Presented to TSA Alberni Valley, 30 August 2025 by Major Michel Ramsay
Many
things from this trip could be possible sermons. The beauty of nature and creation
is always a good theme. And launching from the testimony of the Bible translator,
one could easily speak about Doctrine One of The Salvation Army (We believe
that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of
God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and
practice) or Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the
power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes..."
One thing that is a natural analogy is the nature of cruises in general. There are so many people on the trip from all over the world. I met people from Germany, Japan, Columbia, Philippines, South Africa, the UK, the US and elsewhere. People were from different walks of life and different ages. This reminded me of the Kingdom of Heaven and how, Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
I was also reminded that as is pointed out in Ecclesiastes 9:2-3:
“All share a common
destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the
unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.
As it is with the good,
so with the sinful;
as it is with those who take oaths,
so with those who are afraid to take them.
This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun:
The same destiny overtakes all.”
It
doesn’t matter what people do on the cruise – there were more activities than one
could possibly do even if they wanted to do them all. Some people could have
spent the whole time in their rooms; some people could have gone on every shore
excursion - dog sleds, helicopters, hikes – or visited every museum or saw every
show. Some people could have eaten and drank so much that they couldn’t move
whereas others could have spent their time doing abs workouts and Tai Chi. I
could easily make the point that this is what life is like. We all board the
cruise ship of our life and we are all going to get off – the revivalist would
then ask us this question, when your temporal cruise ends, what will your eternal
destination be? This is important. I myself am drawn to holiness / social
justice themes these days; concentrating on what you do while you are on the
cruise of life rather than where you will exit the ship because I truly believe
that Salvation is a relationship (with God) rather than merely a final destination.
About
that: I have shared with you this summer many books I have been reading: about Truth
and Reconciliation, and prison reform and other social justice issues. If I
have gone overboard (pun acknowledged) I do apologize. I do believe that we are
called to live holy lives serving God, showing love, mercy to our neighbour.
One book I have been reading is ‘Just Mercy’ by Bryan Stevenson, a death row
lawyer who helps people who can’t afford lawyers in the USA. He shared a number
of stories about his clients: some guilty, some innocent; Some who were spared
execution; some who weren’t. I read stories of children who lived 40 years in
prison to finally have their sentence overturned and be released. There is one
amazing story of Walter, who was wrongfully committed and was almost executed
but they were able to save him. There were also hair-raising stories of people
who could prove they were innocent but were still executed. There was one story
of a man who never matured beyond the equivalent of a young child who was
convicted of murder and spent most of his years in prison in solitary confinement
and who truly believed that when/if he was released, he would go to live with
his lawyer. One execution, that of Mr. Dill, hit the author, his lawyer, quite
hard… (288-289)
On the
phone with Mr. Dill, I thought about all of his struggles and all the terrible
things he’d gone through and how his disabilities had broken him. There was no
excuse for him to have shot someone, but it didn’t make sense to kill him. I
began to get angry about it. Why do we want to kill all the broken people? What
is wrong with us, that we think a thing like that can be right? I tried not to
let Mr. Dill hear me crying. I tried not to show him that he was breaking my
heart. He finally got his words out. “Mr. Bryan, I just want to thank you for fighting
for me. I thank you for caring about me. I love y’all for trying to save me.”
This
next part really resonates with me in my role as a Salvation Army Officer. I truly
feel sometimes as the Mr. Stevenson writes:
When I
hung up the phone that night I had a wet face and a broken heart. The lack of
compassion I witnessed every day had finally exhausted me. I looked around my
crowded office, at the stacks of records and papers, each pile filled with
tragic stories, and I suddenly didn’t want to be surrounded by all this anguish
and misery. As I sat there, I thought myself a fool for having tried to fix
situations that were so fatally broken. It’s time to stop. I can’t do this
anymore.
For
the first time I realized that my life was just full of brokenness. I worked in
a broken system of justice. My clients were broken by mental illness, poverty,
and racism. They were torn apart by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear,
and anger. I thought of Joe Sullivan and of Trina, Antonio, Ian, and dozens of
other broken children we worked with, struggling to survive in prison. I
thought of people broken by war, like Herbert Richardson; people broken by
poverty, like Marsha Colbey; people broken by disability, like Avery Jenkins.
In their broken state, they were judged and condemned by people whose
commitment to fairness had been broken by cynicism, hopelessness, and
prejudice.
I
looked at my computer and at the calendar on the wall. I looked again around my
office at the stacks of files. I saw the list of our staff.... And before I
knew it, I was talking to myself aloud: “I can just leave. Why am I doing
this?”
It
took me a while to sort it out, but I realized something sitting there while
Jimmy Dill was being killed at Holman prison. After working for more than
twenty-five years, I understood that I don’t do what I do because it’s required
or necessary or important. I don’t do it because I have no choice. I do what I
do because I’m broken, too.
My
years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and
injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering,
death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness
of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own
brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality,
illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it.
We are
all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all
share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I
desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create
justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from
my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different
from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared
brokenness connected us.
… We have a choice.
We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the
compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our
brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.
I
thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I
thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of
victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never
admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful
and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and
sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a
threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes
us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the
survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their
pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of
the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed
our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to
the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible.
But
simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from
sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no
wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.
Like
me, Mr. Stevenson says:
I
frequently had difficult conversations with clients who were struggling and
despairing over their situations—over the things they’d done, or had been done
to them, that had led them to painful moments. Whenever things got really bad,
and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that
each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. I told them that if
someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that
doesn’t belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone,
you’re not just a killer. I told myself that evening what I had been telling my
clients for years. I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power
even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a
need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When
you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You
see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear.
You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.
All of
sudden, I felt stronger. I began thinking about what would happen if we all
just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits,
our biases, our fears. Maybe if we did, we wouldn’t want to kill the broken
among us who have killed others. Maybe we would look harder for solutions to
caring for the disabled, the abused, the neglected, and the traumatized. I had
a notion that if we acknowledged our brokenness, we could no longer take pride
in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to
the most vulnerable.
My friends,
I almost wept as I read all of this; because this is what my life as a Salvation
Army Officer often feels like. I see so many people broken, needing mercy, and
it makes me cry when we as a society, or I, as a person, don’t offer it.
I read
one part in this book where Mr. Stevenson’s client was being released after
many years of wrongful imprisonment and he said he should have felt happy – but
he felt angry that Walter, his client, had to suffer for many years and even
though he was released, his years can never be returned to him. My heart was in
my throat. I have felt that anger on behalf of our friends here and at the Bread
of Life as they receive justice delayed, knowing many will not even experience
that. I have like Mr. Stevenson felt I wanted to quit some days.
He tells another story. This one is about a lady he encountered in a courtroom. The first time she was ever in court was after her young grandson, whom she loved more than anything else, was murdered. Mrs. Macmillan prayed to the Lord repeatedly. She sat through the whole trial of the three young men convicted of killing her son. When they were sentenced to die in prison, she cried. A lady came to comfort her asking which one of the convicted boys she was related to – none, the victim. They sat together for two hours in silence. Mrs. Macmillan then began coming regularly to court. She said,
“It has been wonderful, Bryan. When I first
came, I’d look for people who had lost someone to murder or some violent crime.
Then it got to the point where some of the ones grieving the most were the ones
whose children or parents were on trial, so I just started letting anybody lean
on me who needed it. All these young children being sent to prison forever, all
this grief and violence. Those judges throwing people away like they’re not
even human, people shooting each other, hurting each other like they don’t
care. I don’t know, it’s a lot of pain. I decided that I was supposed to be
here to catch some of the stones people cast at each other.”
She is
referencing the woman caught in adultery and how the Lord required that they
let the woman go. Mr. Stevenson said to a congregation once, “But today, our
self-righteousness, our fear, and our anger have caused even the Christians to
hurl stones at the people who fall down, even when we know we should forgive or
show compassion…we can’t simply watch that happen…. we have to be stone-catchers.”
Mrs. Macmillan doesn’t have the power of the Lord or the judges to release
people but she can catch the stones we throw at each other. We can all do that.
We are all called to do that.
Mr.
Stevenson recalls again the night his friend was killed:
On the
drive home, I turned on the car radio, seeking news about Mr. Dill’s execution.
I found a station airing a news report. It was a local religious station, but
in their news broadcast there was no mention of the execution. I left the
station on, and before long a preacher began a sermon. She started with
scripture (1 Corinthians 12:8-10).
Three
different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace
is sufficient. My power is made perfect in your weakness.” So now I am glad to
boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me.
Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite content with my weaknesses
and with insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak,
then I am strong.
I
turned off the radio station, and as I slowly made my way home, I understood
that even as we are caught in a web of hurt and brokenness, we’re also in a web
of healing and mercy. I thought of the little boy who hugged me outside of
church, creating reconciliation and love. I didn’t deserve reconciliation or
love in that moment, but that’s how mercy works. The power of just mercy is
that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s
most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood,
retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and
injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass
incarceration.
Today, I confess to you that this is a
burden on my heart. I feel for all our employees who are struggling with addiction,
mental illness, and trauma; my friends who steal from our Thrift Store to feed
their addiction. Our folk at the Bread of Life and The Salvation Army shelter
who have left us to go to prison, the hospital or the funeral home. My heart
breaks for the many people struggling whom I know personally and who we live and
work alongside everyday. I just hope that I will always remember to extend the
mercy that I know that I don’t even deserve to everyone I meet. After all, we are
called to be stone-catchers. It is my prayer that we will all do just that and
show just mercy.
Let us pray.
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