Preaching to & Pastoring Men in Jail

When I walk into jail, I sometimes know the person up front. We’ve been there long enough, consistently enough, that the staff know us. They stop asking who we are here with. They know that Pam’s knee will set the metal detector off. The guards talk about podcasts They’re listening too on the long walk to the pod. We’re always at a shift change, so guards are coming in and we collect a group on the way. Everyone chimes in: True crime seems to be popular and I guess that makes sense. It is their world. I ask if they go to church, a lot of them do. They always want to know if we’ll be playing the name game. This is where the prisoners give themselves an adjective coordinating with the first letter of their name. Joking Jami. Jail-house-hair-cut-Jami is always a popular one. This is how I earn street credit. Not everyone grows up getting their haircut in jail as a child.

These men live in the same max security pod with one another, there’s an upstairs and a downstairs that look into a main area. We take our seats. With a few buzzes and beeps the younger guys barrel down the steps like children and the older men are eager but keep their own pace. They sit with their orange suits and black crocs and we begin with the name game. The person that goes last has it the hardest as they have to remember everyone’s adjective and first name. They do not know each other’s names. They see one another every day, and are not called by their first names, only last. They keep to themselves for the most part because jail is safe in some senses but not psychologically. This is the most dignifying act we will do for the entire session. It is not the teaching, it is in the naming. In the defiant act of using their first names, laughing (the audacity), giving each other hell when they can’t remember the list of names. Their smiles are varied, often toothless. I’ve told this story before but to me, it doesn’t get old.

When we walk in, we pass a visitation booth. It is paneled with glass and there is a telephone to pick up to talk to each other. It is all controlled, listened to. Sometimes there are people in there. They probably ache to not have the glass there, the imposition of separation. But I get to walk into their house with my body, no separation and it is not lost on me what an honor that is. This last time, there were 3 of us women ministering. There are other guys on the team but it happens quite a bit that it’s 3 ladies, in usually bright colored tops, walking into the grey, echoey, locker room smelling pod. What an odd sight to see.

I asked if the guys got to go to chapel and without skipping a beat, T said, “No, this is our church.” The gospel is on the move and it does not stop for bars and locks and guards. But God is already in there, the gospel has already seeped in. They are reading their daily devotionals and watching The Chosen. For 11 weeks, we have the honor of preaching the gospel and pastoring these men face to face. In jail, there is no discussion of women being preachers, ministers, pastors. They receive it so hungrily, I am also fed. I came in there empty on account of the gnarliness of the world, the racism, the nasty things the people of God are partaking in, the back biting inside the church, the gatekeeping, it’s just too much.

I leave full as tick.

This last week I gave the talk. My seminary sister, Pri said “Stop saying that, you’re gave the sermon. You’re preaching.” And she’s right. I continue to make myself palatable because that’s what I have been taught to do. The subject given to me was why Jesus had to die. I told them that I was praying about what to say this morning and I felt like God wouldn’t leave me alone about the kidnapping story when I was younger. I made a video on instagram about it but the short story is that when I was 9, I was biking the neighborhood with my next door neighbor and a man in a crusty brown car kept following us and told us to get in the car. We dropped our bikes and swerved in and out of alley ways and blocks until we got home, screaming with tears running down our faces. My dad told us to get in the car to go find him and we found his car and apartment, to which my dad gave this guy a beating and then shoved his head under the car by the tire and yelled, “START THE CAR, GIRLS! I’m going to run over your head. You like little girls? I’ll kill you.” Just then, cops and sirens and an ambulance and fire truck came and my dad asked if it was a slow night lol.

I told them I told God I didn’t know why that had to do anything with His death. But He said, “What was your dad’s solution to the problem of such evil done to his daughter?” My dad was going to kill someone. “And what is my solution to the problem of such great evil?” AHA! You were killed. You died to conquer the problem of evil because you are not like worldly empire, worldly ways. “Jesus could not conquer the greatest evil of our time, death, without dying and showing nothing could keep him in the grave. And he did it an interesting way. The electric chair.”

Their eyes got big. “ Was Jesus the only one who died on a cross? What is the symbol of the cross?”

Government control, they chimed in.

“YES! This is a public lynching. What is Rome saying?”

Comply, follow the rules, we are powerful, we control you.

“YES. Where did Paul write his letters from a lot.”

Jail, they said.

“And how did Paul die?”

Execution too.

Exactly.

You could see them feeling understood by Jesus and by Paul. Criminals. Controlled. And now they’re sitting in jail trying to figure out how to live in love, with love, right where they are.

“So the point isn’t whether or not we’re going to be in environments that are good or comfortable. It doesn’t mean we won’t be oppressed, it is that we are invited into a new kingdom with a new king and that now, we are siblings. Because Jesus died for us. You are my brother, R. You are my brother, F. I am your sister and this place, doesn’t have the last word over you.”

And then we talked about how that redefinition changes how they see others in prison. It was beautiful to hear them articulate the life-changing gospel of Jesus’ subversive life. There is a man in that circle who does not know Jesus yet, and he’s reading his bible and studying this Man. And I can see his wheels turning. I just want to cry about it. They are made in the image of God and they are my brothers, I am not sure of their crimes. I know that when I talked about my on-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks neighborhood and growing up on food stamps, they nodded. We understand.

“How many of you grew up on food stamps?”

Almost everyone raised their hands, mine included. I get you. I get how difficult that was. I understand. We’re not so different, are we?

We concluded with the idea that Holy Spirit lives in us and that means we have the power of God in us to change. We don’t have to keep choosing sin. We are a new kingdom people. The room filled with hope. We prayed and since we can’t hug, we linger and put our chairs away as slowly as possible so we can have a few more words. Say a few more thank you’s. Say a few more, “I can’t wait to see you again next week.” To say their first names one more time with a smile on our faces. I am delighted by you.

Us ladies walk out together feeling the sun on our faces, a nicety our friends on the inside won’t feel but once every 24 hours in the yard. These gals are my friends now too. Jail is a great way to network with people and make new friends lolollololol. All that to say, In Chariots of Fire, there’s a famous scene where Eric Liddel says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” I sit in my car and thank God. I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me unafraid of the marginalized, bent toward them, stubborn for them and when I minister to them, I feel His pleasure.

I said earlier that the gospel is on the move and it does not stop for bars and locks and guards. But it also does not stop for human locks and guards and gatekeepers saying who gets to carry the gospel to the people and who pastors them. I can not imagine meeting God and him saying, “Why ever did you preach to and pastor those 40 men in prison?” The SBC can’t tell me nuthin’ about my calling. I have already been called and commissioned by a greater entity. If anything, like the chin hair I pluck that comes back even stronger 2 days later and could scrub the rust off a cast iron pan, it has made me more stubborn.

Carry on, theologinas. Yes, I misspelled that on purpose.1

Thanks for reading,

Jami

Share