When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.”–John 21:15-17
On Sunday, Grace Gámez offered the message. At our after-church conversation, several folks asked for a written copy. We decided it would make a great devotional:
Good morning, friends.
When I was asked to speak about restorative justice as part of our Lenten journey, I felt both gratitude and responsibility. For me, restorative justice is not just a framework or a set of practices. It shapes how I parent, how I partner, how I show up in movement spaces, how I understand harm, and how I imagine who we must become to build a different world, together.
At its heart, restorative justice is about relationships: how we build them, how we mend them when they break, and how we transform them in the face of conflict and harm. But it begins closer than we usually think, before policy, before circle processes, before alternatives to punishment. Restorative justice begins inside of us.
Meditative Arrival
I’d like to begin there, a quiet return and settling into ourselves- everything is an invitation- but if it feels accessible, close your eyes or soften your gaze. Feel your feet on the ground. And for a moment, notice the arc of your breath moving in and out of your body.
Can you remember a moment when you felt your own dignity, that feeling of standing up inside of yourself, not because you were perfect, not because you achieved something, but because you knew, even briefly, that you mattered?
And now see if you can call to mind a moment when you felt worthy, worthy of care, worthy of love, of rest simply because you exist.
There is a place inside of you that is holy, and knows you belong. That your life is not accidental.
Let’s take a breath here. And when you are ready open your eyes or bring your awareness back to this sacred space.
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This is the place from which restorative work must grow: at the altar of your heart where God dwells. If I can’t feel my own dignity, then when I cause harm, I will collapse into shame or defend myself at all costs. Accountability will feel like erasure or annihilation. And we live in a culture that often confuses accountability with disappearance.
But throughout scripture, accountability is rarely erasure. It is invitation to return to yourself. Peter swears his loyalty to Jesus. And then, when fear rises and the state closes in, he denies Jesus three times. Of his beloved friend, brother, mentor he says, “I do not know him.”
This was not small act without consequence. It was betrayal under pressure, and Jesus was eventually executed by the state. What a weight Peter must have felt, grief, shame. After the resurrection, Jesus finds Peter by the sea. He doesn’t humiliate Peter publicly. Jesus does not revoke Peter’s belonging. What does Jesus do? This normal and tender thing, he makes breakfast on the shore. Over the sound of lapping waves, early morning light, and crackling fire, and the smell of nourishment soon come,
Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Jesus mirrors Peters denial and names the rupture without shaming the person. And then Jesus entrusts Peter with responsibility: “Feed my sheep.”
That is accountable restoration. Jesus didn’t excuse or minimize Peter’s behavior. Nor was Peter banished from the circle of care and belonging- though there may have been a period of separation. He wasn’t just restored into community, he was restored into leadership and purpose.
That is what restorative logic looks like, it holds together truth and belonging and trusts that someone who has failed can still, or might become, someone capable of leading.
This pattern of rupture, naming, responsibility, and return, recurs throughout scripture. The word repent, in the New Testament “metanoia,” means more than remorse; it means a reorientation of heart and life. Repentance in its deepest sense then is not a ritual elimination of sin, nor a punitive erasure of a person. It is a serious re-turning toward relationship.
Many of us were taught to fear what we find inside ourselves. Our limitations, our action and inaction, anger, envy, selfishness, ability to cause or instances where we have caused harm. We try to exile or deny those parts of ourselves in order to become “good” (whatever that means).
But exile doesn’t make harm disappear; it drives brokenness underground. Restorative justice asks us instead to admit our capacity to harm and to train ourselves in repair. Archbishop Desmond Tutu helped popularize the phrase Ubuntu, “I am because we are.” But this sentiment crosses oceans and cultures. “En lak Ech”, “tu eres mi otro yo”, “you are my other self.”
We belong to one another. Harm, when it happens, is not isolated; it ripples across communities and family systems, over generations even. That is why our response to harm matters not only for the person directly affected but for the whole web of relationships.
Restorative justice and the legal system ask different questions when harm occurs. The legal system asks:
What rule was broken?Who broke it?
What punishment is deserved?
Restorative justice asks:
Who was harmed?
What do they need?
Who is responsible for meeting those needs?
Who else was impacted?
What social conditions made this harm possible?
How do we transform those conditions?
Restorative justice in the United States draws deeply from Black and Indigenous traditions of collective accountability and various circle and peacekeeping practices. These traditions require care and humility; they are not techniques to borrow lightly. But they share an understanding that wrongdoing is a wound in the web of relationship, not just a violation of a rule or a law. If we accept this understanding of wrongdoing or harm, then justice can not be addressed
through punishment. True justice is arrived at through tending, mending, meeting material, social, emotional and spiritual needs- for everyone invovled. Including the person who caused the harm.
This sort of tending requires a difficult spiritual capacity, which is the ability to see ourselves inside the possibility of causing harm. When we can’t admit that we, and the people we love most, are capable of causing harm, we push the idea of harm outward. We create categories of “us” and “them.” We exile people.
Jesus consistently disrupts that instinct throughout the gospels.
“Let the one without sin cast the first stone.”
“Forgive seventy times seven.”
“Love your enemies.”
I don’t think these are sentimental commands. I read them as radical refusals to reduce people to their shortcomings or failures, and to remember ourselves.
This does not mean harm has no consequence. Peter still weeps. Zacchaeus still repays what he has taken fourfold.Repair carries the weight of obligation and responsibilty. The work of repair is hard and it doesn’t always look like a returning of a relationship.
Sometimes it looks like separation and new boundaries. I love Prentis Hemphill’s understanding of boundaries; they write “boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and myself at the same time.”
Repair work requires processes that hold truth firmly, and communities willing and brave enough to stay present through discomfort.
Grace Lee Boggs wrote that we must transform ourselves to transform the world. Scripture says something similar: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) Systems are sustained by our patterns of belief, which in turn shape what we believe about human beings and what they deserve. If I believe that some people are disposable, I will build and support systems that disappear. If I believe some people are irredeemable, I will build and support cages and call it safety. But, if we believe what the Gospel suggests, that human beings are capable of both betrayal and transformation, then might we build differently? Maybe we’d build processes that hold repair
and create pathways back to full belongingness in community.
Restorative justice asks you to ask yourself:
Who must I become so that the world I yearn for can exist?
What is inflamed in me that needs healing?
Where must I take responsibility?
How do I practice return?
Before any circle forms in a room, there is the circle within you. You, at the altar of your own heart, willing to face your full humanity and still claim your belonging in God.
Restorative justice is a spiritual discipline, a political commitment, and a relational practice. It begins with dignity, moves through truth, requires repair, and trusts that transformation is possible.
We are all capable of harm. We are all capable of repair. And by God’s grace, we can become people who can hold both. Amen.
A Song:
No one is getting left behind this time
No one is getting left behind
No, not this time
We get there together or we never get there at all
We get there together or we never get there at all
We get there together or we never get there at all.
Amen.
–Grace Gámez