A salesman rings the bell at a suburban home. The door is opened by a 9-year-old boy, puffing on a long, fat cigar.

Trying to hide his astonishment, the salesman asks, “Is your mother home?”

The boy takes the cigar out of his mouth, flicks the ashes and snaps, “What do you think?”

Sometimes what is right in front of you is so confounding that you end up saying something stupid or obvious. In John’s Gospel, it is crucial to recognize Jesus and respond appropriately.

What people expect to see in Jesus and what they actually see are not always the same. Remember when Jesus asked, “who do you say that I am?” and Peter says you are the Messiah. Then Jesus talked about suffering and dying and Peter rebukes Jesus and Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me Satan!”

As you search for Jesus you meet a man who spends his time healing, forgiving, strengthening, suffering with and for others. As you get to know him it means relearning everything.

Jesus learned through experience what obedience to God costs, and so he became the one to bring us to God; as the high priest he can take us into the holiest place once and for all.

Albert Schweitzer once wrote that what matters is the Jesus alive today, the Jesus you get to know as you live and struggle with him. He comes to us as one unknown without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, as he came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same words, “Follow me!” and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time.

He commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in this fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience, who he is.

Mike Gold, a philosopher of sorts, wrote, back in the 1920s, “A Jew Without Knowing It.” He described what happened on a day when he wandered out of the Jewish ghetto in New York. He had been warned about “the wrong kind,” and prejudice.

Some older boys saw him and sneered, “Are you a ‘kike?’ ”

Bewildered, Mike said, “I don’t know.”

Tauntingly they raised their voices, “Are you a Christ-killer?”

Speechless, Mike cried, “I don’t know!”

They beat him up and told him,“ Don’t ever come into Christian territory again!”

At home, his mother asked what happened? He said, “I don’t know.”

“Who did this to you?” “I don’t know.”

Soothing him in her rocker, Mike whispered in her ear, “Mama, who is Christ?”

Mike Gold died in 1967 in obscurity and poverty. His last meals were taken at a Catholic Charity house in New York City run by Dorothy Day. She once said, “Mike Gold eats every day at the table of Christ, but he will probably never accept him because of the first day he heard his name.”

You are to live in such a way that Christ can be seen.