I receive a weekly email from the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity headed ’connecting with culture’. The most recent one talks about the excellent Street Pastors programme in London, which was started in 2003 by Les Isaac. Jason Gardner makes the point that part of the calling of the church must be to work alongside paramedics and the police to ’bring rescue to our violent streets’. The theological rationale for this, if you like, is stated in this way:
This isn’t about random acts of kindness; it’s about intentional kingdom living (Matthew 25:31-40). This is living out God’s rule of compassion and mercy on the streets, and giving hope to paramedics and police, as well as the punters in the pubs.
The passage cited from Matthew is the first part of Jesus’ teaching about the separation of the sheep and the goats when the Son of man comes in his glory to sit on his glorious throne. It is often taken as a biblical argument for Christian social action, a call to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. But to my mind this is a rather careless reading of the text.
Those who are in need of succour are not the general poor and destitute of the world; they are Jesus’ disciples - ’the least of these my brothers’ - who will suffer because they have accepted the invitation to follow him along the difficult and dangerous path that will lead to life for the community of God’s people. The imagined judgment scene, whatever metaphysical reality we may choose to attribute to it, is a judgment of the nations on the basis of how they have treated the disciples. It should probably be understood within the frame of a comprehensive judgment on the Greek-Roman world for its rejection of the good news that God has saved and transformed his people through the faithfulness of Jesus. This is why the judgment is linked to the Son of man story, which is an account of the vindication of the suffering community of the saints of the Most High against the pagan oppressor.
So the passage must be contextualized narratively. It cannot be treated as a general exhortation to the church to care for the poor and suffering. That may sound small-minded, but the positive point is of immense significance, narratively speaking: the story is an assurance given to the disciples that they will share in the vindication of Christ himself when the Son of man comes to receive a kingdom.
This is not to say, of course, that organizations such as Street Pastors are misguided. The challenge, however, is to develop a theological grounding and inspiration for social action that arises out of the whole narrative and is not dependent on suspect proof texts.
