Jordan Paul

Dear Friends,

A whole constellation of things came together to make this piece. I reread the passages and sat down to write. Characteristically, I then opened TikTok. After a while, I saw this one, which showed the distraught reaction of the American church getting a letter from St. Paul. That prompted me to reread a sermon by Martin Luther King, Jr. where he reads a letter that he imagines could have come from St. Paul to churches in the US. Feeling like I had not quite procrastinated enough, I started reading through my backlog of articles.

Fortunately, my procrastination activities all seem to relate both to each other and one of the readings for today—never doubt the Spirit, folks. In an excerpt from today’s passage from the Letter to the Colossians, St. Paul writes: “In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” This verse—and a similar one in St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians—supports the fact that we are all siblings in Christ, all members of the Body of Christ, and that we should treat each other as such. And treating each other as such is precisely what I want to talk about here.

Unless there is intervention by a court or the governor, the State of Oklahoma will, on May 18, execute an innocent man. This is not the space to detail Richard Glossip’s case, but it is detailed here. In short, it’s not just Glossip’s defense team who is convinced of his innocence. Gentner Drummond, the Attorney General of Oklahoma, petitioned the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate Glossip’s death sentence. Drummond—and a contingent of pro–death penalty lawmakers—testified in support of Glossip at his hearing before the Oklahoma Parole Board. It wasn’t enough.

It can be tempting to give our institutions the final word here. They are, after all, institutions legitimately created by our elected representatives to do the very thing they have done here—hear and decide cases. But simply giving them the final word misses the point. We created them. We passed legislation enacting the very same statutes that were used to deny an innocent man relief. We can undo them. The governor could disregard them entirely and grant clemency on his own. Fr. Robert’s sermon on Palm Sunday comes to mind: “the world in which we think we live does not have to be the one in which we live. It can be something different. It can be changed. It can be transformed.” Indeed, our world could be transformed to value the lives of innocent people and take seriously the word of the state—the very entity tasked with executing Glossip—when it says that it made a mistake.

In Dr. King’s sermon linked above, speaking about those who opposed integration, he said: “Yes America, there is still the need for an Amos to cry out to the nation, ‘Let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.’” Let judgment roll down indeed. Pray for Richard Glossip. Lord have mercy.

In Christ,

—Jordan