"Hearing the Cries: Faith and Criminal Justice"
Summer Worship/Sermon Series on the ELCA Social Statement
July 15 - August 26, 2012


Overview: In 2012 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) had released a social statement on Criminal Justice and desired feedback before submitting its final draft to the Churchwide Assembly in 2013. Prince of Peace decided to hold a six-part summer worship and sermon series, using the earlier study document "Hearing the Cries: Faith and Criminal Justice" and encouraging members to study the social statement itself. (Link here to the ELCA page for both this Criminal Justice social statement and its earlier study booklet.) The study booklet had five sub-themes which we used to structure our six weeks, adding an intro week on God's Restorative Justice. The subsequent five sub-themes from the booklet are:

Victims of Crime
Law Enforcement
The Judicial System
Corrections (Incarceration)
Life after Crime

The six weeks were sandwiched around a week from our high school youth returning from the ELCA National Youth Gathering, which also had a theme relating to justice, "Citizens with the Saints" (on Ephesians 2:14-20, one of my personal choices for expressing the heart of the Gospel, being made into one human family). For these seven weeks of the summer, we used a liturgy focused on justice (link here for the liturgy pieces and hymns used).

The following is a week-by-week outline of the themes (with links to readings and sermons). The above ordering from the study booklet was shifted around, primarily to accommodate several speakers who were invited to address specific topics both in worship and in a forum afterwards. The ordering became:

Week 1 - July 15 - God's Restorative Justice, Part 1
Week 2 - July 22 - Law Enforcement / God's Restorative Justice, Part 2
Week 3 - July 29 - Victims of Crime

(Interlude - August 5 - Youth Lead Worship on ELCA Gathering)

Week 4 - August 12 - Corrections / Incarceration
Week 5 - August 19 - Life after Crime
Week 6 - August 26 - Judicial System



Week 1 - July 15
Theme: God's Restorative Justice

Readings (link to full text of readings with introductions):

First Reading: Isaiah 58:6-12
Psalm: Psalm 51:10-12 (sing Freylinghausen version, ELW 188)
Second Reading: Romans 5:6-11
Gospel Reading: Luke 4:14-21

Sermon: "God's Restorative Justice, Part 1" -- If Jesus is Good News to the poor "fulfilled in your hearing," then why is poverty still such a sorrowful, pervasive part of our reality? The difficulty with the notion of a differing justice from God coming into the world through Jesus Christ is that it seems so little has changed in two thousand years. It seems much easier to simply stay with what we know: primarily a retributive justice where each person gets their just deserts -- which fits nicely with an emphasis on going to heaven when you die. This sermon insists with contemporary scholars like N. T. Wright that to let go of the notion of God's Restorative Justice decisively coming into the world through Christ is to let go of the Gospel itself. The first part of an answer to the question of why so little change has come about in two thousand years is the theological part of the equation: God is Love and does not use force. We use force and so we expect things to change more swiftly. The second part of the answer, the anthropological portion, is part two below.

Week 2 - July 22
Theme: Law Enforcement / God's Restorative Justice, Part 2

Readings (link to full text of readings with introductions):

First Reading: Leviticus 20:7-10
Second Reading: Romans 3:1-10, 20-24
Gospel Reading: John 8:2-11

Comment on Second Reading -- In The Deliverance of God Douglas Campbell offers a potential revolution for the way we might more fruitfully read Paul's Letter to the Romans. The version of Romans 3:1-10, 20-24 that we read in worship was a dialog version based on Campbell's hypothesis. I have worked up a full dialog version of Romans 1-3 (link here) that gives a more complete picture of Campbell's revolutionary hypothesis. It is followed by an essay that I see as one of the more important summaries of my work on this website.

Sermon: "God's Restorative Justice, Part 2" -- René Girard's Mimetic Theory gives us the evolutionary big picture on homo sapiens as a species. This anthropological big picture provides the basis for part two of an answer to the question of why God's Restorative Justice in Jesus Christ seems to be taking so long to come into the world. If we are over a hundred thousand years old as a species, then two thousand years is not so long. We need to consider the changes in our ways of justice in the context of God's evolutionary way of working in creation.

There is a theological corollary to thinking in evolutionary terms: God is not a God of eternal, unchanging laws. Jesus taught us to experience God as a loving parent. And what kind of parent applies the same rules and techniques of parenting to both toddlers and teenagers? If we know how to give age-appropriate rules to our children, then God has known how to do so with us as a species, which the biblical history tracks for us:
Ritual blood sacrifice, as Girard has shown, is what ordered our infancy as a species and kept us safe. We have outgrown that and moved into an adolescence of life based on "Law and Order." But God in the prophets, culminating with Jesus of Nazareth, began to show us a more grown-up way to live based on the law of grace and love. Jesus' death and resurrection poured out God's Spirit so that living under a reign of Restorative Justice is now a possibility for us.
In fact, now that we have the ability to destroy ourselves with Weapons of Mass Destruction, the question becomes: will we finally move through our adolescence and fully grow up as a species before it is too late? Is self-extinction a possibility? Is that the question posed by Apocalyptic in the New Testament? Does that make a proper understanding of Resurrection and New Creation even more urgent?

Week 3 - July 29
Theme: Many Voices Crying Out (Victims of Crime)

Readings (link to full text of readings with introductions):

First Reading: Genesis 37:18-28
Psalm: Psalm 10:8-18 -- or "When Trouble Looms" 10A in Psalms for All Seasons
Second Reading: 2 Cor. 6:2b-10
Gospel Reading: Luke 10:25-37

Pastoral Reflections on the Readings: 'Go and Do Likewise'

Speaker: Dawn Jeglum Bartusch, Valparaiso University, Assoc. Prof. of Sociology and Criminology, and one of the authors of the ELCA Social Statement on Criminal Justice (Recommended: the ELCA's Summary of it's Social Statement on Criminal Justice)

Week 4 - August 12
Theme: Corrections and Incarceration

Readings (link to full text of readings with introductions):

First Reading: Genesis 39:19-23
Psalm: Psalm 142:1-7 -- or "Hear My Cry and Supplication" 142A in Psalms for All Seasons
Second Reading: Acts 16:23-34
Gospel Reading: Mark 6:17-29

Pastoral Reflections: Ten Recommendations of ELCA Statement on Criminal Justice

Speaker: Thomas Edmonds, Western Michigan University, Haworth College of Business, Faculty Specialist in Law, 20 year former Sheriff of Kalamazoo County

Week 5 - August 19
Theme: Life after Crime for Ex-Offenders

Readings (link to full text of readings with introductions):

First Reading: Genesis 41:14-16, 33-40
Psalm: Psalm 51:10-12 (sing Freylinghausen version, ELW 188; see first week)
Second Reading: Romans 8:31-39
Gospel Reading: Luke 23:32-47

Pastoral Reflections on the Readings: "Being With"

Speaker: Rollie Preuss, Outreach Director, KPEP (Kalamazoo Probation Enhancement Program)

Week 6 - August 26
Theme: The Judicial System

Readings (link to full text of readings with introductions):

First Reading: Jeremiah 37:12-21
Psalm: Psalm 37:28-33
Second Reading: Acts 24:10-16, 20-22
Gospel Reading: John 18:28-38a

Sermon: "Why the Cross?" and accompanying insert.