Criminal Justice Conference 21st Nov 2013
Thorn Cross YOI
‘For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Ruler, the Lord is our King, He will save us’ (Isaiah 33:22)
What have the courts, prisons and churches to do with each other?
It is good to be at Appleton Thorn again. To me, visiting over the years with the Prison Fellowship and
the Sycamore Tree Conferences, as well as Christmas Day, is always one of the high points of my life
as Bishop.
I am so glad that in this Deanery and in other churches in the Diocese there has been growing
support for ministry amongst ex offenders and I have heard this week of parishes caring for people
who are tagged, having to conduct funerals where people arrive in handcuffs and the whole interface
between church and prison ministry is very real.
In addition to the Diocesan links, I have been a Trustee of Bringing Hope in Birmingham, where I was
Vicar for thirteen years in Aston, a trust that is committed to working amongst gangs and those
involved in gun crime, and have been doing very powerful work in prisons in the West Midlands
region.
Today I have been asked to do a biblical reflection, for us to see what God is doing and always will be
doing in and out of prisons, courts and churches. I think my simple message for today is that the more
that we work together the more God is able to do what he wants to do in us and through us, not only
us towards prisoners and offenders, but us understanding how God works in co-operating and
therefore knowing more and more about how we can be used by him.
Why am I so sure that this is the case and why this is true?
Let me try and sketch an overview of the Bible to see how the biblical message relates to prisons,
courts and churches. All of us already have a place in God's purposes, all are ministers and all are
invited to become part of God's plan and work. To help us see this, I know we are not in a Sunday
School situation, but if there was a memory verse for today, which I think summarises the message of
the Bible, I think it would be Isaiah 33:22:
'For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Ruler, the Lord is our King, He will save us.'
Those are the three names of God as judge, ruler and king, which are names more commonly
associated with courts and prisons.
What it is that God, who is judge, ruler and king, will do. He will save us, an activity more usually
associated with the churches.
What does this verse tell us? It tells us that the God of the Bible is not someone distant, impotent and
irrelevant. On the contrary, it tells us that God is present in the reality of the world in three very
specific ways, as judge, ruler and king, with one specific purpose: to save us.
Think of the whole message of the Bible and see why this verse sums it up. Think of creation and
human rebellion, think of the judgement of God, the exclusion from Eden, and then God working in
the world both to judge and to save: Noah and the flood, the call of Abraham and Israel, and in Israel
a system of justice, laws, governing all manner of human relationships. Yes, there are systems of
punishment and control, and there are systems of reconciliation and restoration. God working to deal
with evil, to name it, to limit it and save his people and the creation from it and from its consequences.
Judgement all through the Bible is good news. It sets limits to evil, it is not a survival of the fittest. God
says so far and no further. If there is no repentance, yes there is punishment and there are different
forms that that will take, but its intention is to bring people to their senses, and back to a right
relationship with God, each other and the land. Jesus does not bring anything new in that sense. He
simply announces himself as the king and ruler and judge and that he has come to save. What he is
doing is going right into the human heart, beyond and beneath the systems and the exteriors,
revealing the repentance and restitution that is for everyone, for Israel and for the nations.
His saving brings that restitution and reconciliation about. The reason Jesus is such a threat to the
systems established – the religious ones and the political ones – is quite simply because he is saying
that they are not enough. They point to him and the saving that he will bring, but without him they are
incomplete. So religious leaders can't cope with the claim that he is God, literally the King who saves.
And political leaders can't cope with that claim that he is judge because political leaders or religious
leaders, just as much as sinners, like the thieves on the cross, need saving.
And as Christians reflect on the meaning of the cross, especially the word that Jesus gives to
describe its meaning: this is my body, this is my blood. All the ancient teaching in Israel about
sacrifice, which holds the whole system of law and courts and punishment together, providing a
system of rewards and restitution, finds its supreme expression.
Yes, God judges evil in human sin; that judgement taken by Jesus on the cross. Yes, God saves from
evil and the consequences of human sin, and that saving offers us pardon and forgiveness and
freedom, not only to individuals but to communities and nations, who see in the death and
resurrection of Jesus the place where God most truly is judge and ruler and king, laying down his life
to save us.
And if you are still with me, that which Jesus has decisively established for the world as king and
judge and ruler, we with him look forward to the fulfilment of that saving. Yes, for now evil and sin
continue, but the time is coming when judgement and punishment and restitution and renewal will be
finally complete and look to the chapters of Revelation.
We don't know how much our law and courts, our justice system, have been shaped by the biblical
understanding of judgement, rule and kingship. Our courts and prisons are under the authority of the
crown, which remains as a way of recognising the role all of us are called to exercise in the ministry of
justice, rule and kingship. Prisons and the courts, along with the church and the rest of the
community, are there as part of God's saving work, expressly to limit evil, representing on earth a
form of punishment, but if we are to fully represent the biblical view of God's saving, we must point to
the way of punishment leading to restoration and restitution and salvation. In the Old Testament,
justice is not just a punishment when you throw away the key, but of punishment that leads to justice
being done, see Exodus 23:1-9, which isn't very specific actually on punishments, just on how a
community is to live together, and the sacrificial system that is there recognises where there have
been breaches and provides a way back to cleansing and wholeness in the community.
Jesus fulfilled all this – Isaiah 61 quoted in Luke 4: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the release
of prisoners.' As Jesus is accepted by kings and rulers around the world, they are called to model this
understanding of justice and kingship and their activity which is involved in God's saving work in the
world. So, yes, there are distinctive ministries of courts and prisons and church, but only as each
contributes to the bigger picture will saving happen. Anyone who thinks that the others are not
relevant will be contributing to salvation not happening. If we focus on punishment without
understanding its purpose, or relation to restitution, or if we focus on a church saving with individuals
which have nothing to do with the reality of evil and its extent, then we will be limiting what God
intends to help us in his saving work. The courts which imagine that their decisions in relation to
prisons can be taken without reference to an understanding of what it is that a church will bring and
try to limit the partnership of a church to a simply secular view, have not understood that the saving
needs the power of God to turn lives around.
So we see in Christian ministries, in relation to prisons, particularly the Sycamore Tree, which
specifically takes the retribution system and says gently but insistently, if you don't engage with
restoration and reconciliation, you haven't understood what punishment is for. We have to look at
prisons being schools for criminals and the extent of the compelling evidence that they are, means we
need to continue to reform prison because it isn't fulfilling God's purpose for punishment and saving.
Similarly, courts and churches. Whatever direction courts can and do give for sentencing, including
community service, they need to recognise and the church must be able to respond to engage
properly with those directions, that men and women will only be delivered from the destructive
patterns of living, often going back generations, by the most powerful and sustained alternative
community support, which should come from churches whose strength is not human but God given.
Bringing Hope in Birmingham focuses on the Damascus Road experience. It is run by former social
workers and drugs advisers, but they know the necessity of the spiritual power from God a part of
what they, with the churches, offer, and if the courts and prison want partnership, they mustn't ask the
church to be silent about the One who is present to save, just as many testimonies, (like Darrell
Tunningley who will help next year at the Runcorn Mission), one of them, and many around our
churches, including those in Thorn Cross, even as we meet, can speak to that saving work.
So today the more we see of what we do in relation to what others are doing the more we will see
what God has been doing since the beginning of time and continues to do, if we are willing to cooperate with him. At the beginning, I said that this is about all of us learning, not the righteous, those
outside prison ministering to the unrighteous inside prison, it is recognising that all of us are touched
by unrighteousness and all of us are called by the righteousness of God and all of us are made
righteous by the blood of Jesus on the cross.
We need to be clear about evil and sin and the control of those things as God promises punishment
and judgement and we need also to be clear about our need and capacity to be changed and
renewed. The church par excellence in and out of prison is the place where transition for those
making that discovery in prisons can continue to happen outside and beyond. So we need closer work
with the chaplaincy teams and the churches, easier means of reference and contact, strengthen the
contacts with families and communities for those inside, greater support for those outside waiting for
the sentences to end, greater sharing of stories of role models for those who have discovered God's
rule, kingship and salvation, and that there is an alternative to continuing in the criminal system
without change.
So today is our yes to God's saving word, yes to God as our judge, ruler and king, and yes to looking
forward to contributing to being part of that serving, saving work here in our Diocese in all our courts,
prisons and churches.
+GKS
Nov 2013
‘For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Ruler, the Lord is our King, He will save us.’ (Isaiah 33:22)
Questions
1 Which part of God as Judge, Ruler or King who saves us is most attractive or scary to you?
2 How would knowing God in this way help our prisons, courts or churches?
3 What do we most need God to do in our prisons, courts and churches?
+GKS
21.11.13