Let Our People Go

Luke 4:14-30

The title of my sermon is “Let Our People Go.” I want to reflect with you this morning on Jesus’
call to ministry, God’s gift of grace and liberation, and how we might be called today to let our
people go.

Our Gospel reading today marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. The setting is Nazareth
in Galilee, the place of Jesus’ childhood. Jesus returns to his hometown after he resists the
temptations in the wilderness and is filled with the power of the Spirit. News about him travels
fast throughout the countryside. He teaches in the synagogues to everyone’s praise and delight.

As he always did on the sabbath day, Jesus went to the synagogue. He stood up to read and
was given the scroll of Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and began reading:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to
the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to
the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then Jesus gives the shortest sermon ​ever​. He rolls up the scroll, gives it back to the attendant,
sits down, and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Amen. As my son
would say, Whaat?!

In ​The Message ​translation of the Bible, Eugene Peterson translates Jesus’ sermon this way,
“You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.”

The people are understandably amazed. In this fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus declares
his ministry and mission. If we were to ask today, “What would Jesus do?” In verse 18, Jesus
answers us right here: bring good news to the poor; proclaim release to the captives and
recovery of sight to the blind; and let the oppressed go free.

All of these things are from the book of Isaiah chapter 61, verse 1. However, Jesus incorporates
a phrase from the 58th chapter of Isaiah. I think the words he adds to this list are significant.
From verse 6, Jesus adds God is calling us “to let the oppressed go free.” To let the oppressed
go free.

Let’s pause for a moment to consider, who are the poor, captive, and oppressed in our
community today?

In Cook County, we are home to one of the largest single jail sites in the country. It covers 96
acres and, as of Thursday, incarcerates over 6,100 people. 90% of people detained in Cook

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County Jail are there pretrial, meaning they haven’t been convicted of ​any ​crimes. 90%! Nearly
half of them are incarcerated because they cannot afford to pay their money bail.

As you know, bail is a guarantee that a judge can require someone to pay in order to leave jail
while their case is pending. In our system, if you can purchase your freedom, you walk free. If
not, you’re stuck behind bars.

But, freedom should not be based on wealth. No one should be incarcerated because they
cannot afford to pay their bail. This is not the purpose of our justice system.

Theoretically, bail is to ensure a defendant returns to court. But, in fact, an individual’s wealth
does not determine how likely he or she is to appear in court. Studies back this up by repeatedly
showing that alternatives to cash bail can be equally effective. In places like Washington D.C.
and Colorado, and Kentucky, courts are successfully ​not​ relying on money bail and defendants
are still returning to appear in court at high rates.

Detaining people before their trial has devastating and long lasting effects. People who are
detained pretrial are more likely to be convicted and receive longer sentences. By being
detained, not only is their presumption of innocence diminished, but they are less able to
participate in their defense and access their counsel. Bail, therefore, is a punishment for legally
innocent people; it coerces guilty pleas, and leads to the mass detention of those who have not
been convicted of anything.

Additionally, the horrific time wasted in jail waiting for a trial can result in substantial hardships
that are extremely difficult to recover from, like losing a job, which means losing the only way
you can pay for your home, bills, and support your family. Even brief separation from family,
friends, and community can also cause strain and loss of custody of children.

As I’ve been preparing this week to welcome a new foster child, I’ve been thinking a lot about
child trauma and the impact on kids of being separated from their families. Unaffordable money
bail harms families, and it especially harms children. A national study last week found that over
half of the people in jail who could not make bail were parents of children under 18. Of the
women who could not meet bail conditions, two-thirds were mothers of minor children, while just
over half of the men were fathers. Just as we have cried out week after week about the
inhumane separation of immigrant families at the border, we need to raise our voices about the
unjust separation of children and parents because of unaffordable money bail.

Not surprisingly, all of these negative consequences have a disproportionate impact on Black
and Latinx people, who generally receive higher bonds and are less likely to be able to post bail
than white people.

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James Williams Jr.’s experience is one example of the common consequences of our cash bail
system. He was arrested a few days before Thanksgiving by an undercover Chicago police
officer in the West Englewood neighborhood.

Low-level drug offenders in Cook County are typically freed on bail without posting cash, but in
court the next day, a judge ordered Williams held on $10,000 bail. That meant he needed to
come up $1,000 cash to win his freedom. He was detained for over a year, pretrial, meaning
without a conviction. During his year behind bars, Williams lost his job and his car, missed the
birth of his son, and his sister passed away. All of this for the charge of selling $40 worth of
cocaine. Unfortunately, this story is far from unique. In fact, many accused people spend
months and sometimes years being imprisoned before their trial.

This was supposed to change last September when Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans
issued a landmark order called General Order 18.8A. This order clearly stated that money
bonds ​should be s​ et in amounts that people can afford to pay. And yet, from November 2017 to
June of this year, the monthly rate of unaffordable money bonds has ​tripled ​from 9% to 29%.
Almost one year later, around 2,500 people are ​still ​being incarcerated in Cook County Jail
simply because they cannot afford to pay their bail.

Poverty is treated as a crime in this country. Did you catch that? Poverty is treated as a crime in
our country. Never should your bank account determine whether you’ll be able to go home, see
your kids or keep your job.

But that’s exactly what the bail system is doing, and it’s feeding a mass incarceration system
that’s unmatched by any other country in the world. Money bail is one of the reasons the United
States incarcerates more people than any country on earth. Across the country, on an given
day, nearly half a million people are currently sitting in jail because they cannot afford bail.

The burden also falls on taxpayers, who pay the high costs that result from an inflated prison
population. It costs $143 a day to house a pretrial detainee in Cook County. Based on the jail
population, we are spending almost $1 million dollars a day to detain pretrial defendants in Cook
County. This is not insignificant given our recent budget crises. It doesn’t make sense, though,
given that a majority of pretrial detainees are accused of nonviolent offenses, they pose little to
no risk to our community.

In sum, our wealth-based pretrial system is unjust, harmful, disproportionately affects minority
communities; it’s costly, irrational, unfair and wrong.

Jesus said:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to
the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to
the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

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As I said earlier, the people of Nazareth were amazed by Jesus’ teaching. At first, they heard
his declaration as finally a fulfillment of God’s promises to them through an exclusive covenant
that involved promises of deliverance from their oppressors. They were joyful that God had sent
a prophet among them.

But, as the magnitude of Jesus’ message really began to sink in, they became angry. Jesus
affirmed a fulfillment that was not limited only to them, to Israel. Yes, Jesus announced
deliverance, but it was not a national deliverance. Instead, Jesus delivered God’s promise of
liberation for everyone -- including Gentiles -- ​all t​ he poor, captive, and oppressed.

Jesus’ message was that God’s grace and liberation was not to be limited by nationality,
gender, religion, race or wealth. Although they banished Jesus from town and tried to throw him
off a mountain cliff, he went on his way to proclaim the good news. God’s liberation is for
everyone! It’s not just for wealthy individuals who are can afford bail and legal representation.
It’s not just for those who can buy their freedom. GOD’S GRACE AND LIBERATION IS FOR
EVERYONE.

The paradox of the Gospel is that while God’s radical love is for everyone, we constantly limit
God’s grace. We limit God’s grace with barbed wires, money bail, racial profiling, electronic
monitoring, private industrial detention facilities, mandatory minimums, closed neighborhood
schools, racist housing policies, checkboxes about criminal history and citizenship questions;
we could go on. Yet, Jesus’ message is that God’s extravagant love is for everyone.

Human beings can be instruments of God’s grace to others, but we are never free to set limits
on who can receive God’s amazing grace.

Still, we have embedded limits to God’s grace throughout our legal system by systematically
excluding people from obtaining freedom and justice based on their race. Our nation was built
on this principle of denying freedom and justice to people of color, while privileging white
people. The money bail system is just one example of this oppression that we must help to end.

In 1964, during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Robert F.
Kennedy noted that bail practices in the federal system had “become a vehicle of systemic
injustice,” under which “the rich man and the poor man do not receive equal justice in our
courts.” Sadly, those comments still apply with full force to Cook County’s bail practices. Over
fifty years after Attorney General Kennedy’s words, the time to correct this injustice in Cook
County is long overdue.

There are 3 things you can do now to help correct this injustice:

1. In the bulletin today, there are flyers for the ​Rally to #EndMoneyBail​ happening on
Tuesday, September 18th at 10 am in downtown Chicago. Leaders of the Coalition to
End Money Bond and our allies across Cook County are marking the one-year

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 anniversary of General Order 18.8A by calling attention to this unjust system and
demanding that we bring our people home! We need the church to show up and join our
neighbors in calling for the oppressed to be free.
2. At the bottom of the flyer, there is a ​petition​ that will be sent to all of the stakeholders in
Cook County. Everyone please take a minute today to sign the petition and share it with
your friends and neighbors. As of this morning, we are still over 1,000 signatures away
from our goal. I’ll also post a link to this petition on our church facebook page that you
can share.
3. This fall our Mission Board is presenting an Anti-Racism film series. It will help us to
delve deeper into the connections between faith, justice, race, and mass incarceration. I
hope you consider joining us for these important conversations.

Friends, there is hope. Earlier this month, a federal judge struck down the money bail system
near my hometown in New Orleans! In a landmark opinion, the federal judge held that the
money bail system in New Orleans is unconstitutional and violates equal protection and due
process.The judge also said if the government wants to detain a person before their trial, there
must be clear and convincing evidence that pretrial detention is absolutely necessary.

It’s time to let our people go.

Now someone in this church might be going through this with a person in your life right now, and
could testify about the injustices of this system.

Our liberation is inextricably tied with our neighbors’ liberation. In the African understanding of
umbuntu,​ I am because we are. I cannot truly be free until we all are free. Right now we have
thousands of people in Cook County who are jailed only 21 miles from our church for one simple
reason—they cannot afford to purchase their freedom.

It’s time to put an end to money bail. God’s grace and liberation is for everyone.

Let’s bring our people home. Amen.