It was exactly one year ago that I spent about an hour or two recounting some poor version of the story of the life and death of Kelly Gissendaner. She had been murdered under the law by the State of Georgia on September 30th of that same year. I remembered Mama Kelly, as she was called by the many women and girls who she loved, nurtured, and cared for in prison as a saint, as one of the faithful followers of Jesus whom we celebrate in the small churches that I hail from every year around this time. I wanted to remember her again this year, a year later. Mama Kelly is countless news cycles behind us now, but the love, her love, Jesus’s love that she branded into the lives of so many lives on, as does the witness of her death at the hands of the state.

The New Testament speaks of Jesus’s death as putting the powers to shame, putting them on display: He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in [the cross]. (Col 2:15). Kelly follows Jesus in this. In her death at the hands of an implacable, resolute state intent on killing, her life of transformation, love and hope “make a public spectacle of them” as well. The story of her life, new life, and death speak to the truth that the powers of this world are intent on death rather than justice, and that even in the face of absolute newness of life they will continue to deal death.

But death has no enduring power against witness. Kelly’s witness lives in her words, in the lives of the women and girls who were prisoners with her, many of whom are alive and living now because “Mama Kelly” would sit with them in their times of darkness. Her witness is alive in the lasting impact she made on the theologians who were her teachers, alive in her children who were transformed along with her from hatred and bitterness into love and reconciliation.

All of this shames and scandalizes the gods of power. It puts the truth on full display and cuts through the lies of the powers of this present time, this present country. It shows the forth the hollow veneer that America’s legal and judicial system in fact is. It puts on display beauty of God’s justice, the justice of repentance, reconciliation, and new life. This is Kelly’s beautiful witness. That the new life that God brings to the world in Christ is more determinative than any sin or any crime we commit. That state disagrees, with cold lethal ferocity. Nevertheless, the witness stands, and continues to speak.

Kelly believed and lived unto the truth that God brings to us a future that is undetermined by the past. That in God there is hope and life and calling for us all, regardless of the chains of the past. Her life stands as witness to that truth. She bears, in her life, death and coming resurrection with Jesus, and with all of us the revelation of the Lamb that was slain, who is worthy to receive power. That is faithfulness worthy of celebration and remembrance.