Week 4 July 2026 – REFLECTION ON VISITING THE SICK

“I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”  Matthew 25:43

In 1973 an outstanding human being and innovative leader joined Hollywood First Pres as Associate Pastor. Don Buteyn organized a tour of rehabilitation facilities that served patients freshly released from the hospital. Our group of would-be visitors cringed at a mere whiff of urine, but liked Briar Oaks. Our experienced leader called it the “Cadillac” of skilled nursing places in Hollywood.  During a visit to the minimum-security prison in Castaic, I was privileged to share the Gospel with my ever present sense of humor.  It made me equally a lawbreaker before the God whose unconditional love in Christ is to be had for the asking.  The audience rose to their feet to warmly applaud me.  Little did they know I would think of murdering someone in my very own home before long.

The feisty Mrs. Marsh, taking a risk with a foldable ladder, was our elderly neighbor in Hollywood until we moved to the Valley. Left to fend for herself by the daughter she had  fawned over, the also funny “Mrs. Swamp” wound up at Briar Oaks. There, sad and deeply unhappy, she lived for my frequent visits.  With my family’s okay, she was moved into my spacious study in the newly built added wing to our large home. After sleeping for ten weeks straight on a downstairs sofa, while our many Swiss visitors enjoyed the amenities of the master bedroom suite with balcony, God had us find an amazing father/son contractor team. They completed their flawless work in record time, with money left over to buy carpeting, drapes, and furniture.  Mrs. Marsh turned out to be a social butterfly who for nine long weeks received a steady stream of duly impressed visitors from her Hollywood Methodist church.  She almost killed me one night when she tried to go to the bathroom by herself.  It took me forever to get her off the floor, but no paramedics needed to be called.  I did feel like killing her when regularly washing her feet in a basin. While she did take it for granted as if a queen, I detested being called “Precious.”  It sound too darned schmalzy to suit my much different personality.

In 1985, after leading my dying brother to Christ, I flew to Switzerland to spend five wonderful weeks of joyful fellowship with him.  Not a churchgoer, the pastor had never visited until shortly before my arrival.  He stayed just long enough to warn him about my unrealistic “Americanized” Christianity.  The card he left behind read, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”  Perhaps that can only be topped by the much misunderstood atheist who vented openly how bitterly he resented having to listen to prayers for the sick to a deity he knew didn’t exist.  He might have a worse shock coming when people of every persuasion will hear from Jesus personally on the pivotal day described in Matthew 25:21-46.  “They will also answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you you…sick or in prison, and did not help you?’”  “He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”  Does this beg the question:  Who are the least in our community and more strangely perhaps, in our church family”?