The big question is - why are so many people not interested in meeting Jesus?

Many people assume he is dead – although this is not true it explains why so many people prefer to keep his memory alive, rather than make the effort to meet him.

Many people do not make any effort to introduce others to Jesus. St Andrew, the patron Saint of Scotland, is also known as the person who introduced others to Jesus. ‘Now some Greeks came to Philip and said, “We would like to see Jesus”. Phillip went to tell Andrew and Andrew and Phillip in turn told Jesus’ (John 12 20)

Imagine that you are at an important function and some new guests arrive, but the guests who came earlier insist on hogging the attention of the guest of honour and do not make any room for the new guests. It does seem rather rude, doesn’t it?

The third reason is a little more difficult to understand.  It is related to fear.  This postmodern age puts a high a value on independence. A relationship with Jesus would threaten this.  Also, the very nature of the competitiveness in our society creates a dislike of failure. Therefore it will be impossible to meet Jesus without having to acknowledge the depth of our own failings.  And thirdly there is a horror of being found out.

To help us understand this further let us have another look at my meeting with Elaine Rutherford.  I mentioned that I was pleased when she came to watch my games.  Fortunately for me I was winning my games.  However, if I had been playing badly and losing my games, I would have been embarrassed and wishing she would depart quickly. However, this would show that I understood Elaine as little as I understood the game of chess.  Elaine would not have been critical of my play. She would have shown compassion towards my difficulties. Now if the rules of chess had been different and Elaine had been allowed to talk to me while I was playing, the whole situation would have been different.  She would have been able to instruct me through my badness until I reached the stage where I could win.

Fortunately God does not follow the rules of chess.  One of the strange paradoxes in life, which is certainly very different from conventional values, means that it is through recognising our own badness that we are most likely to meet Jesus. ‘I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.' (Mark 2:17)

So how can we help others meet Jesus? It is wrong to approach someone you hardly know and say to them “Do you know you are a very bad person?” This is as foolish as saying to them “Climb up a tree”. An evangelical Christian came up to me some months ago and said, “Do you know that your are lost?” My response was “I want you to imagine Jesus, the Good Shepherd approaching a lamb. Do you hear him saying to the lamb “Do you know that you are lost?” or do you see him lifting the lamb up in his arms and taking it back to its mother?”

I said at the beginning we could read the Gospels or decide to meet Jesus. This is really a false choice. What I was trying to say was ‘Reading the Gospels couldn’t guarantee a meeting with the living Jesus’. However it is important to read the Gospels. The Gospels reveal the incarnate Jesus; saves us from error and introduces us to the riches of God’s Love: Riches that we have to find for ourselves in our own life of faith.

If you wish to help others meet Jesus, it is important that you are able to recognise the moments in your life when you experienced Jesus helping you through critical periods, even if you cannot say that you experience Jesus’ friendship every day.

People we meet are often burdened in ways that we know nothing about. We may feel this is none of our business or if it is, we cannot involve ourselves because of our lack of competence. However, people do need friends. If they are able to share their burden with you, and they appreciate you taking the time to listen to them. Do not miss the opportunity to quietly tell them about some of the times when Jesus helped you overcome your own burdens.

Finally I want to tell you about the person who helped me meet Jesus for the first time, and how she found the ability to do so. About a year before I met her, some older Christian friends had asked her to spend the night recalling all the occasions she had failed herself or failed other people, and then hand the burden over to Jesus. The next day, she met Jesus in the Spirit and learnt how to help me and others meet the same Jesus.

Bruce Crerar, July 2003