When did we visit you in prison?

Consider any baby. What's essential?
Breath, first.
Food. Drink. Embrace.
The baby is held to the breast
to drink its first food.
It is wrapped in its first clothes.
Then, if the child is sick it's cared for.

Even Baby Jesus we're getting ready for?

When did you see me hungry
or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick?

Get it? Matthew 25?
Life, lifelong essentials.

But what about the sixth? When did we see you in prison? What's essential about that?

When Matthew was writing it was easy to get into prison, like now, for nothing except being in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong skin. And poor, of course. Following Jesus will get you into trouble, too.

I remember watching a courtroom trial on TV, must have been in the 1950s. They said it was the first time a TV broadcast had ever been allowed from a courtroom. One question to prospective jurors shocked me. “Do you believe the police will tell the truth.” Bless my young, white, law abiding soul. The policeman is our friend! I never imagined they wouldn’t be telling the truth.

I’m sure I my automatic bias still leans towards thinking anybody in prison must be a wrongdoer of some sort. Different from being hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick.

Visit? What about a pilgrimage to circumambulate one of those detention centers? It wouldn't be easy, but people go around Mount Kailash prostrating. Monks are right now walking from Fort Worth to Washington, DC.

I was in prison, and you visited me.