Showing Mercy

One of the books that has moved me greatly in recent years has been Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy.  Bryan Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Rights Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, and has emerged as one of the leading voices related to human rights in the United States.

Stevenson began his career as a public interest lawyer who was assigned to investigate the cases of death row inmates – many of whom were unjustly convicted and sentenced to death.  His early work brought him close to the pain of those who were incarcerated and changed how he came to think about justice, compassion and mercy. In his interviews with inmates, Stevenson saw no mercy given – especially to poor, Black men and women – by a cruel system of punishment and incarceration, and also saw that so many of the so-called criminals had themselves been subjected to so much abuse and mistreatment in their lives – from their families, from the realities of the segregated South and from structural inequity.

In the gospel today, Jesus is speaking about all of these things.

He offers us a series of “commands” that go against so much of what we witness in our modern world. He says, “Be merciful…Stop judging…Stop condemning…Forgive…Give”

Just read those slowly a few times.

Jesus could give us these commands because this is what he experienced from his God – mercy, forgiveness, generosity, acceptance, love. And this is what he offered to the people around him – especially to those whom the world deemed as not deserving any of these.

I think Jesus could do this because he understood brokenness. He understood his own and he understood how it worked in the world.  Stevenson says that, “We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent.”  He goes on to say that, “there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.”

For today, just sit with Jesus words, “Be merciful…Stop judging…Stop condemning…Forgive…Give.” Reflect on our own brokenness and how it has been the source of harm for others. Reflect on the harm that has been done to you. What does this bring up in you? Where does it lead you? Talk to God about all of it.

And lest I over-spiritualize things, Stevenson’s work, and the work of Jesus, was to set the prisoners free.  Statistics that I have seen report that there are more than 2 million people incarcerated right now in the United States, and about one-quarter of the world’s prison population is here in the US.  We also know that our justice system incarcerates Black, Native and Latinx people, people with disabilities and people with mental illness at widely disproportional rates and for longer and harsher sentences.

And our jails and prisons are places of violence.  The physical, psychological and emotional toll of incarceration damages people, fractures families and disrupts communities. It erodes the humanity of the people who staff them and the people who allow them to be built and remain functioning.

Spiritus Christi Prison Outreach (that we are celebrating this month) works to help people – both the ones who are currently in the jails and prisons and those who are coming out. This amazing outreach ministry knows firsthand the damage that our jails and prisons do to people, and tries to counter that with mercy, affirmation, love and justice.

Stevenson says that, “We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation.”  Our nation has been corrupted by our mass incarceration, and it is upon us to change this. In addition to personal reflection today, commit to learning more about the “prison-industrial complex” and the damaging effects of prisons. Then take meaningful action to address this as we move towards the abolition of prisons and punishment as a way of life.