"You mean we're making these cookies for murderers and thieves!?!?"

From the archives, this is reposted here today, Father's Day 2018, in memory of my father, Gene Neill. Race car driver, Marine, Mafia lawyer, convict, popsicle salesman, coal miner, prison minister, Christian.  Dad spent more than 30 years traveling to prisons around the world sharing the love of Jesus with the forgotten, in what he called "The Church in the Shadows."   

There's a group of local Christian men who go into Huttonsville Correctional Center and share the love of Jesus with the 1,100 guys incarcerated there.  They generally go twice a year, and spend several days in a row in a prison-wide non-denominational Christian outreach.

Pastor Randy Vincent, one of the Prison Ministry Team, recently visited our little Mt. Zion United Methodist Church and asked if we would make homemade cookies for the Team to take in to the inmates on their upcoming ministry trip.  "For some reason," he said, "those homemade cookies really mean a lot to the guys."  Maybe homemade cookies bring back memories of a life gone by; perhaps they are reminded of their moms or lost sweethearts; maybe it's thoughts of a home they don't have anymore, and may never see again. Or maybe it's just something yummy to eat which they don't get in prison.  Whatever the attraction, for every guy to get even one cookie, it takes 100 dozen and Randy wanted to be able to give every guy a dozen cookies!

Now, Mt. Zion is a tiny little church.  It's full of love, but we're awfully small in numbers.  So I figured I'd try to get other people involved in making cookies.  I wrote a little blog entry, and started contacting area churches on Facebook, by letter, phone, and even going in and talking to them.  The first person I cornered was a guy from work who I know is a Christian, and who I figured would help.  I'll call him "Juan."  He immediately agreed to make cookies (perhaps thinking he'd be able to pass the duty off to his wife), and bring them into work on Friday.

Sure enough, Friday morning rolled around and Juan had three dozen chocolate chip cookies waiting on my desk (smelling quite tempting, I might add), and was proud to tell me he'd baked them himself, with his 10-year-old son (who I'll call Joey), assisting.

During the baking, Joey asked what they were going to do with all these cookies (no doubt with an eye to personal enrichment).  Juan told him, "We're going to give them to men in prison."  "What!?"  Joey was incredulous; this simply was not possible!  Surely, his dad must be joking!  "You mean we're going to give all these cookies to murderers and thieves!?!?"  Juan explained to him that we would be telling the men about Jesus, and giving them the cookies as a gift.  But Joey just could not wrap his head around the fact that all those cookies were going to such wicked, undeserving people, even if they did accompany a talk about Jesus.  What a waste of cookies!

Folks, I gotta confess, Joey is not alone in his dubious opinion of showing kindness to "murderers and thieves" – to say nothing of wasting perfectly good cookies on them!  Granted, his reaction was a bit less filtered than yours and mine (kids do say the darndest things), but he only said what lots of grownups were already thinking anyway.  Even among Christians, who know full well that Jesus came to save the lost, lonely, and wicked, we are quick to turn away from undesirables and I have been as guilty as anyone at times.  Jesus looked at it differently than we do, though.  "Healthy people don't need a physician," He said, "but sick ones do. I did not come to call righteous people, but sinners."

Week after week, we sit in church and listen to the pastor pray, "Dear Lord, please lead us to someone we can tell about you."  But then, when the Lord gives us that opportunity, we turn away because the person's look or circumstances are distasteful or intimidating to us, or we just have more important things to do.  We forget that Church is not a building we go to once or twice a week.  Church is us – reaching out to the lost and lonely, just like Jesus did; taking the love and forgiveness He so freely gave us, when we scarce deserved it, and passing it on to others.  Like Jesus showed us how to do.  Like Jesus told us to do.

Here's the thing: Jesus did not just help people that deserved it.  He didn't just help all the nice church people.  He reached down to lift up beggars and prostitutes and people with loathsome diseases.  And He spent a fair amount of time upbraiding the phony, holier-than-thou church people who criticized Him for it.  Jesus didn't even limit His generosity only to those whom He knew would respond to it with genuine repentance.  Many of the people whom He fed loaves and fishes were only there for the show and the food, but He fed them anyway.  He healed them anyway.  He ministered to them anyway.  He loved them anyway.  He gave them a chance anyway.  He lived and died for them anyway.

Jesus did not say, "Hey, Heather, you only need to help nice-looking people who are pretty decent, who have had a bath this week, have never done anything too terribly bad, who won't cost you much, and who you're pretty sure will repent."

He said, "Heather, take up your cross daily and follow me.  The road's going to be hard and steep and narrow, and you're going to be on it alone, with only me beside you, a lot of the time.  But it'll be worth it in the end.  And I'll never leave you.  I'll be right there with you the whole way.  Now, go tell the world there's another way.  Tell them them I died for them.  Tell them I love them."

I know I made an awful lot of cookies for guys who will just eat them without a second thought.  They won't all repent.  They won't all be touched.  They may not even all be appreciative.  And they may very well get out of prison, only to do something to end up right back in again.  But at least once in their lives, someone will have told them Jesus loves them.  Someone will have said, "There's a better Way."  Someone will have reached out to them with a small kindness.  Someone will have given them a chance.

 "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' "They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'  "He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'  "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

Matthew 25:40-46