Today, April 10th 2017 the Tuesday before Easter, I read again, as I have before, that portion of Matthew 25 that says, "I was in prison and you visited me." The book of meditations Meeting Jesus on the Margins reminds us of where we meet Him. Not only in meditation and the pew; but out in the world among the less than ...
The meditation spoke of a number of clergy persons who stayed at a jail near Ferguson Missouri until a group of young people who were unjustly jailed were released. The author of this meditation said, "Jesus tells us to visit the prisioner and that's where we will find him."
It has been my experience that sometimes Jesus visits us and we usually don't expect it. In the Thrift Store at Grace Episcopal Church in Utica, NY a child walked in with her parent. She was not naked but needed clothes. She spotted a T-shirt on the rack with a heart and the word Love, held it up, and said, "Can I have this one?" Of course she could. The child Jesus was clothed.
A couple came in, another time, with a small baby. The woman said that her sister had handed her the child and said she didn't want it. So the man and woman were there to get clothing for the baby because they had nothing to dress it with. We said, "Help yourself." We clothed the baby Jesus and meet Mary and Joseph.
Two men came in newly released from jail.They had little more than the clothes on their backs and paperwork to show they had just been released. We clothed Jesus newly released.
At the end of the meditation in Meeting Jesus ... the author says:
"These days any number of people will tell you their opinions about how to grow the church. I have lost interest in all of them. Because just about all of the opinions are about how I can get people to come into my church.
Growing the church is not about getting people into my church building. Growing the church is about being out in the streets... and sitting in a jail cell.
That's where Jesus is."
Where do you; where will you find Jesus?
