“Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’
Matthew 25:40 MSG

Jesus frequently taught about what we may see as the tension between right belief and right action. Some have a tick-box attitude to faith…it’s all about believing the right things if you want to be in. Others put the emphasis on behaving the right way…what good is a set of beliefs if they don’t change the way we live?

Personally, I think we need to avoid this polarising of views. Belief matters but so does living our beliefs. Jesus doesn’t specifically say it here, but he definitely seems to come down on the side of those who do the right things, even if they are not aware that they’re doing them.

I’m writing elsewhere, with my colleagues in the Northumbrian Collective, about how our biases sometimes affect our ability to make right choices. Is bias a good thing or a bad thing?

One thing is certain from the whole arc of scripture and the life and teaching of Jesus himself. Every Christian should have at least one bias…a bias towards the poor, the overlooked and the ignored. As I argued in my previous post, loving God involves us in loving other people…if we don’t love others it calls into question our claim that we love God.

This passage is one of those that really pulls me up short every time I return to it. It forces me to examine my life in the light of what Jesus says…how often have I overlooked and ignored the Lord I claim to love and follow when I’ve ignored the man or woman on the street asking for change, and my old excuse that they would probably use it for drugs or drink doesn’t hold water…yes, I could buy them food rather than give them money, but I could also give them respect as I trust them to make their own choices. I’m reminded that God didn’t wait for us to clean up our act before he sent Jesus:

Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
Romans 5:6-8 MSG

When was the last time you saw Jesus in the overlooked and ignored, and did something about it?