadfast love, O God, endures forever! Do not forsake the work of your hands!" ************** To be "forsaken" means to be deserted, abandoned, to be given up on and renounced. It is a harsh word meant to describe the hot unbearable hurt and the private pain of those who are left to suffer alone! When someone is forsaken they feel as if everyone and everything has given up on them-their family, their friends, their faith community, their society, their country, and, yes, even their God! One need only listen to frightening cry of Psalm 22 to sense the horror of such abandonment-a cry which was also placed on the lips of Jesus by the Gospel writers: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, so far from the words of my groaning?" To be in a state of forsaken-ness is a frightening thing! To be given up on, deserted, and abandoned are feelings that no one should have to embody or embrace. Yet on this Sunday entitled "The Church and the Criminal Justice System" we must fully and faithfully acknowledge the truth that as a nation we are systematically creating an ever-growing population of forsaken people-forsaken because they are the by-products or victims of our country's failed educational, economic, political, and social systems. Far from being a lighthouse of freedom for other nations, we have become a dark example of inequitable justice and institutionalized racism. And let me try and put some factual flesh on such an indictment: " Today our nation incarcerates more people per capita than any other modernized society on the globe-with over three million people currently doing hard time. Since 1980, the prison population in the United States has quadrupled, constituting the largest and the most frenetic correctional build-up of any country in the history of the world! And if that is not frightening enough, the National Criminal Justice Commission estimates that by the end of this decade the number of incarcerated individuals across this land will swell to over ten million! " With such growth in our prison system, is it any wonder then that more than 600,000 people are employed full-time in the American corrections industry-more people than in any Fortune 500 company-except General Motors! Added to that amazing figure is this mind-blowing financial statistic. During the 1990's over 100 billion dollars were spent on prison construction-an amount that comes out to nearly 40 thousand dollars per inmate per year! " But there is still another fact we have to face-and it is this. Our current criminal justice system is implicated in, and is reflective of, this nation's inherent and persistent racist practices. Make no mistake about it-a vast majority of those who inhabit our prisons today are not from wealthy suburbs but rather are from poor communities of color-African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans-and the folkmake up nearly 75% of the prison population. And while that is a frightening statistic for any person of color, the situation for African Americans is the most disturbing-or it SHOULD BE-for as I speak two out of ten black men are in prison, and ONE THIRD of all African American men age eighteen to thirty-five are under the supervision of the criminal justice system-ONE THIRD in prison, or on probation, or on parole, or under stringent court supervision. As Mark Lewis Taylor, professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Seminary, observes, "In America, fault and blame, transgression and punishability, have regularly been marked by the black body, the isolated, controlled, and attacked black body. Today's blackenization of our prisons only exacerbates racist proclivities in non-black Americans to associate black people with wrong. At the same time that blacks are disproportionately sent to prison, all citizens of other colors further stoke their racist fear of blacks as criminals. It is a vicious and forsaken circle: blacks are confined together en masse, and so blackness and transgression get yoked together in America's racist, collective mind, yielding tendencies to send still more blacks to the prison house-thus swelling its racialized composition even more". " With Taylor's words in mind, I want to cite the National Criminal Justice Report once more-for it minces no words in its harsh warning that as a nation we are in the midst of a social catastrophe-first for African American communities-but ultimately for those of us who live in wealthy, well-protected communities like Palo Alto. The report states, "We are on a treacherous course which will only deepen the entrenched racial injustice that has often torn this country apart! For if present trends continue almost two out of three of all young African American men nationwide will be in prison by the year 2020. For young Hispanic men one out of four will be incarcerated. And if prison growth continues at its present annual rate, by the year 2020 over 4.5 million African American men and 2.5 million Hispanic males will be incarcerated-a prison population of minority men about five times as large as the prison population of ALL races combined today! If you think for a moment that our social justice system is creating a safe society for us all, think again-for we are moving ever closer to the racial abyss of a segregated country-a nation where your skin color, and your social class, and your educational level, and your zip-code determines whether you are IN or OUT of the Big House. Listen to these blunt words from a prison administrator as she points toward this dichotomy: "Without prisons the attractive lives some of us lead in the nicest sections of town would simply not be possible. If you want to get your outcasts out of sight, first you need a ghetto and then you need a prison to take the pressure off the ghetto . . . Short term terror and revulsion are more powerful than long-term wisdom!" And so I must be honest with you this morning-that frightening comment made not by some twisted prison staff member but by a powerful prison administrator angers me beyond belief-especially as a follower of Christ! For if the Church with a big "C" is to make any kind of start at opening blind eyes, if the Church with a big 'C' is to make any kind of start at releasing prisoners from forsaken dungeons and emptying all the dark prison cells, if the Church with a big "C" is to make any kind of start at setting the burdened and the battered free all across this land, then it must stand ready to speak OUT and FOR the forsaken. It must stand ready to recognize and to name and to challenge the racist tendencies, and the economic disparities, and the educational short-comings that drive our criminal justice system. And it must stand ready to publicly acknowledge that as a nation we are sacrificing folk who have been caught up in and crushed by systems that WE have allowed to fail. As John McKnight, director of Community Studies at Northwestern University, writes, the Church, and those who are part of it, must continually remind our nation's leaders that, like our ancestors of old, we are still sacrificing REAL human lives in this country! "We may hide it behind gray walls of steel, rather than sprinkling blood in the public tabernacle. We may execute in the darkest hours of the night, rather than at high noon on a pyramid. But we are still engaged in human sacrifice-and for that we should be ashamed!" But there is one other thing that the Church needs to be up to-and maybe it is the hardest of all! For the Church needs to declare from the top of its lungs that our criminal justice system disrupts, divides and destroys the very unity Christ calls us to broker and build with our neighbors and with all humanity. The Church must boldly proclaim that for white, affluent folk to have their positions and bodily safety dependent on a penal system based on domination and inherent racism is nothing less than an affront to human dignity. For how can we breath freely, and love freely, and declare good news freely if our lives and security are a function of a hard boot planted on the throat of someone else? If we are to have a war on terror-then maybe, just maybe, it is the Church that must tell our nation's leaders that we should begin by looking in our own back yard. Ands so it is that the Psalmist writes, "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, I urge you, O God, I plead with you-do not forsake the work of your hands!" Such a prayer is on the lips of too many forsaken folk all across our land this Sunday-prisoners who feel disserted, abandoned, given up on and renounced. And the question is this: Will the Church respond to such prayers in ways that are reflective of our present lock-down culture or in ways that are reflective of the restorative love of Christ! I hope and prayer that we chose the right answer! AMEN
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