We can offer Christ to all through scripture, songs, poetry

Reflections on the Church:
Meeting Jesus Christ

In this Epiphany season, it may be important to remember that “Offering Christ to All,” our vision for the Southwest Texas Conference, is not original with us. The story of the magi who traveled to the manger to see Jesus has been the motif for missionary efforts to strangers in every era.
But how do we “offer Christ to all”? How do we come into contact with Jesus today?
If Jesus is raised from the dead, he is not available in the same way that he was when he was introduced to others by his disciples (See John 2).
Here are some ways that come to mind:
> We read about Jesus in scripture. Many people over the world have been touched by the living Christ through simply reading about Jesus’ life, actions, teachings and death and resurrection.
> We are touched by Jesus in the songs we sing. From “Jesus Loves Me” forward to “Fairest Lord Jesus” and Messiah to contemporary Christian music of all kinds, we are touched by the Risen Crucified One.
> Similarly, Jesus meets us in poetry. I have a dog-eared volume of George Herbert’s poems in which I have found inspiration for and critique of my life, as if from Jesus himself.
John Wesley believed that the Lord’s Supper was a saving as well as a sanctifying sacrament. That means on those occasions that we are alert and needy, Christ himself can be experienced in the receiving of the sacrament and all that surrounds it. (Someone once said that the most powerful words in the liturgy are the phrase “for you.”)
Christ meets us in other sacramental occasions, too, such as services of death and resurrection and weddings.
My first mental image of Jesus came from the simplistic artwork that accompanied Sunday school curriculum when I was a child. I believe I met Jesus in formative ways in those years. It is still true that we are often enchanted by a variety of visual representations of Jesus.
I have met Jesus in the reading of theology. I always understood perfectly Wesley’s Aldersgate experience of having his heart “strangely warmed” while someone was reading the Preface to Martin Luther’s commentary of Romans! Reading theology has been a kind of prayer for me, as I think with the writer about the meaning of belief in the Triune God. Concepts and creeds can be windows upon Christ, too.
I believe that I have met Christ in others. I have been visited by Christ in my limited experiences of ministry with the poor. Jesus has spoken to me through the questions of children under the age of 3. I have found—or been found by—Christ in the witness of a precious few men and women whose lives really were a living doxology.
I have heard people who claimed to have encountered Christ in more or less direct ways, in mystical experiences of various kinds. I don’t discount these out of hand, and I always want to see if the envisioned Christ is consistent with the biblical Jesus. God really is a God of surprises after all.
It is my belief that God came to us up close and personal in Jesus. In Advent, we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Well, he has come. But he is not only coming again, as we pray in the Great Thanksgiving. He comes again and again and again.
God uses the means above and many others to continue to offer us Christ. Maybe if we reflect upon these experiences, we will know more genuinely how we can be the ambassadors through whom God offers Christ to others.