Love is always good, no matter what the circumstances

A reflection for Prisoners’ Sunday, 17 November 2002, given at All Hallows by Anna Davie

It was very difficult to know what to say today. I could actually stand here for the next two or three hours and talk about prison and what it is like being a prisoner’s partner, but that in itself would be a form of punishment for all of us, I feel, so I shall keep it brief!

When I was thinking about this reflection, I kept coming back to the Gospel text that I have chosen [John 8.2—11]. It’s a story that has meant a great deal to me over the past two years, since I last stood here and talked about prison. At that point I was working in one as a drug counsellor and I was married. I am now divorced, and for most of the past two years I have not worked in prisons but visited them. I guess you could say I became and still am a piece of scandal, and I think that’s why this text means so much to me.

This is what it says to me. I think it’s a remarkable story of compassion. Total, steadfast, unwavering, fearless compassion. Here is Jesus faced with what must have been a very ugly scene in which a woman is about to be murdered in front of him, and he kneels down and calmly writes in the sand. We’re not told what he writes, but I like to imagine it is from the Old Testament lesson [Isaiah 43.1—7] that we heard earlier:

‘Do not be afraid,
For I have redeemed you,
I have called you by your name,
You are mine.’

When the crowd of accusers continue with what must have been a barrage of judgements against this woman and a blatant attempt to trick Jesus into showing himself to be a false teacher who rejects God’s Law, he asks them who amongst them has not sinned. Can you imagine that silence? Everyone suddenly shocked into remembering that occasion, that deed, that breaking of the Law. They leave.

I find that conversation afterwards between Jesus of the woman especially moving. The way he asks her ‘Where are they? Where are your accusers now?’ He makes it clear to her that he has driven her accusers away by turning their judgements back to themselves, not by accusing or judging them but by illuminating their hypocrisy.

‘I do not condemn you either’ he tells her. To me this is incredibly radical stuff. Jesus is saying that he does not look at people, including her, with condemnation. It has gone.

I like to think that maybe his parting words to her — ‘do not sin again’ — are a calling to make choices that are rooted in that compassion, that exist beyond judgement. He does not say ‘I condemn your sin but not you.’ It seems to me he steps outside the restricted perspectives of right and wrong presented as The Law. He shows us that we are all human and all have failings, and yet we are not condemned.

The crowd stood, as they so often do now, baying for blood and throwing stones, and God silently writes in the sand, he kneels, he speaks and he challenges us to live without condemnation for ourselves or each other.

Maybe Jesus tells the woman that he does not condemn her because he knows that this is not only what she might expect but also might be doing to herself. Maybe it is this that he sees as the sin. Not the act of adultery, but that of self-condemnation.

I would like you to think for a moment of the worst thing that you have ever done. The thing that caused the most damage to yourself or to others. Whatever you most regret or have sought forgiveness for more than anything else.

I want you to imagine that because of that act or deeds you have been condemned to a term of imprisonment during which you are forced to live in close proximity with other people day in and day out for years on end, without a break. In the same place all the time. Constantly watched, searched and reminded of what you have done. As if that act or acts define who you are.

Every letter you write is read by prison officers, every phone call is listened to, and you can only see the people you love for two hours a week — at the very maximum. They can never phone you. They travel a long distance to see you and wait around for hours beforehand. They are searched, watched, videoed. You can never be alone with them.

At the end of every visit you have to watch them leave without you.

I know that many people feel that such treatment is justified both as punishment and in order to protect the public. I do not have time here to outline my own observations on the ineffectual nature of this punishment and to offer alternative ways of dealing with crime, but what I would say is that to me imprisonment is like one long mental stoning.

I read a review of a biography of Primo Levi recently. In it the writer talked about Levi’s book If This is a Man which he wrote after his release from Auschwitz. The writer said of this book:

‘He showed that there is something even worse than physical murder: the destruction of the victim’s humanity and dignity that preceded it.’

And this struck a chord with me as someone who has witnessed other human beings, my own partner included, being treated as if they are worthless and beyond contempt.

I too have been on the receiving end of this. I can leave the prison but it never wholly leaves me: the way I’m looked at, spoken to, controlled and denied my basic human rights because of who I love.

I think that as visitors we live in two countries, a so-called democracy and this totalitarian nightmare. I do daily battle with the powerlessness, despair and rage which that can engender. I no longer wonder: How do people become terrorists? What drives people to unleash such violence and hatred on others? I know how it happens. I felt it in me for months and months before I could finally make my peace with my own murderousness.

Many of us who love people in prison also face judgement and condemnation outside its walls too. We may have lost family and friends because of their prejudices. Often we are accused of condoning or ignoring crime, of being stupid, masochistic and gullible. I actually think we are the unsung heroes of the criminal justice system. They build their ‘hate factories’, as my partner and I call prisons, and we pour love into them. We are almost certainly the people doing most in this country to try to prevent crime, by treating prisoners as people, as human, lovable, capable of being more of who they really are; through challenging them, listening to their stories, thinking about them, writing to them, praying for them, holding them and helping to heal the terrible scars that so many of them bear from years of institutionalised brutality and abuse.

Successive governments and the media talk of victims and perpetrators, as if we can all be neatly divided on those lines; and the prisons of this country become full to bursting-point with the outcomes of these posturings and panderings to people’s fears about crime.

As Christians, I believe we have a responsibility to look at where our taxes go, to see beyond the self-righteous rhetoric, and to look at ourselves and what we most deeply believe about the condemnation that is enacted daily in our name.

This government is planning to overhaul the criminal justice system, remove basic legal rights and lock up more people than ever in our prisons. It has a policy of imprisoning more and more children. In The Guardian on Wednesday a mother wrote about her teenage son, Joseph, who committed suicide in a young offender institution:

‘I feel ashamed that before this happened I didn’t know what went on in these places … he was a child; children should only go to places which are set up to cater for children dash they shouldn’t be in prison. The government keeps saying we should lock them up. But as far as I’m concerned my son was murdered by the government.’

Jesus said ‘I do not condemn you.’ When he was hanging on the cross, executed as a prisoner with criminals either side of him, he said: ‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.’

We try not to look away here at All Hallows. We struggle against injustice in a church and in a society where so many are marginalised through poverty, racism and homophobia. I feel a deep solidarity with my sisters and brothers who are judged and condemned for who they love. The ridiculous notion of condemning the so-called sin of homosexuality and loving the sinner seems to me to be totally contrary to what Jesus was saying to the woman when he told her ‘I do not condemn you.’

The oppression I and other people in loving, committed relationships with prisoners face is deeply painful in its denial of the freedom of sexual expression. Somewhat miraculously, Paul and I have managed to find great joy and freedom even in this situation. We laugh a lot, I cry a lot, and when I forget my hanky he lets me wipe my nose on his prison shirt. God knows what the officers make of that! We explore our differences, we try to live for now and we share a vision of a more just, humane world. As Anne Michaels said:

‘Love is always good, no matter what the circumstances.’

I want to end by returning to the issue of judgement and invite everyone here to imagine that they are that woman, condemned for adultery, standing before Jesus. I would like you to remember that deed I asked you to think about at the start of this reflection, and to know that the crowd who stood around baying for your blood and wanting to kill you have gone away. He looks at you and says ‘Where are they? Is there no one left to condemn you?’

‘No one, Sir’ you say.

‘Well then,’ Jesus tells you. ‘I do not condemn you either.’

This page was last updated on Sunday, 17 November 2002

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