John chapter 1 has some poignant things to say about the world’s failure to recognise Jesus when he came: “He was in the world, and the world came into existence through him, but the world did not recognize him. He came to his own people, but they did not accept him. But to the ones who did accept him, the ones who believed in his name, he gave the right to become God’s children.” It is a continuing theme: we do not expect to see God in our daily lives, so we fail to see him or accept him.
Jesus told his followers that whenever we see “the least of these” his brothers and give him food to eat or something to drink or clothes or care or attention, we will be doing it to him. But in practice when we see a beggar or a tramp we tend to cross to the other side of the road, and when someone is sent to prison we tend to avoid him. Every now and them we might do a kind act, but the vast majority of our opportunities to help slide idly by.
If Jesus came back tomorrow, I suspect that a lot of us would fail to recognise him. His ideas would be far too radical for us middle-of-the-road Christians. Dropping everything to follow him would be way too risky and embarrassing. His confrontational attitude towards highly regarded pillars of respectability would be frankly offensive. In fact, we do not have to wait until he returns. The choices we are making today indicate how we will respond.