Prisoners Connect to Jesus's Story of Salvation

Inmates Pray Overnight At Good Friday Service

It was a story to which the prisoners could relate. A man accused. A man condemned. A man punished by society. And so, on the anniversary of Jesus's death, almost 100 inmates gathered in their prison's small cinder-block chapel to sing, preach and pray.

However, this year's Good Friday service at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup began late in the evening and stretched into the wee hours of yesterday morning -- a seven-hour vigil that ended at 4:30 a.m.

The all-night service was born partly out of necessity. With an Islamic group's regular service scheduled in the chapel for Friday night, the late hour was the only time the room was free.

But there was a biblical component to the late-night vigil as well. On the night Christians believe he died, Jesus's disciples stayed up with him to pray in his final hours. As his modern-day followers, the inmates said they would do no less to honor his name.

So, locked in by heavy metal doors and under the eyes of the guards, they prayed and preached, then prayed some more.

An electronic keyboard brought in by a volunteer served as the church organ. A cross handmade from wicker hung on the podium as the crucifix. And the ministers -- some volunteers, some inmates -- retraced the centuries-old story of Jesus's last night on Earth. All night, the sermons were punctuated by cries of "hallelujah" and bursts of old gospel hymns.

"He was alone in the end. All his homeboys had rolled out on him," went an inmate's version. "And the thugs, they put a hit out on him. But Jesus, the thugs didn't take his life. Uh-uh, he gave it up willingly. . . . And when Jesus gave it up, that's when the miracle showed up."

That the inmates could even hold a Good Friday service was a small miracle. Although some Good Friday services had been held in past years on Saturday, the prison chaplain's idea for an all-night vigil took months to plan and the warden's approval to arrange.

The hope, the Rev. Reginald Bellamy explained, was to shake things up, add a change, however small, into the men's schedule. In a world where everything -- from the clothes the men wear to the time and content of their meals -- are fixed, an all-night prayer service just might be the jolt needed to nudge a few more souls toward God, Bellamy said.

At the Good Friday service, he gave the 98 inmates a strip of paper to write down prayer requests, and as the night went on, the pile of notes grew in front of the makeshift pulpit.

Some asked for healing from diseases that spread through the housing units. Some asked for prayer over the growing rifts and resentment between them and their children. Others simply prayed for survival.

"Being a Christian in here sometimes is seen as a sign of weakness," said inmate and lay minister Paul Hamby, 44, who is serving an 11-year sentence for robbery charges. "Being a peacemaker makes you look passive, vulnerable."