Last Sunday in Easter: Prison Break

6/2

Sunday morning Beverly 

It's a beautiful spring day walking from the subway station to Beverly Church. 

along the way....

along the way

As I arrive, Evgeny is very excited telling me about his art show. He will fill the church with 300 paintings.. Today is the last Sunday in Easter....

Ready to preach

                                                                             **** 

Let's start with Paul and Silas in prison. Incarcerated is what we say. When I say that, what do you think of? How many of us have family members or friends behind bars? I was never chosen to be a juror because I always had members of my church incarcerated. 

So common that we speak of the "school to prison" pipeline. A friend of mine who works with homeless people tells me that in Oklahoma they  use  3rd grade failure rates to predict future prison building needs. Michelle Alexander has shown us how mass incarceration is "the new Jim Crow." In a direct line from slavery. 

According to the NAACP:
Incarceration Trends in America
Between 1980 and 2015, the number of people incarcerated in America increased from roughly 500,000 to over 2.2 million.
Today, the United States makes up about 5% of the world’s population and has 21% of the world’s prisoners.
1 in every 37 adults in the United States, or 2.7% of the adult population, is under some form of correctional supervision.

StopFriskRacial Disparities in Incarceration
In 2014, African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million correctional population.
African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites.
The imprisonment rate for African American women is twice that of white women.
Nationwide, African American children represent 32% of children who are arrested,

Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32% of the US
population, they comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015.


Drug Sentencing Disparities


African Americans represent 12.5% of illicit drug users, but 29% of those arrested for drug offenses and 33% of those incarcerated in state facilities for drug offenses.


In 2012 alone, the United States spent nearly $81 billion on corrections.
Spending on prisons and jails has increased at triple the rate of spending on Pre‐K‐12 public education in the last thirty years.

I'm gonna stop. It's just not right.

There sit Paul and Silas in prison....why? Well as always it's got something to do with money. Seems this slave girl kept following them around. Calling out that these men were "slaves of the most high God" who were ".....proclaiming a way of salvation. Well, come to think of it, that was true! And she is annoying  Paul to no end. So  he discerns that  there's a spirit involved  and he draws the spirit out.

SO the owners who were making  money from her "psychic readings" or "fortune telling" or "tarot card reading" are angry at having lost their meal ticket and seek to find a way to get  Paul and Silas taken in. And it of course involves some "Jew" baiting language and sure enough there's an angry mob and beatings.  And they wind up in double bondage, not only in jail, but in stocks as well !

So far, as to be expected. I like the scene where they are singing hymns and the prisoners are listening...I remember when I was arrested in the protests following the Mohamed Diallo killing. As I was led in to the cells, my African-American brother clergy were singing spirituals and gospel songs, making the prison walls vibrate with sound. I thought of this verse. 

SO here's where the story takes a turn...seems God doesn't like prison walls either . and there's an earthquake and the walls fall down. And everyone runs away, right? No way. They stay. And presumably the other prisoners do too. 

The jailer is sure he will be blamed and made to pay. But when he looks, they're all still there. Still praying, singing , testifying. 

And before  it's all over, the jailer will have become  their  captor, in essence. By this  propaganda of the deed, as my Central American call it, the jailer is converted...and his whole household. 

And Paul and Silas, who took the risk to stay in jail, are washed, bandaged and fed. .

What we see is caring about someone enough to take a very serious risk on their behalf. Showing by doing. We're called to that kind of love. 

Loose ends. I don't expect any earthquake to take down our walls anytime soon. Rikers Island isn't going anywhere anytime soon. We'll have to do our own actions, like Paul and Silas, and see what can happen. 

At our last General Assembly last year in St.Louis,  as a sign of protest against the bail bond system, we  took up an offering of some 65000 and a whole bunch Presbyterians marched downtown and bailed out over 100 prisoners...not a bad way to begin....

Amen

In our prayers, there are many intercessions  as always. But this tine, prayers of thanksgiving as well as Geraldine's granddaughter has 6 college acceptances to choose from.  Geraldine always knew something special was in store. As always we will go downstairs to break  bread together.

Beverly is hospitality

First Reading Acts 16:16-34

16One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. 17While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation." 18She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, "I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And it came out that very hour.

19But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. 20When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, "These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews 21and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe." 22The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. 23After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. 24Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

25About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened. 27When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. 28But Paul shouted in a loud voice, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here." 29The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30Then he brought them outside and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" 31They answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." 32They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. 34He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

Will Be Heard: the voices of mass incarceration

11/11

Mass incarceration panel

“Will be Heard: a performance and public conversation around mass incarceration in the United States” is the latest project of The Open Program of the Workcenterof Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards of Pontedara, Italy developed as part of this fall’s New York City residency. The performance piece emerged from extended conversations with formerly incarcerated people and a wide circle of community andadvicacy groups that relate to this issue.

Performing "Will Be Heard"

More than anything, “Will Be Heard” articulates and amplifies the voices of the people who shared their stories. The stories and commentary are interwoven, in a typical Open Center style, with work songs, spirituals and laments from the African Diaspora tradition. And in this performance piece, that is especially appropriate. What comes through beyond the pain and suffering inflicted on those in the corrections system is the reality of a “prison-industrial complex” through which prisoners lives are commodified. They are used to create commodities and become commodities themselves. In essence, the 13th Amendment allowed for the continuation of salvery by virtue of this clause which abolished slavery: "….except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…."

The performance was followed by a wide and diverse panel of community persons involved with mass  incarceration from clergy to former Black Panthers to activists  calling for the closing of Riders Island. 

Among the points to emerge from the conversation were these:

• There is a direct connection between gentrification, police violence and mass incarceration
• When we buy products that come from the prison labor system, we are participating in “complicit consumption”
• The system runs on a plea bargain default whereby 90% of those incarcerated never had the opportunity for a  trial (Walter Puryear, Mid Bronx Senior Citizen Council and Andrew Freedman Home)
• Solitary confinement must be understood to be the essence of illegal “cruel and unusual punishment” (Wesley Caines, Bronx Defenders)
• Solitary confinement has been especially used against the 65 “Political prisoners” in the US, i.e., those who have been placed in solitary because of their “dangerous ideas” (BJ , Black Panther Commemoration Committee and Incarcerated Nation)
• There are very special effects of incarceration on young women and re-entry presents a real challenge as prison has been internalized. TabaithaRodriguez, (G.I.R.L.S. Achieving Incorprotion)
• Actors need to remember that they are human beings first and must always honor community (Dilson Hernandez, Urban Art Beat)
• The Stella Adler School of Acting has Rikers as one of its studios and its participants are students whose address is Rikers. We will not say “living” at Rikers.  Engaging in the experience of drama and theatre becomes transformative. (Joanne Edelman, Tom Oppenhgeim, Stella Adler School)
• The American Friends Service Committee, which has been involved in working with incarcerated persons for over 100 years, Wesleyan  University and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music have been working together on a “Hope Lives for Lifers” project.  A performance using the experience of incarceration and Dante’s Inferno is being prepared for December
• Most prisoners at Rikers, mainly black and brown, have never been convicted of a crime and are there primarily because of lack of bail money and/or  adequate legal representation. 
• Pastor (Rev.Dr.)Patricia Sealy’s Mott Haven Reformed Church was a stop on the Underground Railroad helping escaped slaves to freedom.

  

  Myrto, Robert, Mario and Pastor Sealy

  She reports:
• 2.7 million children with at least one parent in prison
• 43% have seen there parent(s) treated violently by th eploice
• 1/9 African American children have a incarcerated parent as opposed to 1/28 Hispanics and 1/59 whites
• In Kenya, the standard greeting is “Are the children well?“ To which our answer must be “no”
• We ‘ve now entered into intergenerational incarceration, a difficult pattern to break

More conversation and a dinner followed. 

While the Open Program has always had a commitment to justice and civic engagement, this is the most explicit engagement of an issue they have done in their New York City residencies. This exploration of the intersection of  beauty and justice and ethics and esthetics is an example of exactly what the Center at West Park has as its vision. It I stood to see new Executive and Artistic Director Zachary Tomlinson keeping that vision alive and continuing collaboration with artists like the Ope Center.

The 3rd Sunday in Easter: Have you anything to eat?

4/19

The PDA volunteer work crew from Sacramento Presbytery

Today we have our friends from the Sacramento Presbytery with us. We’ve got 8 volunteers from the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance program to do a week’s worth of reconstruction work with us, under the leadership of my longtime friend Jeanie. (Marsha finds it a fun thought that we qualify as a Presbyterian disaster.) Andre has come to lend his voice and jazz musician Adam Birnbaum is our musician.

Pat and Larry decorated again

As we do throughout Easter, we begin with Alleluias. And the traditional greeting:

One: Christ is risen!

All: Christ is risen indeed!

Our first hymn is  Come Ye Faithful Raise the Strain. And for the first time in a long time, we get one of Andre’s jazz improvs on Psalm 4. Today’s gospel reading is LUKE 24:36B-48

Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” ³⁷They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. ³⁸He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” ⁴⁰And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. ⁴¹While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate in their presence

⁴⁴Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things.”

I start my reflection with the question:

Have you seen Jesus this week?   Just wondering…was he on one of the posters of the victims of police shootings at the rally last Tuesday at Union Square? With Cornel West and Eve Ensler and Arturo O’Farrill? Did he spend the night in jail? Was he with the one who came in to my office last week, the one who we helped find housing who said you helped me can you help him? Asking me to contact our Reachout friends and write a letter to help get his friend a place to live. Passing it on, you might say. Or was he the one who needed a home? Was he at the PCUSA DC training on Mass Incarceration last Friday? Maybe a cell mate of my friend whose 39 year old son has been in since age 17? Or did he come from Sacramento with a hammer and paintbrush? Have you seen Jesus this week.?

Rising…resurrection living…that’s our topic, that’s our theme…today the question is…do you have anything to eat? We’re looking at what the disciples saw, reported…

Let’s set the context….after Easter morning, in the late afternoon, two unsuspecting characters were walking along the road to Emmaus and were taken by surprise by a stranger. And they walk and talk and ask the stranger to stay for dinner and when he breaks bread, they recognize him…like Mary needed to heart her voice, and Thomas needed to see the wounds, it’s this familiar act, they must have shared with him so many times….those must have been great meals, not the food so much, but the fellowship…during the revolution in Nicaragua, the usual form of address was companero, the one I break bread with …like our word companion…with the Latin word for bread in the middle..Jesus was before all else, their companero, the one they shared bread with…and in that act, they knew him..

So the two guys, already late in the day, walk the seven miles back to Jerusalem…anxious to tell the disciples…and all of a sudden, Jesus is there…don’t ask how he got there…and he says, Shalom….peace…

And how do they respond? ³⁷They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.

And how does he respond? As he did to Thomas…

Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 

And although they feel joy, it was too much to believe…so what does Jesus do? He asks for something to eat…(It’s been a pretty long day after all…) And they offer him broiled fish. (Several were after all, fishers…) And he eats….

What is the gospel writer trying to tell us? That this was a flesh and blood rising…even this risen, resurrected one could hunger and need food and nourishment…that just as Christmas was about incarnation, so too is Easter…God made flesh…(John puts this story on a beach…at breakfast…here, we’re still on Easter night..)

And then he connects his story with the Bible story they all know…and before he’s done, tells them to take this story to all nations…as witnesses…that’s what it means to be a disciple…to be  a witness….

So what is this supposed to tell us about our rising? Our resurrection living?

First of all, it’s not about metaphor. We are being challenged with flesh and blood reality. Go wrestle with that. There’s no how here. There may be a why. But at the end, it’s just an IS.

Believe me, I have struggled with that my whole adult life. Je suis Thomas,  le incredule…I survived for years on the power of metaphor…but I feel I’m starting to get it… it has to be flesh and blood….

And we are to be witnesses…what do we witness? How do we witness? It’s got to be flesh and blood real.. He asking for something to eat…

My Easter ended perfectly with the meal we served at the women’s homeless shelter…no fish this time, though Kate can put out  mean salmon…but we did have lamb and ham..he wants  to break bread…he wants to walk the road with us…he wants a place for the night to rest his head…and yes, he wants to breathe…

SO your job for next week? See if you see Jesus…maybe carry a notebook, or just put a memo on your smart phone…

I want to close with a poem by John Updike, not usually one of my favorites, but with this one he took me by surprise…

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

John Updike, 1960.

We enter into our prayers by singing

Lead me, guide me along the way

For if you lead me I cannot stray

Lord let me walk each day with thee

Lead me, O Lord, lead me

And then there’s a joyous passing of the peace all around. Andre treats us to a an artful

Fairest Lord Jesus as we pass the plates.

a circle of friendship

And we close the service with Christ is Risen Shout Hosanna to the tune of Beethoven’s Ode to joy. And it feel something like that.

After our post worship conversations, Don from Sacramento, the construction manager of the team, and I will head down to Home Depot in Chelsea to get all the supplies needed for the week’s work.

I get back to the church in time for Noche’s  final flamenco singing class. The song that begins Si alguna vez va a Cadiz a el barrio de Santa Maria, tu veras los gitanitos bailando con alegria is working its way inside of me. We’ve been working on it all week. Since it’s the last class, there are bottles of wine and Spanish sherry and cheese and later chicken. Voices are singing open and full. I learned from el maestro Juan Ogallo that you riff on the open vowels, the a’s and o’s. It’s like una ventana entro la alma…To do it on the i (sung as e in Spanish) sounds like you saw a mouse. So I did learns something. 

Talking with Juan about flamenco singing

Around 7 PM, I’m in the lobby. In the sanctuary, the francophone African fellowship is finishing it’s service with vibrant soul stirring song. Upstairs in McAlpin Hall the Stop Mass Incarceration Network is working diligently and determinedly on their next action.

The Stop Mass Incarceration Network

And in Martin’s studio, the flamenco fiesta continues. I think to myself, this is how it is supposed to be. 

From other steps: Marquand Chapel, Yale Divinity School

10/23

Yale Divinity School

Random notes from Yale Divinity School 2014 Convocation and Class Reunions:

Peter S. Hawkins, Poetry and the Psalms: Singing a New Song

* King James has the poetry, the translation we carry in our bowels

* George Herbert’s 1633 lyric metric Psalm 23, the God of Love my shepherd is…unofficial Scottish national anthem. (http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/23dPsalme.html)

* Gerard Manley Hopkins created his own Psalms, like  Pied beauty: Glory be to God for dappled things…(http://www.bartleby.com/122/13.html)

* Jacqueline Osherow Handiwork/Glory from Scattered Psalms: Dead Men’s Praise http://books.google.com/books?id=db8Y6aMTdFAC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=Osherow+%22Handiwork/Glory%22&source=bl&ots=N7uAgKub-P&sig=3cfDTt_ml2zJPf6kh_80HajoG40&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6elJVI7qOu_9sAT8z4HYDQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Osherow%20%22Handiwork%2FGlory%22&f=false

....and for a bonus, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/hallelujah.html

Christian Smith Parents: the Real Pastors: The Absolute centrality of parenting in passing on religious faith and practice to the next generation

We have moved from religion as a communal solidarity project to a personal identity accessory…

(see youthandreligion.nd.edu)

The Justice Imperative:How Hyper-incarceration Hijacked the American Dream by Marilyn Kendrix et al.

* We have 2.3 million behind bars

* We have more incarcerated than the top 35 eurocentric nations combined

* In Connecticut, there are 16,500 inmates, 46500 on parole, a total of 45000 in  the system

* Connecticut spends a billion a year on  Department of Corrections

* Even though we are a nation of 2^nd chances, formerly incarcerated have penalties that go beyond time. Ineligible for public housing. Unrentable by landlords. Ineligible  for food stamps. Employment  discrimination is legal. Most rational thing to do is to reoffend and be sent back. 60% are back in prison within one year of release. Costs us 52,000 per inmate per year.

* We are the world leader in imprisoning our own people.With 5% of world's population we have 25% of world’s incarcerated.

And none can vote after felony conviction

Like a new Jim Crow (http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431)

 The Blue Note gospel: preaching the prophetic Blues in a Post-Soul World by Otis Moss III, successor to the controversial Jeremiah Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago

* The church is capitalism in drag

* Society of a neo-religious capitalism

* The blues expresses America from the underside

* The blues is catastrophe expressed quietly

* The blues expresses tragedy without despair

* The gift of the black church is joy in the face of desperate sadness, to express tragedy without ultimate despair, the ability to dance in the dark….

Giving the invocation at Woolsey Hall

My prayer of invocation at the alumni dinner:

Oh God, creator of the universe, of all that is, we praise you. We thank you for all around these tables. For the meeting of old friends. For memories of when ideas were exciting and study brought us close to you. Let these days rekindle the passionate desire to question, thing and learn. Help us remember all who brought this food to our table tonight. From planting to serving.  We thank you for the opportunity to renew our friendships and remember the times we spent together here. Let us enjoy this night together. In Jesus’ name, Amen.