Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Introduction

Concluding Our Journey Through or Values

Series on Honor as we seek to be a people of movement from apathy to advocacy.

Journey started with our value of

Renewal

"we experience God’s restorative power flowing into and mending the broken and hurting places, and we join the stream of this grand renewal project by making known the all encompassing love of JESUS in our neighborhoods & city”

Through God’s Restorative Power we are Transformed from the inside out

Freedom

We are liberated through the person and work of Jesus to unceasingly experience the Spirit’s transformative power and presence, and as a distinct people marked by this freedom, we delight to behold and encounter the face of God as the Kingdom breaks in among us.

That we are free, because of Jesus, to Encounter God and to actively receive the Spirit’s Transformative Power

Honor

We affirm that every single person has immeasurable value because they are made in the image of God.

Yet we live in a world where so many have their inherent dignity questioned & marred, often as the result of systemic injustices.

In response, we will be a community of hope and action — seeking friendship and unity as we become reconcilers and advocate until all people in Chicago flourish.

Lofty Value

Its not enough to affirm the Imago Dei

Its not enough to recognize inequality & injustice

But to be a community of hope and action.

reconcilers, advocates and friends.

This series will be anchored in and we will be looking at some of the major injustices in our city.

Will use the God-given revelation of love and grace as a way of boosting our own sense of isolated security and purity, or whether we will see it as a call and challenge to extend that love and grace to the whole world.

No church, no Christian, can remain content with easy definitions which allow us to sit on the side lines in our cultural moment.

What is Mass Incarceration?

A phenomenon that refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.

Why are we talking about Mass Incarceration?

Our Value

We affirm that every single person has immeasurable value because they are made in the image of God.

Yet we live in a world where so many have their inherent dignity questioned & marred, often as the result of systemic injustices.

In response, we will be a community of hope and action — seeking friendship and unity as we become reconcilers and advocate until all people in Chicago flourish.

Our City

The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration.

The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration.

In the Land of the Free, there are 2.2 million people in prison and jail.

This is a 500% increase over the last 40 years.

Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase.

Through a series of law enforcement and sentencing policy changes of the “tough on crime” era resulted in dramatic growth in incarceration.

Since the official beginning of the War on Drugs in 1982, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses in the U.S. skyrocketed from 40,900 in 1980 to 450,345 in 2016.

Today, there are more people behind bars for a drug offense than the number of people who were in prison or jail for any crime in 1980.

The number of people sentenced to prison for property and violent crimes has also increased even during periods when crime rates have declined

We started sending people to prison for much longer terms.

Harsh sentencing laws like mandatory minimums, combined with cutbacks in parole release, keep people in prison for longer periods of time.

The National Research Council reported that half of the 222% growth in the state prison population between 1980 and 2010 was due to an increase of time served in prison for all offenses.

There has also been a historic rise in the use of life sentences: one in nine people in prison is now serving a life sentence, nearly a third of whom are sentenced to life without parole.

(NLT)

31 “But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne.

32 All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33 He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world.

35 For I was hungry, and you fed me.

I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink.

I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home.

36 I was naked, and you gave me clothing.

I was sick, and you cared for me.

I was in prison, and you visited me.’

37 “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you?

Or thirsty and give you something to drink?

38 Or a stranger and show you hospitality?

Or naked and give you clothing?

39 When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

40 “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’

41 “Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.

42 For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me.

I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink.

43 I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home.

I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing.

I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

44 “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’

45 “And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’

46 “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.” - (NLT)

Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me bring love.

Where there is offense, let me bring pardon.

Where there is discord, let me bring union.

Where there is error, let me bring truth.

Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.

Where there is despair, let me bring hope.

Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.

Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.

O Master, let me not seek as much

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love,

for it is in giving that one receives,

it is in self-forgetting that one finds,

it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,

it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.

Resources:

Oxford History of Prison

Discipline & Punish - Foucault

The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander

The Christian Imagination - Rev. Dr. Willie Jennings

How did we get here?

Development of Prison

The original purpose of confining a person within a prison was not to punish them, but was a means of keeping the perpetrator of a crime detained until the actual punishment could be carried out.

The most concise statement concerning a rationale for the punishment of criminals in Greece is found not in the legal literature but in a remark of the philosopher Plato.

Now the proper office of all punishment is twofold: he who is rightly punished ought either to become better and profit by it, or he ought to be made an example to his fellows, that they may see what he suffers, and fear to suffer the like, and become better.

Imprisonment was a piece of penal process, but by no means the vehicle for punishment.

18th Century