Seeing Jesus

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

“What is it?” Philly said.

  “If you asked Brenda right now, she would go to lunch with you.”

  “Oh,” Philly said aloud. Then thinking, “I kinda want to, but kinda don’t want to.” He twisted his mouth as he looked at Jesus.

  “Yes, but fear is all that holds you back,” Jesus said.

  Philly looked at his guest chair and the disruptive, supernatural visitor sitting there and made an emotional lunge into danger. He reached for his phone and dialed Brenda’s extension.

  “Hello, Philly,” Brenda said, the caller I.D. preempting any surprise that she might have felt when she picked up.

  “Hey, Brenda. What do you say I buy you lunch?”

  “Wow. That would be great,” she said. “When you going?”

  “Anytime you’re ready,” he said.

  “Okay, just give me a minute to save and close a few things and I’ll meet you down at the front door,” she said.

  After goodbyes, Philly hung up the phone and remembered something. He looked at Jesus, consciously limiting his communication to thought. “When you first saw Brenda yesterday, you reached up for her face and your hand disappeared,” he said. “What was that?”

  Jesus stood up, as Philly did. “Well, I wanted to caress her, to let her know how beautiful she is to me and how much I love her,” he said. “But I can’t physically touch anyone in this present age. I rely on people to touch others for me.”

  For Philly, this was two cargo loads of information at once. Jesus was apparently passionately in love with Brenda, which made him want to touch her, as he wanted to touch other people. However, he had to do that through human hands. To a person more familiar with the Gospels, or more accustomed to having Jesus around, these two notions might have simply swirled together like coffee and cream. But Philly was well out of his depth. All he could do was respond to his own experience.

  “But you touched me last night, when I like freaked out and cried,” he thought, as he stepped through his office door.

  “I touched you because you wanted me to touch you,” Jesus said. “Though you didn’t say anything, I knew you wanted comfort. Your heart had opened a deep well of pain so I could bring relief to that pain. Since you were conscious of my presence with you, you easily welcomed my participation in your emotional purging. You felt my touch as if it were a physical touch, just the same way that you’ve been given the gift of seeing and hearing me.”

  When they both got on the elevator, Philly tried not to look at Jesus while he answered. Walking and not staring at Jesus during this lesson, took all the concentration Philly could muster. Absorbing the significance of what Jesus was saying overtaxed Philly’s spiritually atrophied soul. He stopped by the front door and looked around the lobby, only half-aware of for whom he was looking.

  Brenda came down the stairs from her second floor desk. Philly saw her face and remembered first how much he liked her face, it’s hint of girlish freckles, bright blue eyes, china doll lips that stretched easily into a thin smile, and her elfish chin. Then he remembered, of course, about lunch with Brenda and forgot what Jesus had been saying.

  As they chatted, agreeing on where to eat, with Philly winning the battle over who was buying, he saw again that look on Jesus’s face as he walked along looking at Brenda. This time, Philly understood that the fraternal familiarity on Jesus’s face came naturally, because he enjoyed being with Brenda, as he enjoyed being with Philly. By now, Philly was convinced that Jesus genuinely liked him and was not as angry as he had expected. Internally, however, Philly stopped short of telling himself that Jesus loved him; unfamiliar with love at that depth, given his life-long drought of affection, broken only by occasional contact with his grandma.

  “You seem different these days,” Brenda said, looking Philly full in the face. “Is it just your grandma? ‘Cause I see something else going on with you.”

  Philly resisted the temptation to look past Brenda to Jesus, knowing that she had essentially just flung open a door and shouted, “Come on in and tell me the whole story.” He didn’t need to look at Jesus to know his reaction to that opening. Philly didn’t want the extra pressure.

  Edging forward in the line at the burrito bar they had chosen for lunch, Philly made a deposit on full disclosure. “There is something going on,” he said, uncertain how to go on from there.

  Brenda, being more relationship savvy, knew what to do. “Good, let’s get our food and you can tell me when we find a place to sit.”

  “Good.” Philly sounded considerably less invested in that word than Brenda had.

  Philly did have the sense to order his meal in a bowl, instead of the big two-handed burrito, maintaining at least that level of commitment to actually talking. What exactly he would say remained the topic of an intense internal debate. When he sat down and Jesus sat in the chair to his right—which happened to be pulled out enough to not require a ghost mover—Philly finally looked at his constant companion for moral support. Thus he crossed another threshold in his resolve to include someone in his unique spiritual experience.

  Brenda sat down, arranged her bowl and cup, and opened the floor for Philly, with nearly clinical affect. “Go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind these days.”

  In this relationship, an invitation for Philly to control the verbal agenda constituted an unfamiliar maneuver, like being required to write with his opposite hand. Adding that to eating at the same time, on top of the controversial content of what he had to say, Philly almost shook with nerves. Jesus caught his attention and offered a reassuring smile.

  “Well,” Philly said, swallowing his first small bite of beans and sour cream, “you know how religious my grandma is?” The question mark allowed him time for another, bigger bite.

  “Umhm.” Brenda acknowledged his opening remarks with her mouth full.

  “Well, she always used to tell me that she prayed for me. Sometimes when she said it, it seemed pretty intense, you know?”

  Brenda nodded, intrigued at where this might be going.

  Philly took another bite, corralling a fly-away shred of lettuce with his lips. Then he realized what an advantage the food offered. He had an excuse to stop and figure out what to say. He chewed thoughtfully, looking primarily at his food.

  Brenda chewed and waited, looking intensely at Philly.

  Feeling the pressure, Philly picked up the pace. “I knew she prayed all the time, but I never really put any thought into whether it did any good. But the other night, when I visited her, I was feeling really desperate about her coma, and all, and didn’t know what to say t’ her.” He foraged a mouth full of chicken, but attempted to keep talking with his lips pursed. “So I asked her to pray for me, since she was not there to talk to me, ‘cause I really missed her.”

  Here, Philly looked at Brenda, but regretted it. Her look of consternation slowed his resolve, like a cold, winter morning slows an old man.

  “Go ahead, Philly. I’m listening,” she said.

  Jesus piped in here. “She’s not mad about what you’re saying, Philly. She’s just anxious to figure out what you’re talking about.”

  The latter encouragement trumped Brenda’s, but since she didn’t hear Jesus, she assumed she had provided the needed lubrication.

  Philly continued. “I really just said it because I missed her and was desperate. I didn’t expect anything really to happen,” he said, hesitating a bit. “But, something did happen.”

  Brenda still looked intense. “You told me on the phone that you asked your grandma to pray for you. Now you’re saying that something happened?”

  Philly nodded, glad to recognize what he had intended to say, in Brenda’s reflection of it. He pressed on. “I’ve been having this . . . sort of . . . experience . . . like sort of a vision, kind of, since the morning after I saw her.”

  “A vision?” Brenda said, sounding either incredulous or excited. Philly couldn’t tell which.

  “Well, I don’t know if that’s what you call it.” Philly fal
tered.

  Jesus offered some help. “You could call it a revelation.”

  Philly didn’t look at him, but said, “I guess it’s sort of a revelation, really.”

  “Really?” Brenda said. She had stopped eating.

  Philly, on the other hand, sought comfort in his burrito bowl. He chewed vigorously on a large mouthful, not wanting it to all get cold before he could enjoy it.

  He continue with his mouth still full. “Since yesterday morning, I’ve been seeing Jesus with me all the time.”

  “Cheeses?” Brenda said, watching a bit of shredded cheddar dangle from the corner of Philly’s mouth.

  To be fair, Brenda’s parents had never been religious and she had only gone to church for weddings and funerals, except for a few visits with church-going friends, who invited her to special events. She had contributed an indeterminate number of points to various friends’ Sunday school or youth group contests, but she knew much more about cheeses than she did about Jesus.

  Philly swallowed. Jesus was laughing.

  “I said ‘Jesus,’” Philly said, sounding a bit distracted. He was trying to reconcile himself with Jesus laughing so irreverently.

  Brenda took a bite of her lunch and began to chew purposefully. She too could use her food as a delay tactic.

  Philly’s heart began to roll down a long slow slope toward his greatest fear, that he would never be understood, that he would always be alone in the world.

  A memory hovered just beyond Philly’s consciousness, pushing him down that lonely slope.

  Philly had been a chess prodigy as a boy. His third grade math teacher introduced him to the game, as the sponsor of the school chess club. Within weeks, Philly was the top rated player in the club, though he had only learned the game a few months before. Many disgruntled fifth graders stormed away from a match with the little, round-faced third-grader, who said very little before, during, or after, dismantling them.

  If you prompted him, Philly could recount to you the time he came home to beg his ma and dad to take him to a youth chess tournament downtown. After his mother finally relented, making the drive down to Navy Pier, she stumbled through the registration and matriculation process, nearly missing the first match, which would have ended the entire day for him. But, once he won the first match, Philly had only to follow the direction of the organizers, to the next board that awaited his conquest. His mother huffed and puffed after him, dazed by the whole event, so that even she was lost for words. When Philly won the tournament, collecting a trophy nearly as tall as him, he smiled for the first time that day. He had done it and done it on his own. Even his mother couldn’t, and didn’t even try to, take any credit.

  Not until he got home from that first tournament did his ma catch her stride. “This is insane,” she said to her husband. “Driving downtown, standing in lines, filling out forms and then waiting around all day for him to finish, I’m not doing that again,” she said.

  Philly tried to change her mind and even tried to move his always-laconic father. But his parents told him that it was enough for him to play at school. There they didn’t have to be involved and there they wouldn’t have to explain how their son could be such a wizard at chess.

  The defining moment came over dinner one night, when Philly was ten years old. He tried to get them to sign a permission slip that would allow him to go to a tournament for local schools. At last, they surrendered to his constant badgering and whining, but each of his parents said something in that conversation that impacted Philly’s soul.

  Ever looking to make a joke, his father had said, “You know, Philly, we might just have to admit that we found you in the ash can behind the house and didn’t really bring you home from the hospital, if you keep this up.” He punctuated his remark with a harmless guffaw.

  His mother responded, “I know. I just can’t understand all this sweat and tears over a board game. But then I never pretended to understand you, Philly, not even from the start.”

  With these statements, his parents sealed the feeling he had harbored all of his conscious life, that his parents didn’t understand him and neither did anyone else. In essence, he discovered that he was truly alone in the world. Now, here he sat across from the woman whom he knew best in the world, outside of his own family, and he fully expected to discover that she too couldn’t understand him and would leave him alone with his delusions.

  Brenda looked around, rotating her eyes, while keeping her head stationary. “Are you saying that you’re seeing Jesus here, right now?”

  Philly looked at Jesus, who smiled and nodded. Philly looked back at Brenda and said courageously, “Yes. He’s right there.”

  Brenda glanced in the direction Philly was looking and then looked back at Philly. “I don’t know what to say about that,” she said.

  Philly chewed another bite, raised his eyebrows and said, “I know, it’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard of too. And it’s happening to me,” he said, a rare bit of animation elevating his voice.

  He could see Brenda weighing the spooky and disturbing options, her eyes rolling back and forth, trying not to look at the empty chair.

  “I could prove it to you,” Philly said.

  Brenda looked at him, more frightened by this offer than by Philly’s unsubstantiated claim. “How would you do that?”

  “He could tell me something about you that I don’t know.” He kept his eyes on Jesus during this challenge, monitoring whether he had overstepped his bounds.

  “Like what?” Brenda said.

  Philly, still staring at Jesus, raised his eyebrows in question, turning the onus over to his apparition.

  Jesus said, looking at Brenda, “Like, that you had a doll when you were six years old, that you named Nancy, and the neighbor boy threw her into a yard with a big, mean dog and the dog chewed her up.”

  Philly repeated this narrative and watched Brenda’s face.

  She stopped chewing; then she shivered, as she slipped back into that dreadful memory. “Oh my,” she said.

  Philly was pretty sure that she meant, “Oh, my God,” but had edited, considering present company.

  When tears began to well up in her eyes, Philly began to regret his little demonstration. He looked at Jesus.

  Jesus assured him. “She can take it. It’s just a bit of a shock at first. Mostly she’s stunned at revisiting that memory.”

  Philly nodded.

  Brenda saw this gesture, which followed, what seemed to be, Philly listening to his invisible friend. The impact of the notion that Philly was communicating directly to Jesus suddenly toppled Brenda’s defenses.

  “Oh, my God, Philly. How is this possible?”

  Philly shrugged. “Grandma prayed,” he said.

  Chapter Five

  Back at work that afternoon, Philly tussled with his distracted mind, searching for certainty where little seemed available. Lunch with Brenda had ended in a muddle of uneaten food, stunned silence and brooding. Philly’s only assurance had come from looking at Jesus’s face. Jesus clearly had anticipated Brenda’s response and harbored no fear of the long-term impact. Throughout the stalled afternoon, Philly looked up from his work to find Jesus’s comforting smile. Everyone could use a serene supporter, ready and waiting with an encouraging smile, throughout the day.

  As comforting as Jesus’s smile was, and as reinforcing as the conversation on the commute home, Philly still longed to share his wonder with another mortal. Brenda had not responded to a gently probing email late in the day and Philly felt more alone in his Jesus experience than he had before telling her. Therefore, right in the middle of his bus transfer, Philly changed direction. He headed up to the train station at Belmont, where he could catch the line that would get him within half a mile of the hospital. That this would leave him with a substantial walk didn’t faze the sedentary thirty-eight-year-old, in light of his urgency to see Grandma.

  His impulsive redirection didn’t include a consultation with Jesus. Philly just assu
med that Jesus would continue to follow him and, of course, he was right. Jesus spent a good deal of the train ride reaching toward an old woman who seemed to have some mental illness, but once again his hands disappeared from Philly’s view when he did this. The phenomenon annoyed Philly, mostly because he didn’t understand. To him it just seemed a weirder depth to an already weird experience.

  Philly missed the stop he intended to use, but the next option was only slightly worse, leaving him crossing back over the North Branch of the Chicago River. Jesus seemed reticent once again to leave the latest object of his affection, but he also clearly enjoyed the river park they passed on the way, smiling effusively at children playing, and soaking in the late afternoon sun.

  Philly chuckled at Jesus, when he smiled at the woman at the hospital information desk with passionate love in his eyes. Philly was accumulating the impression of Jesus as a mooning romantic, which amused him, the way a father might enjoy his son’s fascination with butterflies or beetles.

  On the patient floor, Philly slowed as he approached the door of Grandma’s room, then he stopped dead still as an orderly backed out of the room, rolling a bed with him. Philly’s heart restarted when he saw that the passenger on the bed was Grandma’s roommate, who lay sedately on one side, apparently recovering from some sort of surgery. As she passed, Philly smiled and nodded to the woman and the orderly, but Jesus tried to maneuver into position to touch the woman. Jesus’s handicapped arms missed the chance and Philly shook his head, as he resumed his pilgrimage to Grandma’s bedside.

  Immediately, Philly noticed the absence of the other woman in the room, with the intangible space vacated by someone he had not even seen the last time. For Philly, this meant more room to feel the grief of his loss. He discovered the extent to which that incalculable impact of strangers nearby had stifled his emotions on his previous visit. At the foot of her bed, Philly stopped and stared at Grandma. In the low light, his eyes not yet adjusted, he couldn’t see any movement, not even breathing.

  Jesus turned and stepped silently to the near side of the bed. He leaned close, but seemed to intentionally withhold his touch, perhaps to spare Philly the discomfort he felt over the disappearing hands. Jesus’s bold intentionality spurred Philly beyond his morbid grief. He looked at Jesus and then walked gingerly to the other side of the bed, this time forsaking the chair.