“Two different things. I know that doing dope is a sin, but I don’t do it. And I only sell the small stuff. I don’t sell no crack or shit like that. But, Brother Chaplain, I love to sing in the choir.”
“I know you do, and you are very good. In fact, I don’t know what I am going to do without you, but you must realize that I can no longer allow you to lead the choir.”
“I got to sing,” he said emphatically as if he were saying,
“Certainly you can sing, but not in the choir and especially not as the choir leader.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“As a leader you take on more responsibility and accountability to the group, not to mention God. You have to attempt to live in such a way as not to bring reproach on the Body of Christ.”
“That what you do?” he asked.
“I certainly do the attempting part, but I do not succeed.”
“How you can be the chaplain then?”
“The requirements do not involve being perfect.”
Through my window I could see the inmates fortunate enough to receive a visit from their loved ones in the fenced-in visiting park. Couples walked around the yard holding hands, families sat at tables eating ice cream, children ran and played-remove the chain-link fence and razor wire, and you’d have an average Sunday afternoon in any park in America.
“But you say you don’t do it,” he said, trying to understand.
“Yeah, but I’m not out doing illegal things either. I mean, I am not as mature or integrated in most areas of my life as I want to be, but I’m not doing anything illegal or even immoral. That’s the difference.”
We were silent for a moment. “You say you don’t sell the hard stuff?” I asked.
“That’s right,” he said with pride.
“Who does?”
“Don’t nobody on the ’pound. It’s too hard to get, too much trouble. Not many inmates can afford it anyway.”
“Are you saying that there is no crack on the compound?”
“None that I know of. And I’d know. When it come to drugs, I the man,” he said defiantly. Then he realized whom he was talking to.
“Did you know Ike Johnson?”
“Knew of him.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“He was taken care of.”
“What do you mean?”
Jasper rolled his eyes in exasperation over having to explain so much to this naive chaplain.
“Somebody took care of him. But it wasn’t no inmate. It had to be an officer. He do whatever the hell he want. He get high every day, and he stopped getting it from me a long time ago.”
“Is there another inmate he could have gotten it from?”
“No.”
“How do you get the drugs that you sell?”
“Can’t say, sir. Get lotsa people in trouble. People that can give me a world of trouble if they want to.”
“So you’re saying that it comes from the staff?”
“I ain’t saying.”
“Okay. If you think of anything else you can tell me about the drug trade inside here, I would sure like to know. You coming to church this morning?”
“Am I going to be singing?”
“No,” I said.
“No,” he said.
As soon as he left, I tore open the letter. “Chaplain, I not going to tell you again. This is your last warning. I will kill the bitch if you don’t back off. I’ll kill you too. It’s going to hurt. Leave Molly Thomas alone, too. Nothing but trouble there. Now’s a good time to take some time off.”
I read and reread it several times. Maybe the letter wasn’t from the murderer. It could be from a witness or about something that was totally unrelated. I wondered if Anna was in any real danger. I thought about taking more precautions, and, as it turned out, I should have.
“Today we are here to receive the holy Eucharist,” I said, beginning my Sunday morning chapel communion service. All week I had been thinking, even obsessing, on the power of blood. I was interested in seeing how it would affect what I was going to say.
“We are here to eat the body and to drink the blood of Christ. On the night of the feast of the Passover, Jesus revealed to his disciples that he was about to become their Passover. His blood would be shed for an entirely new Passover. This was, of course, very familiar to them. Their minds raced back to the time when the people of their great nation were little more than a band of slaves in Egypt. Daily they cried out to God for deliverance. God answered them after four hundred years-for God is never in a hurry. God’s answer came in the form of a deliverer.
“God’s unlikely deliverer was a Hebrew shepherd who had been wandering in the wilderness for forty years. His name was Moses, and his mission was to go and tell the pharaoh that God said, “Let my people go.” He did. Pharaoh, however, was resistant to this idea, so God sent plagues, each one an affront to the gods of the Egyptians. Pharaoh, however, continued to resist.
“So it was that on the Hebrews’ final night as Egyptian slaves, God sent a death angel to kill the firstborn of every family. This would be the final straw that would break the back of the pharaoh, and he would then indeed let God’s people go. God’s instructions to the Hebrews were for each family to sacrifice a lamb and smear his shed blood over their doors. Thus, seeing the blood, the death angel would pass over and allow their firstborn to live. Because of the blood, the death angel passed over-only because of the blood.
“So when Jesus said that his shed blood would be the beginning of a brand new Passover, the disciples understood him to say that they would be spared from eternal death because of what he was about to do. Christ, our Passover, shed his blood for us. As we prepare to receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, I want to remind each of you that there is power in the blood. There is power in his blood. We are about to receive Jesus’ own blood, and as we do, we will receive forgiveness for our sins, restoration of our inheritance, and eternal life, the death angel will pass over and not come near us. There is power in the blood.
“The shedding of blood represents covenant. A covenant is a sacred and binding agreement that demands the death of the one who breaks it. When a man and a woman enter into the covenant of marriage, the consummation of that covenant involves the shedding of the woman’s blood.
“God’s grace is not cheap. It is costly. When we partake of the cup of Christ, we are accepting the costly gift of forgiveness. Realizing that we could not pay the price ourselves, we accept Christ’s free, but costly, gift. We acknowledge that it is only through the painful shedding of blood that our sins are blotted out. There is power in the blood. Life is in the blood. Death is in the blood, too. Christ exchanges the life in his blood for the death in ours.
“So come to the altar and receive the body of our Lord and the cup of Christ, and as you do, receive healing, recovery, and redemption. And also, too, remember what it cost Jesus.”
Serving communion to my congregation, the inmates of Potter Correctional Institution, I dipped the wafer, which was his body, into the cup of juice, which was his blood, saying, “The body that was broken for you. The blood that was shed for you”-all the while wishing, praying that it were true.
After serving everybody else, I partook of the body and blood of Christ, praying:
