Revd Alan Hodgetts, 15th November 2009

Prisons Week, Sunday 15th November 2009

Revd Alan Hodgetts, Chaplain of Woodhill Prison, Milton Keynes

Four years ago, as a Rector, I had the Cure of Souls of 10,000 – 400 of whom were on the church’s Electoral Roll. Today, as a prison chaplain, there are 1500 – 700 of us are staff and 800 are prisoners. Today I am preaching to around 100? I’m talking about sinners! On Prisons Sunday, we must preface every one of our reflections with Jesus’ words Luke 5:32:-

"I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."

This, I believe, is the datum against which we should judge our actions – the reality that we are all sinners. In fact, unless we do then we might say that Jesus has little relevance for us.

However, many of us simply pay lip service to this truth because although we can say ‘we are all sinners’ we then begin to put a ‘spin on sin’ and begin to create a kind of moral highground, and like some kind of grotesque Harry Enfield character find ourselves thinking or even saying, ‘I am considerably less sinful than you!’

On Wednesday I was grabbed by the meditation in ‘Every Day with Jesus’ a little booklet of daily reflections we make available to prisoners. Last Wednesday the meditation was based on a passage from the Epistle of James :

If you show favouritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as law-breakers

The meditation ends …

“The whole point of this passage is to show that this sort of prejudice and judgmentalism is sin, just as adultery and murder are sin. The God who said that you must not steal, lie, murder, cheat or be unfaithful to your wife, says also through James that you must not be a snob. O God, save me from the central wrong of thinking of big sins and little sins. All sin is abhorrent to You.”

This is stark contrast to our society who’s attitudes are inflamed by our tabloid media, implying that those of us outside the walls or who have the privilege of drawing prison keys have the right to look down on what I have heard someone refer to as the pond life behind the walls. We currently have over 85,000 men and women behind bars in this country. Our current government is planning for 95,000 prison places and the opposition are planning for over 100,000. Many refer to this as ‘warehousing’ prisoners.

The theme for society seems, therefore, to encourage the imaginary plaque above the prison gate ‘Abandon Hope all Ye who enter here.’ Whereas Prison’s Sunday offers the very real antidote: Hold Fast to Hope.

As Christians we must walk in step with Our Lord who famously said

“… you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.”

But to do this is break step with the mores of the world and this takes courage and commitment. As Christians, we must not look for some imaginary ivory tower or moral high ground from which we can look down on those in prison because the voices we can hear wafting over the walls of Woodhill could so easily be ours or those of our sons.

So what, we might ask, are prisons for, if they aren’t to separate the sinners from the sinless amongst us. There are two phrases in the National Offender Management Service 2009 Strategic Business Plan from which I take great heart:

We work to protect the public and reduce re-offending
by delivering the punishment and orders of the courts
and by helping offenders to reform their lives.

How, then, can we reduce re-offending by helping offenders reform their lives? Well, to start with we need to acknowledge the results of a culture of punishment. Recently I showed a group of prisoners a small extract from the film Wilde which showed the realities of the Victorian prison’s Exercise Yard and the Treadmill. They were visibly shocked. One prisoner on Wednesday called me over and said

“Father, have you got the DVD of what real prison was like.”

He inferred that if we had prison like that today it might work. I reminded him of the reality of that punishment culture and the three ‘S’s’ of Separation, Silence and Solitude which often resulted in madness. There is also the reality explored with great insight by Timothy Gorringe in his book ‘God’s Just Vengeance’ that punishment does not work as a deterrent.

The reality is that punishment results in the opposite to Hope – Despair. And even in today’s prison environment which is light years away from the prisons of the 19th and early 20th Century – there are still extreme cases of despair that result in self-inflicted death. Self inflicted death in prison is 4 times greater than in the normal UK population – on average around 100 out of the 85,000 prisoners in the UK. It doesn’t take much to calculate that at Woodhill with around 820 prisoners, we can expect around one self inflicted death every year.

Fortunately, such abandoned hope happens to a small minority of prisoners - around 4% of prisoners confide in having suicidal thoughts or have self-harmed. But it will be exacerbated unless there are committed men and women of faith offering the antidote – Hope.
If I had written this sermon before today’s service was put together, I would have asked for the Franciscan hymn ‘Make me a Channel of your Peace’ because of the verse:

Where there’s despair let me bring hope

This is what the Chaplaincy team of ministers and volunteers do by their very presence – we are visual aids for Hope. This is the marching song we sing as we break step with the march encouraged by the media and many politicians.

So are there signs of hope in Woodhill? There are indeed, let’s hear four prisoners explain what difference the Chaplaincy makes:

1. “As some of us were suddenly whisked away with less than 4 weeks to serve on an overcrowding draft from Woodhill to Lincoln, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your care and excellent Sunday services…… for our brilliant Monday bible studies where we benefited much from our studies of Romans …. The sacrifice you’ve made to work with prisoners brings a blessing.”

2. “Sir, I’m just writing to say thank you for helping me to become a better person. Before I came to prison I didn’t think about my actions. I’ve just finished the Sycamore Tree Programme which has really helped me. (This is a Victim Awareness and Restorative Justice Programme run by the Christian group – Prison Fellowship). I now think about my family more and other people’s families. I’m not going to excuse my actions with my bad past as I know what’s right and wrong.”

3. “you guys turned it around for me …. Remember on the last class David gave us the IF and THEN assignment, this is mine from Philippians 2:

IF I be encouraged, comforted and compassionate
THEN my joy will be complete on being like-minded with the same love and being one in spirit and purpose.
IF I consider others better than myself
THEN my attitude will be the same as that of Christ Jesus
IF I be humbled
THEN God will lift me up
IF I do everything without complaining and arguing
THEN I become blameless and pure as a child of God for Him to boast that he did not labour for nothing.
Thank you for giving me the encouragement and it has paid off and I will carry on.”

4. “Sometimes you look into others eyes and you see that sometime they have a look on their face of an endless chore of no hope. But they plod on regardless and receive no thanks. Sometimes when small things are asked you might think they go unnoticed. A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. God bless.”

The antidote to punishment and despair not to give up Hope even when we see a familiar face who has come through what can often be the revolving door of the prison gate. We do this by our very presence and our work, because our work is to help grow the self-esteem of prisoners and to strengthen their moral compass as they try to steer themselves through life.

I have always believed this core value and if you feel that God might be calling you to answer his call to do the same as a Chaplaincy Volunteer or Prison Visitor – please see me after the service.
This week, we are asked to pray for those who find it hard to Hold Fast to Hope.

1. On day 1 we pray for Victims of Crime,
2. On day 2 we pray for Prisoners
3. Day 3 for Families who serve “the silent sentence”
4. Day 4 for those who do extraordinary jobs – prison staff
5. Day 5 for the community
6. On the last day – for those engaged in the justice system

You can use the intercessions in today’s service to help you if you too would like to pray for those who sometimes struggle to Hold Fast to Hope. When I felt called to this ministry myself, I had to preach a sermon at my interview, and this is the story around which I based it and I would use it again:

Once upon a time there was a man who had two water jars – but years ago one of the jars had got a small hole knocked in it. Every morning the man would put a pole across his back and carry the jars, one on each end, down to the river at the bottom of the hill.

Each day the man returned home with only one and a half jars full of water. The perfect water jar was rather pleased with itself, but the other jar felt miserable because it always got home half full. In fact, it felt so bad, that one day it surprised the old man and spoke to him,

"I’m ashamed of myself,” she said, “and I want to say sorry."

"Why?" asked the old man, "What are you ashamed of?"

"Every day I’ve wanted to get home full to the brim with water, but this hole in my side means I lose half on the way. Compared to the other jar I feel useless.”

The old man felt sorry for her, and to cheer her up said, "On our way home, take a look at the lovely flowers by the roadside.”

The water jar took his advice and as they walked she smiled at the beautiful wild flowers by the road, but when she got home she still felt sad because once more she was only half full and so, again, said she was sorry.

The old man smiled and said to the water jar, "Didn’t you notice that the flowers were only on your side of the road, and not on the other? That's because I’ve always known about the hole in your side – so I planted flower seeds on your side of the road, and every day on our way back from the stream, you've watered them. So now, I can pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my table. Without you being just the way you are, my house would have no beauty in it.”