Another installment in our long-running dialogue on doubt and faith between Rev. Dean Lueking, former pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest, and Helen Mildenhall.

Friend Helen: Our conversations about where The Way of Jesus leads in our time make me think about prisons and the people inside.

Interesting, isn't it, that the only reference Jesus makes to prisons in the Gospels is when he says to go visit them and in so doing find him there. It's from his parable about the End Time where his list of surprises in store for us includes this: "I was in prison and you visited me ..." (Matthew 25:36)

Meaning what? If we can start by understanding that every parable Jesus told turns the world upside down, this "Parable of the Last Judgment" does so in spades. He is to be found among those upon whom everybody has given up-the prison people, who, as our inborn instincts tell us, deserve to be locked up and the key thrown away.

Lest we dismiss Jesus as a dreamer who never got near prisons and criminals, it's well to remember that he was crucified between two of them. And a third was set free, whose death sentence Jesus took on-Barabbas-and all the rest of us with him who are measured not by human law alone but God's divine law which we have not kept. Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between golden candelabra, but on a cross between two thieves, as has been said.

So people of The Way have in Jesus full reason to think and act differently from those who, if thinking about prisons at all, keep them at a distance as places for retribution for those who've got it coming.

And where has that brought us?

1) The United States now incarcerates 1 out of every 100 adults in our country.

2) This is 700 times the rate of imprisonment that existed in South Africa at the height of apartheid.

3) Our rate is second only to China.

4) Most of those in prison are disproportionately poor, black, or Latino, with little access to real legal help. Is this what we're about? Proud of? Satisfied with?

Then comes the other Way, taking direction from Matthew 25:36, traveled by people who do indeed visit those in prison. It's no lark for the fainthearted; there is something unforgettable about the clank of a massive prison door closing after stepping inside another world altogether.

That notwithstanding, I think of those in our own congregation who take the time and trouble to keep personal contact with a fellow parishioner through visits and letters. He has 20 years of prison time behind him for a crime long since repented of. Those connections to people on the outside are life-giving, he says, for his worst fear is to have no one left out there who remembers and cares.

People of The Way not only visit and write but advocate for greater justice in the penal system. One example: The Elderly Sentence Adjustment Act (HB4154), which is currently before the Illinois Assembly, is described as "one part of a larger movement to create a criminal justice system that is driven by hope, fairness, and rehabilitation rather than fear, arbitrariness, and cynicism." The quote is from Bill Ryan (nanatoad@comcast.com for more about that movement), editor of Stateville Speaks.

Followers of The Way know something about what it takes to sustain the will and courage to care and connect with people who have been victimized by unspeakable crimes against them and their dear ones, as well as the families of those in prison-especially their children. The Way is traveled by lawyers who do pro bono work and judges who are in nobody's hip pocket. It includes volunteers who go into prisons to teach in education programs that prepare men and women for life after prison.

Here's another key truth about The Way: it reaches behind bars to convert, rehabilitate, and enable long-term inmates to risk getting out of themselves and doing for others. Recently I received a letter from such a man who describes what it meant for him to intervene in behalf of another inmate, wrongly accused of breaking a prison rule that could have had serious consequences. He found the courage to go over the heads of the guards, whose carelessness actually created the situation, and take the matter to the warden, risking plenty of retaliation. The warden heard the matter out herself, examined the evidence, and justice prevailed. That might seem of little consequence, but it was a victory where victories are few and hard won. He signed his letter with "In Christ who truly gives us all our victories."

I think of things like this when trying to envision just how Jesus is found in prison-surely in those who have been wrongly imprisoned for years, even decades, then exonerated and come out of prison without raging bitterness. Or those who have lost loved ones to criminal violence yet have overcome vengeance and are the best qualified advocates for rehabilitation rather than retribution.

How to account for such marvels? Answers vary, but among them The Way still beckons, not with abstractions, but the daring adventure of knowing from experience this great mystery of the faith: "I was in prison and you visited me."

P.S. There's a downside in Jesus' parable, too. "Inasmuch as you did it not to the least of these my own, you did it not to me." The vicious cycle of hate-filled crime then goes on, ground ever deeper by retribution, and The Way is the road not taken.