Hi friends. It’s Holy Week, and I wanted to share images and reflections I wrote a few years ago for a Stations of the Cross event at church. There are 14 Stations adapted for Substack and socials, so I’ll be sending out more emails than usual this week. Feel free to read what you like and skip what you need to, or read them all next Friday. Regardless of how you go about it, I invite you to reflect on the image, Scripture passage, and meditation/reflection question in each email.
They seized him, led him away, and brought him into the high priest’s house. Meanwhile Peter was following at a distance. They lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, and Peter sat among them. When a servant saw him sitting in the light, and looked closely at him, she said, “This man was with him too.” But he denied it: “Woman, I don’t know him.” After a little while, someone else saw him and said, “You’re one of them too.” “Man, I am not!” Peter said. About an hour later, another kept insisting, “This man was certainly with him, since he’s also a Galilean.” But Peter said, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Immediately, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed. Then the Lord turned and looked at Peter. So Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly. Luke 22:54-62
Just as Peter denies knowing Jesus, we often deny “knowing Jesus” when we turn our face away from the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned. Yet, Jesus told His disciples that when they cared for each of these people, it would be as if they were caring for Jesus. Unfortunately, it is just too easy to avert our eyes from Jesus in the form of those less fortunate.
There are many in the United States who are unjustly incarcerated or given unjust and severe sentences. Often, the justice system carries racial bias when carrying out punishment. Black Americans are incarcerated almost 5 times the number of White Americans, and more than half of the prison population in 12 of the 50 states is Black.1 In Iowa, while Black people make up only 4% of the population, they make up 25% of the prison population.2 When concentrated on a particular racial group, mass incarceration has multigenerational impacts on families and their economic and relational flourishing. Will we, like Peter, distance ourselves from this reality or will we, at the risk of making others uncomfortable, confront the system that has created this kind of injustice and seek to turn our face toward its victims?
Suggested Prayer: Lord, please help me acknowledge You in the faces that are easier not to notice. Wherever I see it, give me courage to stand against injustice–in prisons, in schools, in health care–and to move toward You in the form of all those who need a drink, a friend, a visit, or another chance. Forgive me for the biases that blind me, and open my eyes to see as you see.
Thanks for reading. I’m a book-obsessed pastor, seminarian, podcaster, author, and life and leadership coach. For essays and podcasts that come straight to your inbox, subscribe to this Dear Exiles newsletter in the subscription box above. Fun fact: I’m also the author of Dear Boy:, An Epistolary Memoir and the host of the Your Pastor Reads Books podcast.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-Color-of-Justice-Racial-and-Ethnic-Disparity-in-State-Prisons.pdf
https://www.weareiowa.com/article/news/verify/verify-iowa-incarcer