Today’s three readings show us a number of people who encounter or see Jesus in radically different ways. First we have seven disciples, who’ve been fishing all night without success, unexpectedly noticing Jesus on the lake shore. He shouts to them because he can see a shoal of fish which, in the dawn light, is invisible to the fishermen. On his instructions they put out their nets one final time and haul in a bumper catch. They beach their boat and Jesus cooks breakfast. Even though this is one of Jesus’ somewhat mysterious resurrection appearances, the whole scene seems commonplace, even domestic.

Then we have Saul’s famous encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus – an event which has led many people to wrongly think that they’re not truly converted because they haven’t had a similar experience. So what exactly does Saul hear and see? Well, he hears the voice of Jesus asking, “Why are you persecuting me?” but sees nothing tangible – only a dazzling light which seems to penetrate the very depths of his being. Of course we only have Saul’s word for all this – although we are told that the men accompanying him heard a rumble like thunder. What we do know is that this experience was so overwhelming that it completely changed the direction of Saul’s life, even his name.

Finally our reading from Revelation gives us a flavour of the vision John had while he was imprisoned on the island of Patmos: he sees a lamb standing on a heavenly throne, surrounded by elders and mystical creatures. The atmosphere is one of noisy praise and worship.

Taken in isolation these experience would give us three varied, even irreconcilable, views of Jesus. The first would give us a picture of a man who got up early, a landlubber who had occasional insights into the world of fishing, someone who was a dab hand at the barbecue. The second shows that he might appear to us suddenly, powerfully and in ways which can have a huge impact on our lives; that he can speak to us but that we might not see him as he does. And the third gives us a more rounded, if mysterious, portrait of Jesus in glory. All of them are realistic and true, but none of them is by any means complete. We need to stitch them together if we’re not going to end up with an unbalanced or distorted notion of who Jesus is.

Of course those fishermen had known Jesus over a period of three years so they just slotted that morning’s encounter with him into their portfolios – although these resurrection appearances, with Jesus coming and going at will, even through closed doors, must have been disturbing. For John, too, this vision was but one of many he had while in exile; if he was also, as he may well have been, the ‘beloved disciple’ of the Gospel, them he would have had a rich archive to mine in order to build up his image of Jesus. For Saul (later Paul) things were more problematic: yes, he had this encounter with Jesus on the road and, we are led to believe, several others later on. But he’d never met the human Jesus himself, he couldn’t listen to his voice on a CD or watch him on a video; he could only rely on other peoples’ tales.

When you think about it, our experience of Jesus is closest to Paul’s. Even for the few of us who may have had a dramatic spiritual encounter, what we know about Jesus (and, in fact, of God) basically comes from what we’ve read in the Bible, picked up in church, seen on television or elicited from the Internet.

The problem is that, unless we’ve done a lot of digging (or should I say ‘researching’?) for ourselves, what we have learned about Jesus will depend on what we’ve been taught – which may be incomplete or even inaccurate. It seems to me that preachers and teachers and the people who put together Sunday School materials have a tendency to focus on the bits of Scripture which present Jesus as a “nice” person and which seem fairly easy to understand (although there may actually be important but easily-missed meanings lurking beneath the surface). I think we tend to shy away from the pictures of Jesus that don’t fit into the neat framework we’ve built, pictures which we may even find upsetting.

It’s therefore very easy to end up with a picture of Jesus which is at best incomplete and at worst downright wrong. For instance some people can’t cope with the idea of miracles so snip them out of the Gospel narrative; what they’re left with is Jesus as a good teacher and example but little else. There are folk who struggle with the Virgin Birth so take away something of Jesus being the unique Son of God. Others may find Jesus a bit too earthy and homespun to really be God, and like to detach him from the hurly-burly of human life. Yet others have such a picture of “Jesus meek and mild” that they can’t stomach the thought of him whipping the traders out of the Temple. There’s the story of the Transfiguration which strains at our imagination; and of course many people would like to get rid of the Crucifixion, the Resurrection or the Ascension: all of them stories which challenge belief but which are absolutely central to Jesus’ story. Perhaps we should all ask ourselves: do we have a complete picture of Jesus? And, indeed, of God himself? We almost certainly don’t and, if that’s the case. we will need to do some work to fill in the gaps.

I’d like to pass on two more thoughts before I close. One is that we may need to ‘zoom into’ some parts of our image of Jesus at different stages in our lives. For instance, new parents may find it particularly helpful to think of him as a baby or a boy; people who feel excluded from society could be encouraged by looking at the stories of him talking to people ignored by everyone else; folk who are lonely might like to concentrate on the Emmaus Road story and think of him as their accompanying friend; those of us in ministry might learn from Jesus’ teaching techniques as well as heeding his warnings to the scribes and Pharisees; oppressed women might see him treating females with respect; above all, people who are suffering can reflect on Jesus’ suffering on the Cross, people who have lost hope can think of darkness being replaced by light on Jesus’ resurrection morning, people who see only uncontrolled chaos in the world might do well to consider John’s vision of Jesus as supreme king of the universe. So yes, I can see good reasons for sometimes focusing on specific parts of our picture of Jesus; but we need to have the full portrait as well.

The other thought I’d like to touch on is that some people seem to find it difficult to build up a picture of Jesus in their minds: they may be longing to “see” him but he seems to be elusive, even though they’ve read their Bibles or heard people speaking about him. I don’t know why this should be the case; is there something in their background which stops them seeing Jesus, are they so sceptical about religion that they just can’t believe, are they unable to ‘ditch’ unhelpful and false notions of Jesus which keep creeping into their minds? I don’t know – but, for some mysterious reason, some people do seem to find faith in Jesus easier than others. All we can do is pray and persevere.

When I was nine years old, I started going the local Crusaders Bible class, which had a formative influence on my Christian life. The Crusaders’ Union had a badge which boys gained after attending for ten Sundays without a break; it now looks very dated but we wore it with pride. The badge’s design was inspired by the ‘Armour of God’ passage in Ephesians: it was in the shape of a shield with a cross in the middle, a sword diagonally across it, and a crown and helmet in two corners. There was one part to the badge that wasn’t included in the lapel version: a motto in ancient Greek – Crusaders clearly saw itself as quite an upmarket organisation! It was in fact a quotation from the book of Hebrews: ἀφορῶντες εἰς Ἰησοῦν which means “Looking unto Jesus”. Today the organisation is known as “Urban Saints” but the motto, apart from now being in English, hasn’t changed.

And perhaps that’s the clue. Despite all the difficulties we may have in perceiving Jesus, in finding out about him, in bringing together the varied pictures we have of him, in encountering him in any meaningful way, perhaps our first priority is to try and look for, at and to Jesus. For there’s surely one surefire route to never seeing Jesus – which is by not taking the time or making the effort of trying to do so. Yes, we may be like those six blind men, each attempting to make sense of the little bit of Jesus we have touched, felt or even seen, and possibly coming to wrong understandings of who he is. But if we seriously “turn our eyes upon Jesus” and look him, we may find himself revealing his glory is both expected and surprising ways.