This chamber, the largest by far, had a dais in the center with various levels built onto it, each laden with piles of bread and goblets of wine and grape juice. I knelt in front of it and silently considered what sat before me. Jesus said the juice was his blood and the bread his body and that he wanted us to eat and drink it in remembrance of him. I usually did this with other people. I had never been in a place like this and taken it alone.
I took a piece of the bread in my hand. “In remembrance,” I said. And I remembered many things he had done for me. My family came to mind. My parents have been good parents, and they would be quick to say that this is because of their friendship with Jesus. My parents-in-law would say the same thing, and I had to admit the blessing that had come with having parents and in-laws who get along so well. That must come from Jesus too, I knew. The way Krista and I had met was obviously more than coincidence. I remembered so clearly the moment when I knew I was falling in love with her. I had tricked her into a date, and as we drove the streets of San Francisco she bit a grape in half, put the halves on her eyes, and grabbed my arm so I would look. Then she shouted, “My eyes! The acid is burning my eyes!” I thought, I could love a woman like this. She was beautiful, and not just her eyes, or the curl in her hair, or the way she walked, or the million other pieces of beauty that added up in her every motion and curve. She was beautiful inside, too, in a way that I had seen in few people. I don’t think she has ever told a lie. She gets nauseous just hearing them. She’s the kind of person who speaks only the clearest, most certain truths, and she’s unswervingly faithful in relationships. And she would lay that virtue at the feet of Jesus, because he said, “I am the Truth.” The fact that this exceptional woman—beautiful, funny, intelligent, moral, and deeply spiritual—would meet some guy working at a comic book store and even consider him as a possibility was nothing short of miraculous.
I could walk through my many friends, of course, and my sisters and brother. I could mention my daughters, like some mirror image of our child lost to miscarriage. Zoey had been breech, the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. The doctors tried everything they could to get her turned around, but nothing worked. In the end they performed a C-section and she came to us healthy and well. She has grown into a young lady of surpassing brilliance and charm. She thinks she’s a horse, she reads books without ceasing, she writes stories, she teaches me new things about life. It could have so easily gone another way.
When Krista was in labor with Allie, our second daughter, the doctor noticed that Allie’s heartbeat became erratic with each contraction, so another C-section was necessary. The hole in Allie’s heart was big enough and noisy enough that the medical interns crowded into our room to listen to it. A heart specialist took a look after she was born and told us to wait, so we did. The hole closed up by itself without surgery, without incident. Allie is a ball of giggling energy, a ballerina, a singer, a comedian, a cuddler, an irreplaceable part of our family.
An unending stream of blessings attributable to Jesus came to mind. Our house, the people at our church, the way he had walked me through changes in my own life and taught me to be a better man, the power he had given me to overcome evil around me and in my own heart. All of this without taking into account the stars, the intricate veins on a leaf, the complicated biology of a single cell. All these things were from him too, all these things were worthy of remembrance, of thankfulness, of praise.
And then, of course, there was this bread. His body. I took the bread and dipped it in the cup. His blood. I put it in my mouth, chewing carefully. Here was a reminder that when I least deserved it, when I was his enemy, he died so that I could live. He died so that the entire world order could be restructured, so the dead could live, so that the universe could be restored. He died so that I could live a victorious life, so that I could become like him and no longer be held captive to my own nature and desires but could instead break out of those for my deeper desires, those amazing, wonderful, transcendent actions that I so badly wanted to do but couldn’t without his help. He died so that I could live his life.
As I finished the bread, I saw a thousand ghostly images of others around the table, taking the bread and the wine, praying, eating. All of us—fishermen, comic book retailers, construction workers, emperors, prostitutes, Turks, Greeks, rock stars, garbage collectors, people of every possible race, people from remote tribes and monstrous cities, elderly and youthful, the exceedingly rich and the inconceivably poor, all of us following this one man. Not because of who he was once upon a time, but because of who he is today, and because of who he promises we can become. Because he has promised us life overflowing and an end to pain. Because he has the words of life that lead us to God, that lead us to himself.
Moved by this procession of the ages, I took another piece of bread, a larger one this time, and I ate and drank together with my brothers and sisters from across time and space. As they slowly faded, I felt someone behind me place strong hands on my head. I didn’t move. I still had my hood on, so I could only see directly in front of me, but I knew whose hands they were. Fear and awe welled up from within me, and a strange sensation of privilege that he would choose to show himself to me in this way. His hands—although I couldn’t see them—felt real. Not imagined. Not hallucinated. They were his real hands.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. And he prayed for me. He prayed a blessing over me, a prayer for strength and protection, a prayer that I would do the things that he had set out for me, a prayer for courage and hope and deeper relationship. “You have a question for me.”
The question seemed different now. It had been about justice. It had been about being wronged, and about where God had been while I was hurt. But in the light of all I had just seen and remembered, the question seemed almost . . . petty. I felt his encouragement, though. I knew that he stood ready to answer.
“If you had been here,” I said, “my baby would still be alive.” I couldn’t bring myself to say it as a question. Where were you? If you love us so much, how could you let this happen?
Jesus was silent for a long time, his hands still on my head. I felt him lean down near my ear, and then he spoke quietly. “I am the resurrection and the life. Belief in me brings life, even if you die. And for those who live and believe in me, they will never die.” He paused. Then he asked me, “Do you believe this?”
Did I believe? If I didn’t believe that he had power over life and death, why would I be angry? There would be no point in being angry at a powerless God, because it wouldn’t be his fault that he couldn’t intervene. My anger and pain, then, were actually evidences of a deep certainty that Jesus has power over life and death. I believed with all my heart that he could bring life into any circumstance. I simply didn’t understand why he had chosen not to do so with my child. The otherness of someone who has power over death suddenly hit me. Here was Jesus, God in the flesh, who had come to earth not to condemn the world but to save it. To save us, his creation, the world and people he had brought into existence merely by desiring it. And here I was, a few decades old, thinking I could tell him how to save us. Who was I to say such things to him? I couldn’t even help an old woman overcome a fever.
Back in the synagogue he had said that he had come to bring healing to the brokenhearted and freedom for the captives. And we had been told from our earliest ancestors that he would come and do away with sickness and death and pain and take us to live with God. A sudden certainty washed over me that my child had entered into his presence in a more profound way than even this moment when he stood here physically beside me, his hands on my head. She was safely home in a way that I was not. And now he stood near me asking if I believed that he was the resurrection—the ultimate defeat of death. Did I believe that he was the answer to every pain-filled question I had?
“Yes, Lord,” I said, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” Then my story spilled out of my mouth as I breathlessly shared it all with
him—the bleeding, the hospital, the ultrasound, and the deep loss echoing in the empty places of my heart. When I had spoken it all, when it had poured out until I had nothing left to say, I felt his hands tremble. I heard a sound, as if he had been about to speak. A catch in his breath or a broken word. I paused to hear what he would say. But he didn’t speak. Instead he began to weep.
Jesus’ tears fell with mine. This wasn’t some distant power. He was hurting with me. He mourned our loss. Whatever his control in the situation, however he had chosen to act or not act, I knew he hadn’t made that decision lightly. I felt a fundamental shift inside of me, like tectonic plates grinding back into place. The sorrow hadn’t left, but the anger drained away.
We talked for a long time in that small chamber, the candlelight flickering over the bread and wine. I remembered my imaginary Jesuses and I looked through the narrow crack in the wall, but they were gone, done at last. I hadn’t said good-bye to them and I was glad, because they were less than a shadow of the real Christ. They were a ghastly insult to the true Jesus. I took another piece of bread and dipped it in the wine and ate it slowly. I could see that another dark corridor led from this room, presumably back to where I started.
“I don’t want to leave.”
“You can’t live the rest of your life here,” Jesus said, and his voice sounded kind and amused. “An ambassador never remains in his home country for long.” He removed his hands from my head. “My followers must live in the world. My message is for the world, after all.”
I pulled my hood back and tried to catch a glimpse of him with the corner of my eyes. I was worried what I might see. If I saw nothing, what would that mean? And if I saw him, would I be able to handle that? I turned, slowly, but I didn’t see him. I could feel him near me still, like when someone walks up behind you and you haven’t turned to see their face, but you sense them. A certainty of his presence—a stir of air, maybe, or the lingering memory of his hands on my head.“Do you have something more to say to me?” I asked him.
“It always has to be something new with you, doesn’t it?” he asked, and I realized how true this was. I wasn’t satisfied with the insights he gave me through the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and my prayer times. It wasn’t enough to hear from his messengers in church or to see him revealed in nature. I wanted more moments like this one—these rare, inexplicable visions. But even as I thought this I realized it was a difference in kind, not in quality. I’ve had mystical experiences many times in prayer, when his quiet voice has shaken me with his truth. The Bible, prayer, church—these were places where he met with me often and spoke clearly.
I could see it was time to leave. A sense that time had stopped receded from me, a feeling that the world was rushing back into this room, that life—or what passed for it—was starting up again. I could sense him moving away down corridors I could not see. At the last moment I remembered one more question I had for him and I yelled, “Jesus! Did you write the Book of Mormon?”
I could hear his laughter as if from another room. Deep, unfettered, joyous laughter that clearly said, After all this time, don’t you know me better than that?
I shrugged. “I didn’t think so,” I called. “But I did promise Elder Hardy I would ask.” I stood up and looked around the chamber one last time. I wished I could stay but knew that even in that act of devotion and desire I would be moving away from Christ, not toward him. So I stepped out of the chamber and followed it back, out from the center, out toward the world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Craft Time with the Apostle John
A feeling of increased reality overcame me as I followed the path. Or rather, increased normalcy, because the encounter in the labyrinth’s center had seemed more real than anything I had experienced in a long time. I came around a corner to one last station. An old man, maybe the oldest I had ever seen, sat behind a table. He looked like one of the Muppets, those old men who sit in the balcony and make fun of the show the whole time.
“You’ve come through the labyrinth.”
“Yes. I’m Matt.” We shook hands. His felt cool and papery, and when I looked closely, I could see the faded evidence of tattoos across his skin, what appeared to be a densely written script.
“I am John.” He held his palm out to the table and I could see a bowl of water, a set of paints, some modeling clay, and some paper. “Sometimes I’ve found that after being with him these things can be helpful. It’s hard to describe your experience to the people out there.” His hand waved vaguely toward the exit.
I sat across from him and picked up some of the modeling clay. It bent easily in my fingers and rapidly took shape. If the clay had been responding to my natural ability as a sculptor, I would have rolled out a long, skinny snake, but the clay seemed to respond instead to the complex emotions of my experience in the center of the labyrinth. Within a few moments the clay had formed into the shape of a man wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, bowing down.
John nodded, his own withered hands working slowly on a chunk of clay. “Is that man receiving a blessing or is he bowed in worship? Or could it be that he is being knighted by a king and given a mission?”
“All those things,” I said.
John set his own sculpture down. A white horse, beautifully detailed. It was galloping, and its mane crashed on its neck like waves. Flecks of sweat flew from its haunches, and it was clear that the horse was straining, bent forward at the urging of its master. John picked up another chunk of clay and began molding. “Paint,” he said, so I picked up some paper and the watercolors. At first nothing came to me, but then an image suddenly carried me away, and as I painted, John spoke.
“Some people stop following Jesus because the world is full of pain.” He watched me paint for a minute. “They lose a loved one, or they are harmed by a loved one.” He started taking small pieces of clay in various colors and mixing them in his papery hands. “Here they acknowledge a great truth: that God is love. He must be love. And if he is not, then he is no God worth serving.
“But they also make a great mistake, for they assume that the world’s pain is his pleasure. This is simply false. Or they will say he cannot know our pain. This, too, is a lie.” I could see that in his hands he was fashioning a tiny crown of gold, made to look like thorns. “They will say that he has no power to overcome death—another lie. Love is as strong as death. It burns like a bonfire, like the very flame of the Lord. Water can’t put it out. Rivers can’t wash it away. Love existed before the first death, and it will remain when death is gone.” He rolled out a robe from the clay, shining white in the darkness of the labyrinth.
“We crowded around him at the city gates,” John said. “All the people, united by our suffering. We cried out to him, ‘Save now, Lord!’” He swiftly wrapped a man-shaped bit of clay into the robe, then set the crown upon its head and the man upon the horse. “We do not follow Jesus because the world is a perfect place.” He made a clay sword and put it into the hand of the rider. “We follow him because we desire his Kingdom to come. When he comes, he will make all things right. He will bring justice. And you and I are his humble servants. His representatives. His ambassadors. And we must do our best to bring life and justice, to free the captives, and to bring recovery of sight to the blind. Show me your picture.”
I showed him the painting. It was a hand, one of the hands I had felt so vividly on my head, and around it shone a pure light, a seeping of color that bled through the page and into the world. From the center of his hand spilled a slash of red that pooled in the palm and then up and over, running along his fingertips, dripping off the page. “He suffered too,” I said.
John reached across and grabbed my hand. “God will live with us. You will speak with him as you did today. We will be his people, and he himself will be with us and be our God. He will wipe every tear from our eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” Even as he said these words, his voice quavered and a tear ran down his crooked face
. “The old order of things will have passed away.”
“How can he wipe our tears if there’s no more crying?”
John smiled. “Because the tears he will wipe from our eyes will be for the things we’ve lost in this life. After that, there will be no more mourning.” He took the sculpture of Christ in his hands. “I have seen all my friends die,” he said. “I have seen many grievous things in my life. Here is the lesson I have learned: Love each other.”
He took my painting of the hand of Christ and centered it on the table. Above it Christ the King rode his mighty white horse, bringing justice to the world. He took the sculpture I had made of myself and placed it facing Christ, a clear picture of supplication and praise.
“He is our hope.” John tapped his finger on the edge of the paper I had painted. “We follow him not only for what he has done in the past—” he touched the sculpture of me on my knees in the labyrinth—“but for what he is doing today.” He ran a finger around the mounted Christ. “We follow him because of what he will one day do.”
I looked at the white horse, Christ returning to make all things right and do away with death and suffering and mourning once and for all. “I hope he comes quickly,” I said.
“Amen.” John’s eyes reflected my yearning. “Amen.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Imaginary Jesus Page 16
