The essay reflects on the way the transforming love of God has broken into the depressed neighborhood of West Jackson to offer the hope of beloved community in the face of human depravity. Elizabeth Perkins shares her own struggle to find “Hope for Humanity” after experiencing two burglaries in the midst of her work with the Zechariah 8 Community in Jackson, Mississippi. The essay presents a striking vision where young and old participate in the kingdom of God through living for one another in community. A vision Perkin challenges us “to cuddle up to,” so we can discover, with her, through this “our lives become so rich!” While a thief may be able to steal our possessions, as Perkins reminds us, “No thief can steal God’s love from us.”
Freeing the Captive and the Captive Church
In his sermon, Dr. John Perkins focuses on how the church should engage critical problems in the cultural foundations of family and community—especially as those problems affect those in prison, and those at risk for future incarceration. He states that the church has often ignored prisoners as victims of their own failures; but the church ought to recognize that prisoners’ failures are just reflections of our own failure as Christians—failure to be salt and light in the world’s individualistic and materialistic culture. Perkins draws on the example of Psalm 11 and David’s own struggle with captivity to outline what the church ought to do in light of the worldly influences in culture. He asserts that, “the Church must be the driving force behind changes in culture. We must be a worshipping, nurturing community, allowing people to move forward with dignity.” Only through the church acting on Scripture’s directives, and truly serving Christ through serving others, can we help to free the captive and work together for God’s Kingdom.
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“Folsom Prison Blues” Revisited
In his essay, Paul Louis Metzger utilizes the lyrical imagery of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” to relate to the personal and structural barriers that many ‘prisoners’ experience both within the church and outside it. He states that the church often cultivates exclusionary and elitist attitudes toward ‘outsiders’ and even toward other churches. On the other hand, Cash related to those who were ‘imprisoned’ either literally or spiritually—and he also understood the liberation that Christ offers to the saved. “Before Jesus freed him from his ‘imprisonment’, [Cash] was inside longing to get out. After his turning point, he was outside longing to get in—to help free other slaves.” Paraphrasing Jesus’ words, Metzger states that, “those like Cash who are forgiven much, love much; those who are forgiven little, love little.” We in the church often play down our own sins while labeling those who ‘get caught’ as the real villains—when, in fact, we are all sinners, in need of Christ’s transforming love. Metzger emphasizes that Jesus came to free the captive (whatever form that captivity may take) and he believes that, “we all need a fresh vision of the ‘Personal Jesus’, whose glorious love and mercy and grace are the only things capable of breaking us out of our Folsom blues imprisonment.”