In every other religion we have to go to God. In every other religion God's holiness meant that we couldn't get close to God until we, ourselves, became holy. So in every other religion, God is way, way up there, and we are down here, and some of us are way, way down here. The job of the priests in all those religions is to mediate, to appease God through offering sacrifices so that God will like us, and we will be acceptable to God.

But in Christianity the proclamation is just the opposite. It says we don't have to find our way to God, because God has found his way to us. What is unique, Montefiore said, is that God seeks us and God finds us. That is why the classical, prototypical Christian experience is, "I have been found." "I once was lost, but now am found."