Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Justice weightier
Matthew 25:36
I was in prison and you came to me.
[Note: Prison Fellowship leaders in the Caribbean are meeting in Guyana today for a four-day forum. As Chairman of Prison Fellowship Guyana, it is my honour and pleasure to be their host, along with members of our board. Todays Devotional is, in part, a Devotional I will deliver later this morning. It is a revision of one first published in February and some readers here may recognise some of the content. Please pray for us as we meet and deliberate today on how we as the church could better serve the cause of justice in the Caribbean.]
Jesus, in one of the long discourses recorded by Matthew, gots to telling a story of what it would be like in the final judgement, Matthew 25:31-46. This description of the final judgement reads like the answering of oral questions in a final exam, except that this is, indeed, a final exam.
However, that description, or exam parallel, falls down because the questions are not about theoretical content, or about things learned in the course of study. These questions are about the practical conduct of those who are being examined. The examiner also seems to have known the answers that the students would give and graded them before having them engage with the questions.
Jesus said that the passing grade goes to those who have completed the practical projects of feeding the hungry, quenching the thirst of the thirsty, giving lodging to the stranger, providing clothing for the naked, and visiting the sick and the imprisoned. Today we want to especially focus on the imprisoned.
Jesus did not invalidate ecstatic spiritual experiences. He never downplayed the role of effective preaching. He modelled and taught prayer and intercession. But he also modelled the practical expressions of faith to transform the lives of those who needed the ministry.
Today we are filling up worship events, conferences, seminars and the like more than we are engaged in practical ministry. It is easier to sell tickets to an evening of extravagant worship than to get volunteers to visit an old lady down the street, or her grandson who is in prison because he was in the wrong company. There is something fundamentally wrong with a contemporary church culture that has tended away from practical ministry.
We have allowed church to become such a selfish place that there is little chance that most of our members and visitors would pass the practical exam that Jesus will after we have provided ministry to them. People have been trained to focus on how the worship experience makes them feel, and to sow a seed for their next breakthrough and so they are focused on personal feelings and rewards and not on service and ministry.
Today, many who want to serve, join a service club and not one of the ministries in the church. Here is a Wikipedia description of the Rotary Club: an international service organization whose stated purpose is to bring together business and professional leaders in order to provide humanitarian services, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and to advance goodwill and peace around the world.
Well, we should admire the Rotary Club. But we should wonder where our practical ministry went. We have lost practical ministry in the church and we are failing to cultivate it among our youth.
In the passage we are focused on, Jesus raises the matter of prison visits. As a practical matter, the church is to be involved with ministry to prisoners. The prison should not be an unfamiliar place to us.
Prisons are not attractive, and quite a few prisoners are intimidating. When they are not intimidating by virtue of their looks or behaviour that are repulsive by virtue of the nature of some of the crimes they have committed. Nevertheless, Jesus requires of us that we visit them and provide ministry. God did not judge us on the basis of the particular nature of the sins we have committed but, noting that all have sinned, He made a way in Jesus for everyone, murderous butchers included.
Traditionally, a lot of prison ministry is made up of visits to keep a church service for prisoners, get them to sing a few songs, read some scripture, preach a sermon, and give an invitation to salvation. This is useful and necessary. May have been saved in prison and come out to lead godly lives and become active members of churches. The founder of Prison Fellowship International, the late Charles Colson, is a good example.
However, if we examine the teaching of Jesus further, and the whole counsel of the word of God, we will recognise that Jesus requires of us a little more than just visits and church services. God is a just God and the cause of justice is, therefore, a primary concern of His. From the time God established the law, He established a system of justice.
Jesus challenged the religious leaders of his time saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Matthew 23:23.
The verse challenges us to both worship God in the beauty of holiness, and become advocates for justice, a matter that Jesus considered to be weightier.
Many of us are in societies where, for one reason or many, justice is elusive. Many good and bad, guilty and innocent, deserving and undeserving languish in prison systems where their presence if not as a result of justice served but rather of justice denied. We the people of God must take on their cause and see that justice is served because out God is a just God.
Think on these things:
- Have you ever been imprisoned or visited a prison?
- Are you involved in ministry to prisoners or do you provide resources to support one?
- Does the system of justice in your country reflect God’s justice, if not, what could be done to close that gap?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today for prisoners in your city and that God would show us how we could be better advocates for His justice to prevail.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
