On three occasions in John’s Gospel Jesus challenges people with the words, “Who/what are you looking for?”

The first challenge is to two of John the Baptist’s disciples who start following Jesus at a distance when John declares him to be the “Lamb of God”. He challenges them, “What are you looking for?” No following at a distance allowed here. “Come and see.” They spend time with him and discover Jesus to be the Christ.

The second group is the soldiers who come to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Who are you looking for?” “Jesus of Nazareth.” “That’s me.” They’ve got the right historical person but are looking for a criminal, not the Son of God who is about to give his life for the sins of the world.

The third encounter is with just one person. As Mary stands in the garden on that Sunday morning speaking with an angel, she turns and sees Jesus who says to her, “Who are you looking for?” Why is Mary looking for the living among the dead?

John challenges us in his Gospel to carefully consider who Jesus is and to ask a related question, “Who am I looking for?” A miracle worker or the Christ? A good man done wrong by or the Son of God? A dead man or the One who has defeated death? In prison and in hospital many people are looking for the miracle worker, the magic Mr Fix It Man.

The predominant model of chaplaincy operating in Australia declares that a Chaplain brings no agenda into the pastoral encounter. The chaplain simply responds to the patient and helps the person find their own meaning and spiritual experience. This really is a nonsense. If you saw the Compass eight part series on hospital chaplaincy you will have seen each Chaplain bringing their own very clear agenda into the pastoral context.

Bringing no agenda is not just nonsense, it is also dangerous. The Chaplain who responds to the desire for a Mr Fix It, by trying to help discover one, will be doing the patient or prisoner a great disservice. The Christian Chaplain has the knowledge of who Jesus is and, like John in his Gospel, can challenge the notion of trying to find a Mr Fix It. The Christian Chaplain is one who has been challenged themselves and has come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that by believing, has life.

That life, the life of the risen Christ, lived out in the life of the Christian person, is what the Christian Chaplain brings to the pastoral encounter. We saw in the first of the Compass programs on Hospital Chaplains, a man who said to the Chaplain, “I’m dying. I know I need to do something, but I don’t know what it is. Please tell me.” The Chaplain then led this man in a prayer of confession and of commitment to Jesus.

Good news in hard places is only good when the compassion of Christ challenges us to see God’s truths and not image a god of our own making, or try to shape God to fit our own situation.

Christian Chaplaincy enjoys the insights of a psychotherapeutic understanding of people and their relationships and uses that to help people in hard places follow the One who has revealed Himself in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, who is alive.