Welcoming the formerly incarcerated on behalf of Jesus

LOUISVILLE — On Sunday, Lost and Found Church, an online ministry of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, featured numerous insights from the Rev. Dexter Kearny, of the One Parish One Prisoner program offered throughout the state of Washington by Underground Ministries. Kearny is also a member of Presbyterians for Abolition Working Group.

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One Parish One Prisoner trains faith communities “to be welcoming spaces for those coming home from prison,” Kearny explained. Scripture “has a lot to say about prisons,” in passages including Matthew 25 and Hebrews 13. “Paul wrote nearly all his letters from prison,” Kearny noted. “Nearly all the disciples were imprisoned, as were many from Presbyterian Peace Fellowship as they stood up for their beliefs.”

Nearly two million people are incarcerated in the United States, more than any other country. About 79 million people in the U.S. have a criminal record, and 113 million have someone in their immediate family who’s been incarcerated. Over the last five decades or so, populations at state and federal prisons in the U.S. are up 800%. “Prisons are a sickness in society,” Kearny said, “one which we have been unwilling to heal from.”

He asked those gathered for the online service: What are things you find difficult to bring up in church settings? Kearny went first. He and his spouse, also a teaching elder, had been serving a congregation in the Evergreen State for a few years before they connected with a person who’d been incarcerated. When that occurred and the church welcomed the person, a woman “whose son had been in and out of prison for several years” opened up about that reality, saying that before this person arrived, she didn’t feel she could bring up her son’s history in church. Another woman shared that she herself had been incarcerated as a younger person. “She felt safe because we had engaged with a formerly incarcerated person,” Kearny said.

“We’re all sinners. We’re all on a journey toward Christ’s example of unconditional love,” Kearny said. “People trust us with their stories and their struggles, and it makes us a more honest and healing community. It can be a person formerly incarcerated or a person brave enough to say, ‘I don’t have it together.’ It opens up the space to participate more broadly in the body of Christ.”

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One Parish One Prisoner uses John’s account of the resurrection of Lazarus to get faith communities to talk about how to welcome those who were formerly incarcerated. As a discussion starter Sunday, Kearny displayed two works of art: “Jesus Raises Lazarus to Life” from the JESUS MAFA Project in Cameroon, and “The Resurrection of Lazarus” by Giovanni di Paolo.

The Lazarus story “lines up really well with the way a lot of people coming home from prison feel,” Kearny said. “They have been cut off from community and now they’re getting a second chance. Are they celebrated and welcomed?” Or, like Lazarus, “are they told [even by family members], ‘You’re too stinky. Get over it and get a job, and don’t cause any trouble.’”

In John’s gospel, Jesus orders the stone removed and for Lazarus to come out. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “All right, community, we’re going to do this miracle together,” Kearny said. Jesus then orders those gathered to unbind Lazarus and let him go. “Jesus says, ‘Get closer. Get so close you could smell him and hug him, and unbind the layers holding him tight,’” Kearny said.

We may consider the “inner work needed to do the healing” among the formerly incarcerated, Kearny said, healing from mistrust, addiction, anger, co-dependency, resentment and running away from problems. Then he smiled. “Of course, in our churches we don’t have any of those problems,” he said. What we do find is this: “When we get close enough to smell and hug, it opens up healing and our own transformation.”

Kearny spoke about Angelo, a formerly incarcerated person who’s been welcomed by a PC(USA) congregation in Seattle. On the day he was to be released from prison — with family and church members there to celebrate with him — Angelo was instead taken away by immigration officials. “His legal status had come under question, and so he was whisked away,” Kearny said. Church members concluded “this isn’t right,” he said, and began writing letters and raising money to hire an immigration lawyer. Their efforts helped Angelo secure his release from the immigration detention center, and he’s spent the subsequent years working with homeless youth in downtown Seattle.

“Not all of our stories go this way, of course,” Kearny said. “But Angelo found a way to connect with his church family.” He’s still in relationship with that faith community, Kearny noted.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the sheep and goats that whenever they visited someone in prison, “you visited me,” Kearny said. “I wonder: how does this act become sacramental? When we take communion, we talk about experiencing Jesus in the bread and the cup. We experience Jesus at the table.” Similarly, “we experience Jesus when we go to the margins, meeting with people in prison, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, engaging the sick. How is that not a sacramental act of experiencing God in the world, and going to where God is active?”

Kearny closed the service by praying for “for those in our prisons, for those who have no hope of release and for those who are moving to their release date.”

“Surround them with a community who will walk alongside them,” Kearny asked the Almighty, “not as someone who stinks, but as someone who’s worthy of a hug.”

“May we, loving God, as people of faith, as churches and communities, be part of creating a society, a world, a kin-dom, that helps foster restoration for all those released from prisons, for all those creating new pathways,” Kearny prayed. “Forgiving God, hear our prayers as we commit to putting our feet to making these prayers a reality. Uphold us so this world might be healed, and that all of our people — all of them — might experience this love overflowing. And all God’s people said, ‘Amen.’”

Learn more about Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Lost and Found Church here.