How often does this happen to a modern Christian? How often does someone approach you and ask to meet Jesus? My guess is that, unless you're doing chaplaincy at CAMH, the answer would be, "Not often," or "Never." I know it never happens to me on the street. It happens all too infrequently among my parishioners, for that matter.
Why? As a former atheist, I can tell you why I never asked to meet Jesus. It was because I thought I knew about Him already. I had Him and His followers all figured out. Despite the vociferous denial of Dawkins and Hitchens, Christianity forms the bedrock of western thought, up to and into the modern era at least, and its essential precepts are all so familiar. They're second nature. My guess is that the reason nobody wants to meet Jesus isn't because He's totally foreign and strange. It's because He's too well-known.
Or, rather, a cartoon version of Him. As I discovered when I returned to the Church (drawn in by the architecture, so don't ever tell me that the buildings aren't important) Jesus has a lot more depth and grit than the pastel version I'd perceived. Buddy Jesus wasn't the one I met in bread and wine, Body and Blood. Easy, cheap grace - believe with your head and you're saved, no matter what your heart and body do - was not on display. What I found was hard, bitter, biting, grinding, challenging. I found a master, not a pal, and that master called me to be better than I'd been and to be more than I'd been. I'm still wrestling to accomplish that, but it has already taken me to a new vocation in a new country.
Meanwhile, most of the church worries and frets that the bar is set too high. "How can we make it easier for people to come to church?" Cripes, how easy can it get? The Church no longer asks her members to fast, not on fast days nor before receiving Communion. We certainly don't ask people to dress properly any more - jeans and a t-shirt will do - and we don't require confirmation in order to receive Communion. If some of the sermons I've heard are any indication, we don't even require our clergy to believe in the divinity of Jesus, or the resurrection of the dead, or much of anything beyond Buddy Jesus. As a friend of mine, not a priest and not a churchgoer, said recently, "Anglicanism just keeps getting easier, doesn't it?"
And now the Church, or a part thereof, wants to make Communion open to people who aren't baptised. They'll tell you it's about "radical hospitality" or that Jesus didn't refuse to feed anyone or that it's a "justice issue." (That's the silver bullet designed to shut down all argument, because who wants to be unjust?) Radical hospitality? Justice? When have we turned anyone away from baptism? The church will baptise any person, admit anyone into the Church's life, into the very Body of Christ. We will graft any person who asks into the divine life of Christ..how radical can you get?
Claiming that Jesus didn't refuse to feed anyone at the Last Supper sort of misses the point...He was in the upper room with his disciples, His close followers. He had already narrowed the group to those who had demonstrated commitment to Him. Sure, Jesus fed the five thousand, but that was a normal meal. Our parish delivers food to people every week - a box of groceries for the asking, no proof of need or paperwork required - and we open the door to the world when we host a dinner or reception or even coffee hour. We'll feed anyone...but the Lord's Supper is a different kind of meal.
Communion without baptism isn't really the point, it's just a symptom...though it is a ditch that I'd die in. The point is that a life of faith ought not be easy. It should be hard. It should require something of us. Left to our own devices, humans tend to be like water - we seek the easiest path, heading for lower ground and, by our own passage, carving the way more and more open for those upstream. Hence my friend's comment that Anglicanism keeps getting easier. Following God, though, should lead us upward, not downward. It should challenge us to strive harder, work more, be more.
So when our unnamed Greeks asked to see Jesus, and His disciples told Him, His response wasn't to rush out and find them, or invite them in for a coffee, or to sign them up for the newsletter. His response was to announce that the hour had arrived for his crucifixion. "They want to follow me? Fine. Let them follow me to the cross. The servant who goes there will be with me in glory."
Is Christianity too hard? Is faith too challenging? Is loving God too inconvenient? Well, it was no easy thing for Our Lord, now was it? He walked the hardest road, to the cross, and walked there alone. And we balk when we're asked to fast or pray or attend church regularly...or even bother to get baptised.
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." – G. K. Chesterton
So perhaps nobody is going to ask us about Jesus. Fine, they think they know Him already. Maybe Christians should stop seeking the easy path and start living faith as the challenging, uphill road that it is. Maybe we should pray more, fast during seasons of penance, even - gasp - attend church more regularly. Maybe we should volunteer more, reach out to our neighbours more, love people more without expecting recompense or return. Maybe we should practice the vows of our own baptism.
Then maybe people will ask...not to see Jesus, but to know what it is that makes us walk this way. The answer will be Jesus, and it will probably surprise them.
