Fall 2006Chris Hoke
So, how’ve things been going in the jail with you and pastor Robert?”
Sixers, 24, one of the demigods of the Skagit Valley’s Sureño gang scene, sits in the passenger seat, two days out of state prison and covered with new tattoos on his arms and face. He has just finished telling me about the inner-workings of prison gang violence and politics—how a person who oversteps a code is “marked” by a leader, and ruthlessly harmed by whomever gets the order. Within the hour.
I answer Sixers by telling him we’ve been seeing God move in even clearer ways that make inmates go “Whoa,” spreading news through whole jail pods about people actually being affected by God.
“It’s like God ‘marks’ dudes in the joint as well,” I tell him, “like you guys do. But instead of hurting them, he heals them, brings them life instead of death. Within the hour. Just this last Sunday, nine people were healed, man.”
“Nu-uh…” His tattooed fingers cover his surprised smile.
“Yeah, take last night for example. I’m meeting one-on-one with this Chicano man accused of murder. We’re praying, and I get this image in my head of toes. It’s like God is my ‘shot-caller,’ and he’s telling me to ‘get this guy,’ that there’s a problem with his toes. So I ask the man, ‘Do you have any pain in your toes?’ ‘Yes,’ he says, as he lifts his head. ‘You never told me that before, did you?’ ‘I’ve never told anyone about my toes—I hide this.’
‘I think God wants to heal you,’ I venture.
“So I scoot my chair around the table and lay my hands on his white-socked toes that have severely ingrown nails. Then in Jesus’ name, I tell the pain to leave. I command the nails to grow straight.
“It’s like you on the street, Sixers. You were just telling me the power your name has around here: you say something, it happens.”
“Yup,” and he snaps his fingers.
“Same with Jesus’ authority over death, sickness, and stuff like that. I used Jesus’ name and authority with the unwanted pain hurting this man whom God ‘marked,’ and a minute later he’s squeezing his toes, crying, saying all the pain is gone, that minutes before he couldn’t even touch them!
“Almost immediately, he wants to be closer to God. Like he’s ‘jumped in’ to the gang. He wants to roll with God, let him ‘drive the car,’” I continue with the prison terms Sixers has taught me.
“Daaamnnn, man, that’s cool.” His eyes light up and he pauses before getting out of the car, shaking his head.
Gang members on the streets and men locked in the system are tired of being helpless and pushed around. Sixers’ attraction to Jesus’ power—of life and not violence—shows that what poor and disrespected young men in and out of bars, unserved by a forever-pending world of bureaucratic solutions, are desperate for real authority, even more than their threatening codes. They are hungry for power to effect change in their everyday lives—within the hour.
So we at Tierra Nueva now want to listen to God even more closely and join the authority of Jesus’ name to take the streets back under God’s new, life-giving reign.
