“When I Was in Prison, You Came to Me”
by Reverend Charles Blustein Ortman
April 9, 2006
READINGS :
The first reading is from Chapter 25 of the Book of Matthew from the Christian New Testament:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory with all of his angels, he will sit on his royal throne. The people of all nations will be brought before him, and he will separate them, as shepherds separate their sheep from their goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, "My father has blessed you! Come and receive the kingdom that was prepared for you before the world was created. When I was hungry, you gave me something to eat, and when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink. When I was a stranger, you welcomed me, and when I was naked, you gave me clothes to wear. When I was sick, you took care of me, and when I was in jail, you visited me."
Our second reading, “There is no Summer in Jail,” is from Black Panther activist, Queen Mama Khandi, an aging inmate from Ohio who continues to be an inspiration to many:
There is no warmth behind cinderblock walls; leaks from the ceiling constantly falls; flooding solitary confinement jail cells to make a change, deputies are not compelled…
Iron metal beds, upon which We sleep, concrete floors, inmates pace and creep. Metal ceilings, tables, benches and stools; deputies insult intelligence & condescend as if We are fools.
There is no distinction between innocent or guilt; upon corruption and oppression, this genocidal system is built. Inmates and deputies, to each other they cuss; fights, arguments, unjust treatment and fuss.
A paradigm most imperialistic and strange. This place is enough to make someone deranged. It's cold in treatment and temperament alike. Lights on at all times, robs melanin battery at night…
THERE IS NO SUMMER IN JAIL!
SERMON: “When I Was in Prison, You Came to Me”
I’ve wanted to tell you about a friend of mine. I’ll call him Tom. Tom, who is two years older than I, has been an important part of my ministry here in Montclair for quite some time. He’s important to me; he keeps me real in many ways. And because any ministry that I do here is on your behalf, Tom is an important part of our shared ministry, so I thought you should know about him.
I first met Tom, probably six years ago, on the sidewalk out in front of the church. At about 6’3” with a gregarious smile and all the charm of a very well seasoned street hustler, he was an imposing figure, one to take note of. We started a conversation that has continued from that day to this. Many of the sessions of our conversation often end up with, “Hey Rev, can you spare me a few dollars?” which I’m usually able to oblige. It’s the content of the conversations though, and the evolving quality of our relationship that mean so much to me.
Tom has entrusted the story of his life to me. As a child in the Newark projects, he ate way too many paint chips that were poisoned with lead. That left him with a kind of brain dysfunction that made learning to read an impossibility. He dropped out of middle school because he couldn’t stand the embarrassment he felt over his illiteracy, a feeling that continues to haunt and even terrorize him, still.
That doesn’t mean he’s not bright – he is. His physical size, his strength and prowess, his uncanny street smarts and his compensation systems that have masked his illiteracy quickly made him a force to be reckoned with on the streets of Newark . He was a hustler of hustlers who made his way the only way he knew how – by taking or being taken. And he wasn’t taken very often. But his body, from head to toe, is filled with scars that he’s shown me, mementos of street and jail brawls he’s had with both thugs and police.
Robbing people on the street led to burglaries of homes and businesses. And that led to a coast-to-coast drug and stolen goods operation. He was in and out of jail regularly. He told me that being in jail always made him stronger because all there was to do there, besides trying to stay alive, was to lift weights. He calls himself a warrior and the guys that worked for him on the street he called soldiers. Finally, he killed a guy in a fight and ended up on death row. He spent a couple of years there until his case was overturned and thrown out on a technicality. In his mind, the guy he killed had it coming for having perpetrated some grave injustice against Tom.
It was shortly after he got out that Tom and I met. He was living as a stowaway with an indigent woman in another project nearby. His entry and exit to the building had to be between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. If he was going to go out for the day, he had to go out very early in the morning and couldn’t return until quite late at night. Otherwise the woman he stayed with might be put out on the street, as well as himself. And so most days he was imprisoned there in that apartment. Since that first meeting, his health has continued to deteriorate, and his once outstanding physic has waned to not much more than a lanky skeleton.
One of the defining moments in our relationship (and I think there have been two) came late one afternoon about three years ago. We were in my office talking, and Tom told me for the first time that he couldn’t read. This may not seem like a big deal to you. But believe me, it was to him. He had never told another person outside of his family. The emotion that came along with the confession took him by surprise and he began sobbing. He’d never cried in front of another man either. He had now doubly exposed himself. It was a very new experience for him and somehow very important. He’s reminded me of this experience several times since, reminding me that I not only had his trust but that I had his appreciation and his promise that, if I ever needed him anywhere or any time for anything, he would be there to do what needed to be done – whatever it might be. There’s no question in my mind that should I ever make such a call, he would be there to make good on his promise.
The other defining experience was during a visit to the apartment where he stays. He handed me a pack of matches and asked me to light his cigarette. I lit a match and held it out. After several seconds, he inhaled drawing the flame up into the tip of the cigarette. Then he told me I’d just passed a street test. “If you couldn’t look me in the eye while you held the match, or if your hand had started to shake, I’d have known you were either hiding something or afraid of me. I knew I could trust you.” He said, “If somebody blows that test out on the street or in jail, they’re just dead.” I said I was glad I passed. He said, “I knew you would, Rev.”
Sometimes when we get together, we talk about different challenges that Tom’s facing and he asks for advice. “I love the way that you don’t give me any of that Jesus or God crap,” he says. “You just say things that help me think about what God might want me to do.” The amazing thing to me is that he can quote something I may have said to him years earlier, things that I’ve totally forgotten. And then he can tell me how those things helped him.
This is most assuredly a relationship that benefits both of us, and I want to thank all of you for making it possible for me to be in it. I can hardly begin in 20 minutes to tell you about the version of reality that I’ve learned from Tom. But be assured that it has enlarged my understanding of the world and my appreciation for humanity – immensely.
Here’s the part of the story that I want to emphasize for you this morning. Tom is a guy who’s had the deck stacked against him since the day he ate his first leaded paint chip. Actually, it happened well before that. He was born black in a culture that is rigged for whites, and he was born poor in a culture that worships wealth. When he ate those paint chips, which ruled out the possibility of learning to read, and thereby the means to acquire an education, it severed the one lifeline that might have mitigated on his behalf. As it was, he had no access to any deck of any ship that might have carried him to safe harbor. For Tom, whether it’s been the inability to read, or his time running from the law or spent behind bars, or his time locked away in his friend’s apartment, he has been imprisoned in one way or another for nearly his entire life—whether he’s been incarcerated or not.
When I was in prison, you came to me…
A little later this week, many of us will be celebrating Passover, a holy day that commemorates and aspires to freedom. The story of Exodus is about the journey of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt to freedom and the Promised Land. It is a powerful story of a people and the experience that defines and shapes their character and identity. It is also a powerful story because it provides a narrative of every individual’s struggle to break lose the shackles that hold each of us from becoming self-actualized that keep us from becoming just, mature, and loving human beings.
I suspect that the journey from prison to freedom has much in common with the story of Exodus and with the story of all of our individual human journeys from bondage, only more so. The journey from prison to freedom is laden with false hopes, deceptions, misguided expectations, phenomenal endurance and with very little hope of success.
The writer of the book of Matthew tells us something about our relationship with those who are imprisoned. It tells us that for the sake of goodness we have a responsibility to be there with those imprisoned. It tells us that our responsibility is not only to give witness to their humanity, but to care about their plight.
I suspect that many, if not most of the inmates in our prison systems, have stories much like my friend Tom’s. I don’t think I’m naïve. I know there are a lot of people in prison who might just as soon kill me as look at me. I imagine under different circumstances that could have just as easily been Tom’s and my story. But it wasn’t, and doesn’t that say volumes about the human potential going to waste in our prison systems
The number of wasted lives is staggering and the system that holds them hostage is based on a false paradigm that is sure to keep itself from succeeding as a deterrent from crime or as a source of rehabilitation for inmates. Whose lives are being wasted? The numbers continue to grow every year. There are currently a little over 2 million inmates in federal and state institutions. This is up from 250 thousand 25 years ago and about 1 million in just the last ten years. 93% are men and 7% women. The number of women has risen over 50% in the last ten years. Racial demographics indicate that 56% are white, 40% are African American, (in 2004, 12.6% of all black men in their late 20’s were in jail or prison), 2% are Native American and close to another 2% are Asian. Ethnically, 31.7% are Hispanic.
The system is incredibly racially and ethnically biased. Women are increasingly vulnerable to it. That’s why I included Queen Mama Khandi’s description of prison life in our readings this morning. And this entire system is based on the idea that crime can be alleviated by isolating and punishing the criminal. This is nearly as ludicrous and quite akin to the thought that we can force 10 million illegal immigrants to go back to their homelands. It is not going to happen – not doing away with the immigrants and not by disposing criminals.
In the first place, the criminals who are stealing the most from the American people, including resources such as wealth, clean air and water, and who put the health and safety and livelihood of Americans at greater peril than anyone else, those criminals arrive to work each day in limousines. They’re the CEOs and the officers of those corporations that make their profits by pillaging our county with impunity.
The criminals that end up in the prison system are, for the most part, penny ante in comparison. Their biggest crime – the one they’re doing time for – is being born Black, or Hispanic or poor. Their environment is much like the one my friend Tom grew up in, where it’s kill-or-be-killed, quite literally. And society’s response is to try to make them disappear, to hide them away in penal colonies.
Individuals commit crimes but it is the culture that creates the climate in which crime is the most viable option for the livelihood of its most marginalized citizens. Until we stop focusing on trying to make it, or make them, disappear and start focusing more directly on the root causes of poverty and racism, we won’t begin to make any significant headway into the problems that have created a mega-industry out of criminal detention. We will never be able to enclose enough land or build walls high enough to make up for poor nutrition, crumbling inner city schools, too easily obtained drugs and endless dead ends for meaningful employment.
This is very much a religious/spiritual matter. We can no more hide away a large part of humanity in prisons than we can effectively deny the darker parts of our own humanity.
Jesus said – for the sake of goodness, visit those in prison. He didn’t say – lock the gate and throw the key away. I have to suspect that he understood that in order to be fully human, we have to fully accept the humanity of others. And that by extension, he understood that if we are going to minimize the need for prisons it is by being in responsible relationship with prisoners, not denying their existence.
Our own Unitarian Universalist principles encourage us to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. That’s a pretty tall order when it comes to dealing with hardened criminals. There are some pretty nasty characters out there. Still, it is a worthwhile goal. And maybe we don’t even have to start out accepting the very hardest cases. But at least we could be trying to work our way in that direction. At the very least we need to be working together to change the root causes of poverty, racism and the rest. I’m proud, and I hope you are too, of our efforts in those directions. We have done much as a congregation and there is still much more we can do.
But also, at the very least, we might make it our business to know what’s going on in our prisons and perhaps even to work for prison reform. What about risking really being religious though? What about the possibility of actually visiting those in prison? What about going inside in order to try and make a difference in the lives of the people, the human beings who are trapped there in oppressive systems that are for larger than the cages and the walls that surround them?
There is a quote by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel that comes to mind: “Remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Be sure that every little deed counts, that every work has power. Never forget that you can still do your share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and frustrations and disappointments.
There is a member of our congregation, Dr. Johanna Foster, Prof. of Sociology at Monmouth University , who is going inside. Together with some colleagues she has developed a program, “Women’s Reentry Initiative for Training and Education of New Jersey,” to provide educational programs for women prisoners here in our state. It’s an incredible program. She has my deepest admiration and I’ve asked her here today to provide all of you with an invitation that she is here to present.
From Johanna Foster:
At WRITE-NJ (Women’s Reentry Initiative for Training and Education – New Jersey), we believe that prison has become a central social institution in modern society, and one that serves primarily to recreate race, class and gender inequality. In fact, we argue that it is no overstatement to say that prisons do today what the institutions of legal segregation and slavery have done in the past.
In that context, WRITE-NJ works in partnership with incarcerated women, and with outside colleges and universities, to provide access to a college-in-prison program for women inside, and we are just beginning a nontraditional jobs training program. We invite you to join us in whatever way you can, as teachers, tutors, higher education administrators, financial supporters…
Right now, there are nearly 30,000 people in prison in our state, and it is estimated that over the next three to five years, close to 70,000 will cycle from prison back to community-- and most will return home without having had a chance to pursue education or job training during their incarceration. For drug offenders, they will return home facing a lifetime ban on welfare, barred from public housing, and barred from federal higher education tuition assistance. It is no wonder that in NJ, the rate of recidivism is close to 70%. The data are clear though that people who pursue higher education and job training while in prison are significantly less likely to return to prison than those who do not. Yet, in NJ, only 17 percent of all prisoners have access to ANY educational programming, and only 6% have access to postsecondary programming. WRITE-NJ and our allied organizations are trying to fill this gap and we need your help.
We invite you to come meet our students who are deeply motivated to change their lives. You can meet my student who sat through the entire first class sobbing because she couldn’t believe she was sitting in a college classroom… Or the student who suffered a stroke in prison but demanded to be released from the medical unit because she didn’t want to miss a final exam… Or the student whose daughter died the week before, but came to class anyway. You can meet the student who decided NOT to take her early release date so that she could finish her coursework in prison rather than go home. And you can meet the countless students who tell us that coming to class each week prevents them, literally, from going insane…. And the countless more who tell us that they come to class because they know for a few hours, at least, they will be treated as human beings. I invite you to come and meet with me during the coffee hour and learn more about how you can help.
We are not all called to the same work, but we are all called by the principle of justice to be in right relationship with ourselves, with each other and with our world. Each of us is accountable to our own conscience and ideals in answering that call. That call has been re-sounded here today. I wonder, how will we choose to respond to it? |
