Bible reading: Matthew 25:31-46.

According to an article in the “Nairobi Sunday Standard” (a newspaper I’d never have heard of without the Internet!), there are several things which you must never do when you’re visiting someone ill in hospital.

For instance, you mustn’t sit on the patient’s bed at that might bring in an infection. Nor should you criticise the doctors or the treatment they’re giving: any concerns you do have should be raised with them, not with the patient. And there are other “don’ts”: don’t help the patient to get out of bed, don’t eat their food (which probably isn’t too great a temptation), don’t moan about your own personal problems, and don’t talk or laugh loudly. And there’s one more piece of advice for hospital visitors: don’t stay too long, as you mustn’t overtire the patient and the staff need space to do their work. I have to say that, on the few occasions that Moira or I have been in hospital, that’s not been a problem as (believe it or not) we’ve quickly run out of things to say! I’d obviously make a rotten hospital chaplain!

Visiting the sick seems to be very important in the Jewish tradition. According to the Talmud, commentaries written a few centuries after the time of Jesus, this was introduced in the Bible when God himself visited Abraham while he was recovering from circumcision. Following that divine example Jews are required to visit all who are ill, including Gentiles, offering prayers and spiritual guidance. Such visits are seen as acts of loving kindness and mercy, and can therefore be exempt from the strict rules on Sabbath travel; it’s believed too that they confer blessings and happiness on the visitor. Making hospital rounds is unsurprisingly seen as a major responsibility for local rabbis.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, it’s because visiting (or failing to visit) sick people is mentioned as one of the criteria by which Jesus will judge us at the end of time – alongside other acts of mercy which we may or may not have done, such as feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, offering shelter to the homeless, clothing people who have no clothes of their own, and visiting prisoners. I’m sure you’ll agree that all those activities are down-to-earth and practical; they also have the potential for being distasteful, costly in time and money, dangerous – but also emotionally rewarding.

And there’s more: they also seem to have a spiritual dimension, as I hear in them echoes of Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah, taken up by Jesus as the template of his own ministry: “The spirit of the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of God’s vengeance” (I’m not so sure about that bit!) and “to comfort all who mourn”. I think there are definite parallels.

Of course we’ve just been focusing on one tiny part of a lengthy and, frankly, disturbing passage (and it’s worth noting that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote an incredibly long and complex sermon on “visiting the sick” which, he suggested, is an especially good thing for wealthy people to do as they might never otherwise confront the realities of pain and poverty). This passage brings to a climax the parables that have been gathered together in the preceding chapters of Matthew: the Just and Unjust Stewards, the Thief in the Night, the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids, the Slaves and the Bags of Gold – all of them stories with the same basic message that we must be prepared for Jesus’ return to earth in power and glory, for we have no idea when that will be.

So let’s look at the bigger picture and let’s honestly ask ourselves, “Do we believe that this will actually happen as Jesus describes it?” You see the first Christians lived in troubled times – I’m not just thinking of Jesus’ disciples but of those who were around 40 or 50 years later, when Matthew was writing his Gospel and the Jews were either rising up against the Roman occupation of their beloved country or had just faced defeat and the destruction of their capital city and Temple. To them, people who didn’t have modern media or communications, this felt like the end of the world. The hope they clung to was that Jesus, the Messiah, would soon return in power, judge the world and take them to glory. That’s a theme we meet again and again in the New Testament; indeed St Paul closes one of his letters with what almost sounds like a desperate cry: “Marana tha” – “Lord, come quickly”.

Well, we’re certainly living in a world that’s beset by problems ranging from bloody conflict to climate change, major natural disasters and that back-of-our-minds fear of nuclear devastation. Yet, over the twenty or so centuries since Matthew was writing, we’ve rather got used to that state of affairs and rarely think that “the end of the world is nigh”. Indeed, a man carrying a sandwich-board bearing those words has become a cliché for cartoonists and evokes ridicule rather than fear. When we add to that history our scientific view of “the way things work”, our sceptical approach to reading the Bible, and our belief that a “nice” God would never be so nasty as to judge, we are left with real doubt that Jesus will come as he said he will. We may join in the Apostles’ Creed and declare our belief in Jesus who “will come to judge the living and the dead” – but do we really mean it?

For we can’t just say, “This passage about judgement offends me” and snip it out of our Bibles. It’s there, whether we like it or not, and its words claims to have originated with Jesus himself. And we know, of course, this isn’t the only passage about judgement in the New Testament, as there are others in Paul and Peter’s letters and in Revelation, which we can’t ignore. Nevertheless, “judgement” sounds to us very like “intolerance”; the thought of God separating people like sheep and goats, however much it may be a picture rather than a literal event, appals us. Our God is gracious, he is a God of love: so how could he be so cruel and unkind as to even think of doing that?

I think the answer lies in our belief that Christ won’t just be coming as assessor or judge: that’s only part of the story, the prelude to the “main event”. For he’ll be coming to renew the earth and set up his eternal kingdom. That kingdom will inevitably reflect the personality of its ruler, which means that it can only be just, generous, good and above all holy. As John says in Revelation, nothing that is impure will enter the city of God, nor anyone who does shameful things or tells lies. Indeed, it’s inconceivable that they should have any place there: selfishness, deceitfulness, untruth or lies simply wouldn’t fit in.

I’m coming to the end; but I do want to touch on one aspect of this passage which may be troubling us. It’s that this judgement, division, assessment, sorting-out (or whatever you want to call it) is clearly made on the grounds of what we have done rather than what we have believed, it’s made according to right actions rather than right faith. That seems to fly in the face of so much that we’ve been told. After all, didn’t St Paul write, “It is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God’s gift”.

But Jesus clearly says, “Did you visit your friend when they were ill? If you did, you actually visited me as well. Did you come to see your colleague when they were in prison? If so, I was there too. Did you feed someone who hadn’t eaten since the day before, did you offer a drink to someone gasping with thirst, did you put clothes onto the back of someone who was shamefully naked? You probably didn’t realise that, when you did any of those things, you were caring for me as well as for them. That showed me the kind of person you are”.

“However”, Jesus goes on, “if you saw those needs and did nothing to help, then you weren’t just condemning those poor people to misery or even death – you were ignoring my cries to you through them. Every time you said ‘no’ felt to me like a slap on my face. How could I let you into my kingdom when you have so blatantly ignored my commands and failed to demonstrate basic human compassion. Listen: it’s not me who’s shutting you out: it’s your own behaviour that has done it”.

Well, I’ve embroidered Jesus’ words a bit. But I want to ask a question which in fact runs through all these parables: what is the connection between faith and deeds, between what we believe and what we do? And the answer is of course the one highlighted by James who says that faith is worthless unless it is lived out: “What good is it for one of you to say that you have faith if your actions don’t prove it? Suppose there are brothers or sisters who need clothes and don’t have enough to eat. What’s the point of you saying to them, “God bless you! Keep warm and eat well!” – if you don’t give them the necessities of life? If faith includes no actions, it is dead”. James is just as practical as Jesus, who expects to find us “doing”, not “sitting”, when he returns.

I’m sure that we’d all be shocked and angered if anyone called us hypocrites. After all, we’re doing our best to follow Jesus. But, in the light of this passage, we need to ask ourselves, “Am I serving Jesus properly? Am I doing the things he wants me to do? Have I become complacent in caring for my neighbours?” and even, “Am I so caught up with doing ‘churchy’ things that I’m neglecting my fellow-humans?” Of course, we don’t do good deeds merely because we’re frightened of being caught out by Jesus if he were to suddenly return: that’s not a good motive although Jesus does hint at it in these parables! No; we do them because we know they’re right and because our faith compels us.

I began by talking about visiting sick people. That is something which all ministers do (some of you might think that I don’t do it enough). But I’ve only once visited a prison, many years ago; naturally I’d go again if I was asked but I’d definitely feel overawed by the prospect. However Moira and I knew someone in Suffolk, a Christian but not a Minister, who was part of a group that supported prisoners by becoming their pen-friends. Now these weren’t “ordinary” prisoners, locked up for burglary or assault. Oh no: they were men on America’s “death rows” with the threat of execution constantly hanging over them, sometimes for years. I can’t imagine what writing to these men would be like, strangers from another culture, but that’s what our friend and others did. I suspect that real friendships emerged, and that the prisoners’ mental health was improved, because of these contacts. And sometimes it wasn’t just letters: our friend actually went to America at least once, at her own expense, to meet the people she’d been writing to face-to-face. What must that have been like?

“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me”. That’s what Jesus said to the righteous people in our passage. Can he say the same to us?