Pontius Mead and the Immigrant Prison

According to the Sagebrush Gospel translation of Matthew 27:24, “When Pontius Mead saw that he was about to leave office and hoping to go quietly, but that instead an uproar was starting over whether a private corporation with a track record of human rights abuses could build an immigrant prison in Evanston, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd and said, “It is not my responsibility. I am but a lame duck governor.”

A for-profit corporation wants to build a prison in Evanston housing 600 people charged with, not convicted of, being here illegally, which is not a crime. Management and Training Corporation (MTC) has, according to the Casper Star Tribune, left a “trail of lawsuits in its wake” in several states including Wyoming, and has a “troubled history.”

Wyoming has a law to protect communities from hucksters like this. The legislature didn’t want seat-of-the-pants companies coming here and opening up private prisons free of oversight.

Wyoming Statute 7-22-102 is clear. If a private corporation wants to build a “jail, prison, or other incarceration facility,” the five state elected officials must consent. Until they consent, the Uinta County Commissioners may not contract with MTC. The statute provides standards the facility must meet, standards which MTC has been unable to meet in some of their other facilities.

Washing his hands of the controversy, Governor Mead says the Evanston facility is not a prison and therefore does not require the consent of the five elected officials. So, why haven’t we heard from the other four?

Perhaps all five need a tutorial on the definition of a “jail, prison, or other incarceration facility.” It’s not that hard. The definition is obvious enough the legislature didn’t feel it necessary to be pedantic enough to spell it out in any greater depth.

You don’t need to go to law school to know a jail is a place of confinement for people who are awaiting trial. The jail exists to make sure the people confined there do not come and go as they please. The guards are trained and armed to make sure that doesn’t happen. They are aided by a construction design that includes walls, razor wire, and technology to keep them inside.

That is exactly what MTC and ICE are planning to build and Mr. Mead it is a jail.

For purposes of making life easier for MTC, the Governor cannot simply redefine the term “jail” in order to skirt the statute. Why would he want to with so much at stake? Why have the other four elected officials remained mum?

Didn’t we learn anything from Heart Mountain? Opening the state to a questionable company and allowing it to jail as many as 600 persons in a facility regulated only by the county commissioners in Uinta County is begging for another stain on the state’s image.

MTC’s record should have raised concerns in the minds of the county commissioners but this corporation eats local government politicians for lunch. Dangle a few jobs in the face of locally elected pols and they begin salivating. Then they overlook the red flags and warnings. Neither do they have enough vision to ask themselves what will happen when Trump is no longer president and a new policy on immigration doesn’t rely on rounding up and locking up people. What happens when MTC does here what they have done elsewhere and the level of human rights abuses behind the walls reaches the public. Who then will take responsibility. It won’t be the county commissioners.

Apparently, our Governor wants to make sure it isn’t him either. But what about the other elected officials? Are they as willing to ignore this issue?

Ed Buchanan wants to continue as Secretary of State. State Treasurer Mark Gordon wants the Governorship. Jillian Balow wants a second term as Superintendent of Public Instruction. A lot of voters want them to take responsibility.

They may think it politically prudent to wash their hands alongside Mead, but when this whole thing blows up, as it will, it’ll happen under their watch and Mead will be gone.

Coming back from the dead? No big deal according to Jesus

Millions celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. They greet one another, “He is risen, he is risen indeed.” Are Christians making a bigger deal of the Resurrection than Jesus did? Jesus thought the words of Moses and the prophets far more central to our relationship with God.

Read Luke 16:19-31. Here’s the Sagebrush Gospel translation. There was a gate outside a rich man’s home. Scripture doesn’t name the man. It could be any rich man. Like many, this one wore the finest clothes and “feasted sumptuously,” and like many, he could not see the poor in front of him.

By his gate, lay a poor man. It’s Lazarus. He’s suffering, covered with sores. He would be happy with food scraps falling from the rich man’s table. The man inside the house offers nothing. Of all God’s creatures, only the dogs care for Lazarus, coming to lick his sores. That was the limit of comfort Lazarus received in his dying days.

Death reverses fortunes.

The poor man died. The rich man eventually did as well. The fortunes of both are suddenly reversed. Lazarus is carried away by angels to sit with Abraham. The rich man is received, not by angels, but by gravediggers. They bury him. From the grave, he is ushered into Hades. His greatest penalty is that, from his place in the afterlife, he sees Lazarus and Abraham.

He calls out to Abraham. He wants mercy, asking only a touch of water to cool his tongue. He asks Abraham to dispatch the man whom he watched suffering day after day at his gate. Even in his tormented afterlife, he views poor people as nothing more than his servants.

Abraham calls him, “Child,” speaking condescendingly to the rich man, who in his life had power and good things. No one would have dared call him “child” back then. But, this is now. “Child,” says Abraham, “during your lifetime, you had all the good things and that fellow who laid suffering at your gate had none. You watched him die alone without inviting him into your palace. You refused to feed him or offer any comfort. And now, you want him to bring you a few drops of water to cool your tongue.

“Between the two of us, that’s not going to happen. There is too much distance between your life and his.”

The rich man is left to beg. He understands his fate is sealed. His thoughts turn, perhaps for the first time, to the needs of others. He has five brothers. “Send Lazarus to them,” he asks. “He can warn them so that what has happened to me will not happen to them.”

It is the condemned man who, from Hades, raises the possibility that others might repent if only they could see someone resurrected from the dead.

“Nope,” responded Abraham. “It doesn’t work like that. Witnessing someone rise from the dead will make no difference to those who have been deaf to the words of Moses and the prophets.”

This comes from the same Jesus whose resurrection Christians gather to celebrate this morning. Yes, we celebrate the Resurrection as we should, but following Jesus means a great deal more. It means listening to the words of the prophets and Moses rather than simply focusing on the Easter event for salvation. 

Remember Lazarus while in church today shouting “Hallelujah,” after spending the week oppressing the foreigners among us, marginalizing people on food stamps, asking congress to take healthcare from others, rejecting fellow human-beings because of who God created them to be, or otherwise hoarding God’s blessings.

If you’re going to write a letter-to-the-editor, remember, these are Jesus’s words, not mine. Jesus was serious about that Matthew 25 stuff. Celebrating someone coming back from the dead pales in comparison to reversing the fortunes of those who are hungry, homeless and hurting.

Easter is a day for celebrating reversals of fortune. Ask Jesus. He’ll tell you the story of Lazarus and the rich man.

Easter Sermon @ Highlands

The preacher who comes this morning to join you in celebrating the Resurrection is a jumble of contradictions. I am fortunate you all have come to listen to such a man. Sometimes I am not sure myself just who I am. I didn’t attend a church from the time I was 14 years old until I was a 33-year-old parent who thought I should return to church because my children needed it. Years later, I accidentally stumbled into a Methodist seminary, where I spent three years figuring out what I believed and why. Probably needed thirty years.

Then I was ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Now I preach from a Presbyterian pulpit. But I could be a Unitarian Universalist and if I think about it too much, and it’s a good thing my brother by a different mother, Mohammed Salih doesn’t believe in evangelizing because he could persuade me to become a Muslim…but I also think Buddhism could save the world from much of its turmoil, the Wiccan worship of creation gives hope, and that the Hindus are probably closer than all of us to figuring out what really happens after we die.

So, you’d be excused if you were to ask what meaning could the cross could possibly have to such a person? Let me tell you. At the center of everything I believe about the Divine is a prophet…one who is revered among Muslims, who was a Jewish rabbi, the same Jewish rabbi we Christians know as Jesus of Nazareth, and my focus on Christ persuades me that the cross is not an exclusively Christian symbol…it is a symbol of God’s hope for the world, you know the world that God so loved that he sent Jesus.

He is the one through whom God believed God’s kingdom could be ushered into all the earth if we believed in the hope and love and compassion he proclaimed and in him we could be saved from the spirit-killing forces of oppression and injustice.

The Spirit of the LORD was upon this man and he was anointed to proclaim the good news to the poor, sent to announce freedom for the prisoners and healing for all, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim a time of the LORD's favor. He blessed the meek and those who grieve and the peacemakers. He taught that we should turn the other cheek, pray for our enemies, and love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And he did those things and for it, was summarily executed.

What those who killed Jesus didn’t understand is God’s commitment to a world where the poor receive the good news and the prisoners are set free, the sick are healed, the meek are strong, cheeks are turned, enemies prayed for, peacemakers blessed, and all of our neighbors feel loved. God was unwilling to let the hope die.

Christian values are human values. Human values universal values and are not exclusive to Christians. Let me tell you a story. It is from the Gospel of Luke and these are the words of the Jesus whose resurrection we celebrate this morning.

“There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. At his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with whatever fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. 

He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime you received your good things. Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted and you are in anguish. Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ 

The rich man said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, he could warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ 

He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ Abraham said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’

So, there you have it. The words of Jesus. ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’ So, said the man whose rise from the dead we have come to celebrate.

People throughout Christendom are this morning shouting, “He is risen, hallelujah,” and being told this resurrection thing means we Christians got it right, we are on the way to heaven, see the rest of you later.”

Now, I’m not saying churches can be slower than others to get the point but it was 1991 before the church agreed that Galileo had it right when he was condemned in 1615 for daring to say the earth revolved around the sun. They thought the sun revolved around the earth, in much the same way a lot of folks believe that God revolves around them, that there is only one path to God and it comes through the gate they keep.  

And Jesus is saying, “Whoa. Not so fast. You missed the whole point. It’s not about religious beliefs that anyone came back from the dead; it’s about bringing new life to what you’ve been called to do, wherever you are, whoever you are. The stuffed shirts sitting around thinking they’ve figured God out and have it right and everyone else is wrong, well…how about you start by loving God and loving your neighbors…then we’ll turn some of that water into wine and throw a party…and everyone will be welcome.

Like the women who showed up at the tomb this morning expecting a wake thinking they knew where Jesus was…well, Jesus left that tomb and hit the door a running…heard to say, “it’s a little stuffy in here …instead of a funeral, we are going to have ourselves a revolution. Anyone got a match?”

And now, just as we were getting comfortable that he was somewhere else, seated at the right hand of God, just when we thought we had him where we wanted him, where we could understand him and define him, and knew he was ours alone…he is on the loose, crying out to no one in particular, “Hey you all, I’m the way, the truth, and the life. Anyone, and I do mean anyone…anyone want to follow? You don’t have to memorize bible verses, you don’t have to cross your fingers while you repeat a creed…you don’t have to join a church just a movement.

“You can be a boomer, a millennial, black, white, brown, a Muslim, a Jew, an agnostic, even an atheist, divorced three times or married once, straight or not, tall, short, skinny or not, rich, poor, you can be a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker, it just doesn’t matter who you are; Jesus is looking for people who have more questions than answers, more commitment than comfort.”

And remember, it was the risen Christ who said no one will be convinced of anything just because someone rose from the dead. But, if they see you following the words of the prophets, we’ll get something going.

Isaiah said it, ‘The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”

Jesus has left the grave with a shout loud enough to wake the dead among the living. Everyone with ears to hear…heard him giggle as he fidgeted with his sandals and adjusted his robe, stood up, and walked away from the tomb saying, “I need some air! I am out of here. Ya’all will know where to find me when you’re ready to do this thing.”

That, my dear friends is the resurrection we came to celebrate. AMEN