Seeing Jesus

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Philly felt a sort of scowl overtake his face. The sensation reminded him of the dragon he had fought that night with Allen Breen. Dave saw that cloud darken Philly’s countenance and began the process of setting Philly free from the tangle of cables he had twisted around himself, in the process of attaching and maintaining resentments against the imperfect people he loved.

  Not since that night on the kitchen floor with Jesus, after the chess match, had Philly exhausted his emotional stores to the extent that he did that afternoon with Dave. And, likewise, not since then had Philly felt so free.

  When they finished, and the late sun had begun to illuminate the apartment through the bedroom and bathroom windows, Philly sat across the room from Dave and almost felt as good as when the man sitting in that seat wore the robes of a First Century rabbi. Just as he had promised, Jesus had shown up again when Philly needed him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Philly scooped a spoon full of instant coffee into the cup of nearly boiling water that he had just removed from his microwave oven. Irving crouched on the floor near his master’s feet, contently capturing and consuming bites of odiferous canned food. Philly smiled when he thought of how Irving used to wander around the apartment looking for someone else beside his feeder and caregiver. The cat seemed to have given up lately, convinced that the visitor with the perfect touch couldn’t be found in the other room, no matter how many times Irving prowled hopefully through the door.

  A familiar ringtone startled Philly and his feline friend. Philly turned and grabbed his phone off the kitchen table.

  “Hello, my handsome man.” A woman’s voice crooned in Philly’s ear .

  “Hello, my beautiful woman,” Philly said, smiling. His smile turned, however, to a rebuking scowl directed at Irving, who looked on critically at the playful love talk between the man and his noisy little electronic device.

  “You all ready for work?” the beautiful woman said.

  “Just about,” Philly said. “A bit nervous, I gotta say.”

  A sigh of recognition crossed the cell signal into Philly’s ear. “Yeah, a new job is a scary adventure. But you know they already love you there and you’re gonna have a blast.”

  Philly’s nodding didn’t make it back over the cell signal, but he finally spoke up. “I know. It’ll be great. I think the part with the kids makes me most nervous.”

  “Oh, you’ll be fine. Just be yourself. They’ll know if you try to fake anything. Just do your stuff the way you do it.”

  Philly remembered asking Jesus whether he could get some help keeping things straight after he disappeared. This warm, encouraging voice on the phone sure helped fill that need, just as Jesus had promised. The rest of his life—his new job, his new church—heaped more and more answers to that plea.

  “Thanks for the encouragement,” Philly said humbly.

  “I love you, Philly.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s pretty great too.” They laughed together, though miles apart. “I’ll call you as soon as I get done, to let you know how it went,” he said.

  “Okay. I’ll make sure I have my phone with me. I’m working ‘til seven, ya’ know.”

  “Yeah. How about a late supper, then?”

  “That would be great. We can eat leftovers from Sunday,” she said.

  “Naw,” he countered. “I start my new job. We should go out. It’s been a while.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Though he had waited over two months to start a new job, Philly was glad he didn’t have to wait that long until he reconciled with Theresa. Against expectations, friends from her church had encourage Theresa to pursue forgiveness from Philly. For some of them, their antagonism toward the man who claimed to see and hear Jesus, had turned around at the healing of Theresa’s eye. It was hard to characterize Philly as a delusional kook if he could heal a blind eye.

  After the purging forgiveness session with Dave, and getting cleaned up and out for a decent supper, Philly had sat down by himself at home, prepared to call Theresa. In that moment of hesitation before he dialed, Philly felt the absence of his dearest companion and mentor. Out of unconscious habit he placed his hand on that spot on his chest, where Jesus had touched him that last night, and he wished Jesus was back in his living room, holding Irving in his lap and smiling.

  As soon as he allowed that wish to dock in his heart, Philly felt a thrill, a warm confirmation, and he thought he heard a familiar laugh. “Go ahead, she’s waiting for you to call,” a playful voice prompted him.

  Spurred by that voice, Philly tapped Theresa’s name in his cell phone, riding the spontaneous momentum, avoiding the deflating possibilities of careful calculation. It was time to act.

  Theresa answered, her voice tame and hesitant. “Hello, Philly.”

  “Hello, Theresa. It’s good to hear your voice,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t return your calls before.”

  Theresa took a relieved breath. “Oh, Philly, I feel awful. I’m the one that should be apologizing to you.”

  “I’ve forgiven you already,” Philly said. “Jesus is pretty insistent about that sort of thing.”

  Theresa hesitated for a moment, wondering if Philly was seeing Jesus again.

  Philly intuited the reason for her hesitation and filled in a disclaimer. “I’m just going by what Dave was telling me from the Bible,” he said. “Though I wish I could see him now, Jesus isn’t back with me the way he was. He is with me, though, especially when I started to forgive people.”

  “People besides me?” Theresa said.

  “Yeah, you weren’t even number one on the list,” Philly said. “And just now I realize I gotta forgive my old boss too.”

  “That sounds healthy,” Theresa said. “So you called to tell me that you forgave me?”

  “Hmmm, well, not really,” Philly said, sorting his mix of motives. “I guess I called because I already have forgiven you, but I really called to hear your voice and see if you could still be my girlfriend.”

  Theresa laughed a wild sobbing laugh for two seconds. Regaining her breath, she said, “Oh Philly, I nearly ruined us. But you still wanna be with me?”

  “Yes, I really do. I’d be crazy to let you get away,” he said honestly.

  That was weeks ago now. His relationship with Theresa had grown and matured since then, through the process of reconciliation and recommitment. As he knew she would, Theresa committed to behaving herself at work and, more importantly, would get some help getting over that smothering sensation, which she knew didn’t originate with Philly.

  When Philly hung up the call, on his first day of his new job, Irving had finished eating and turned his focus on a good tongue bath after his meal.

  “You’re disgusting,” Philly said.

  Irving ignored the prejudicial remark.

  With his car key on the same ring as his house key, the adjustment to driving to work altered nothing of Philly’s old pre-work routine. The bus pass remained in his wallet and would stay right there today. But the rest was familiar and welcomed, after two months of unemployment. “Back in the saddle again,” he thought.

  “You gonna to sing?” That subtle voice in his head teased him.

  Philly laughed. “Don’t count on it,” he said aloud.

  He thought about how he had been trying to get used to his own singing voice over the last several weeks, as he sipped his coffee and located the last supplies for his journey into work: sack lunch, sunglasses, cell phone, keys and wallet. That church on the north side of Chicago sure did a lot of singing. To Philly’s relief, the music was more than old hymns, or even the folk songs of his mother’s contemporary mass. The best thing about the loud drums and guitars, and the full-spectrum clash of voices, was the cover it offered a self-conscious singer like Philly. Theresa had a beautiful voice, and he loved worshipping next to her, but he felt that he was simply learning to bellow more freely, instead of actually anything
that could legitimately be called singing.

  “It’s all treasure to me,” that silent voice said, answering his thoughts.

  For a moment, getting ready in the morning and thinking of worship, Philly forgot he was going to work and felt that he was getting ready for church instead. While he put on his shoes, he marveled at how much he looked forward to church meetings, large and small, and he smiled at the realization that the same exhilarating anticipation of worship and healing leaked over into his new job.

  This job that he now headed toward—out his kitchen door, over the shiny gray paint of his back porch, down the imperfect wooden stairs, past Mrs. Kelly’s kitchen and down to his car—this job hurdled well past what he had dared imagine. Theresa had cried and laughed at the same time when she heard his new job description: computer support manager and chess coach. She barely seemed to notice when he revealed the big salary cut. His new employer, a community center backed by his church and two others, needed a computer network manager and computer trainer.

  Among their expanding services to the community, they wanted to offer computer support for families in need. Here, of course, Philly could see a place for himself. Coincidentally, the director of community outreach had begun searching for a chess coach to oversee an ambitious cadre of young prodigies. As he sat listening to the program director apologizing that there might not be full-time computer work at first and throwing out a random comment about the chess program, Philly had become aware of staring with a slack jaw and watery eyes. That smart, young woman interviewing him had stopped talking and fixed on him a querying look.

  What a contrast to his former employer sending him to a psychiatrist as a condition of continued employment, assuming his healing ministry represented a kind of mental illness. In the new job, he would be welcomed to stop and offer healing at any time, to anyone, for anything.

  Philly laughed, and swiped a tear off of his cheek, as he drove west toward the community center. Jesus had once told him that losing his job would not only be survivable, but would actually enrich his life. Though it seemed a lunatic proposition at the time, Philly remembered that promise in unobstructed retrospect and embraced a higher opinion of lunacy. Pastor Dave would have said something about foolish things beating out the wise, Philly thought.

  One benefit of his unemployment, or perhaps one more benefit, was the time Philly spent with Dave Michaels, and others, at his church. After Theresa and he visited a few times, they agreed this should become both Philly’s and Theresa’s church. Grandma would stay with her Pentecostal prayer group, of course. Her testimony, and renewed faith in Jesus, had sparked a small revival in that congregation.

  As Philly met frequently with Dave and began to participate in church, including healing ministry, he had been in the right place to hear about the computer job when it became available.

  Now, a half hour from home, Philly parked his car next to the director’s, in the lot east of the rehabilitated warehouse. Various construction equipment and vehicles, parked in that lot, testified to ongoing work to finish the community center. Arriving so close to the launch of the project would allow Philly to help outline and formulate the various elements of his job, including the chess club.

  The chess players had mostly come from a Hispanic Pentecostal church where they formed a club and participated in tournaments as individuals. Philly would join the club and add some of his chess genius to boosting it into a team. The opportunity to engage so fully again in chess felt like a shiny new gift to Philly, though working with kids had been nowhere on his agenda.

  Swinging through the brand new glass door of the community center, Philly spotted one of the guys from church that he had seen healed of an ankle injury. The stocky, young man greeted Philly warmly.

  “Hey, Philly! What’s happening? Good to see you, bro,” said Benny Hernandez.

  “Hey, Benny. You working here?” Philly said.

  “Yep,” Benny said with an introductory sweep of his left arm. “I’m doing all the new flooring. I bet you didn’t know that’s what I do.”

  “I thought you played for the Bears,” Philly said, “the way you banged up that ankle.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Benny played along. “I got tackled by one of them three-hundred-pound linemen.” He laughed. “This is my retirement.”

  “Hmmm,” said Philly, looking skeptical. “I think you might want to renegotiate that.”

  They laughed together and then Philly clapped Benny on the back and headed for the director’s office. “Gotta get serious and do something productive,” he said. “My first day of work.”

  “Hey, great,” said Benny. “I’ll pray for your new job. That’s really great,” he said turning a bit serious.

  Carmen Evans greeted Philly when he peeked in her office door. “Philly, come on in,” she said, standing up from her desk chair. Carmen wore her hair collar-length, black with a streak of red highlight framing her face. She smiled readily, with a face that somehow won the trust of local politicians as well as little children.

  For Philly, the solid gold welcome settled some of the anxiety he retained about the new job. He could tell immediately that his new boss would be as open and accommodating at work as she had been during the interviews. He could shed his instinct to duck, to keep his head down and try not to be noticed. He could be himself, once he finished discovering exactly who that is. At the same time, he welcomed Carmen’s drive to get things accomplished, and they started right into discussing budget, computer equipment and software, after Carmen got him a cup of coffee, in his new Community Center mug.

  All together, that first day resembled a job, but no job that Philly had ever held. The most outside-the-box activity on that day came just before five o’clock, quitting time. Carmen came into the new server room that Philly was wiring.

  “You have a minute, Philly?” she said, when he looked up from the switch he had just finished connecting.

  Philly smiled, charmed by his humble boss. “Of course. What’s up?”

  “Well, there’s a woman in my office right now with a severely swollen wrist. She fell at home and says she can’t afford to get it looked at. I think she’s more afraid of the hospital than anything. Would you be willing to come and give it a try?”

  Her low key manner made Philly want to do whatever Carmen asked. “Sure, I can give it a try.”

  A short woman, with graying hair that curled free of her pony tail in wiry wisps, looked up at Philly when he entered the room. A small boy, apparently her son, sat next to her, perched on the edge of his seat, so his feet would reach the floor. The boy’s eyes fixed on the strange man, his eyebrows arched high, curious what the director lady had in mind.

  Carmen introduced Philly to the woman in Spanish, then she told Philly that the mother’s name was Phillipa and her son was Herman. Philly shook their hands, taking Phillipa’s left hand instead of the one with the awkward Ace bandage on it. She made a comment in Spanish, that included her name and Carmen translated.

  “She’s saying that it’s funny that you and she have the same name,” Carmen said.

  Philly smiled and nodded, saying “Si, si, es verdad.” That nearly exhausted his entire Spanish vocabulary and the woman seemed to know that, because she continued to rely on Carmen to translate.

  Carmen explained about Philly healing people and the mother and her son both looked at him with new eyes, as they listened to her description. Little Herman stood up from his chair and looked as if he wanted to get close to Philly and perhaps touch him. Philly just watched the boy with quiet amusement.

  In fact, Philly’s understated manner intrigued Phillipa and Herman, given their expectations of how pastors and healers should act. Nonetheless, Phillipa complied readily when Philly held out his hand and asked her to rest her sore hand in his.

  Then Philly used another Spanish phrase he had learned recently, saying simply, “Se sano,” meaning, “Be healed,” as far as he knew.

  For a moment, nothing seemed to have
happened and Philly was trying to listen to Jesus for a different approach. Then, without a word, Phillipa removed her hand from Philly’s. She smiled and nodded, then stood up, as if to leave.

  Carmen looked at Philly, trying to tell whether he knew if Phillipa was healed. Philly just looked at the petite mother, as she reached out her left hand to gather in her son. Carmen finally asked Phillipa, in Spanish, how her wrist felt. Philly waited patiently as the mother spoke plainly, always with the same little smile on her face.

  Then Carmen laughed and looked at Philly. “She says, thank you, it’s all better now. She says she’s going to tell her family, so they can come here and get healed tomorrow.”

  Philly smiled, a surprised look frozen on his face, still holding his hand in nearly the same position in which he had healed Phillipa’s hand. Before he could lower it, Herman reached his little hand up and rested it in Philly’s. Then, as if someone had blown in his ear, Herman pulled his hand back and grabbed at the side of his head, a wide smile animating his face.

  Carmen asked Phillipa about Herman’s ear and listened profoundly as the mother explained the situation.

  Before the translation, however, Herman looked at Philly and said, “Hey, I can hear on both sides now, man.”

  Philly laughed, cheered by the good news and amused by Herman’s way of addressing him. Carmen translated Phillipa’s explanation, so Philly had the complete picture. Herman had been born deaf in one ear. He had never heard a sound in that ear before.

  Philly reached out to shake hands with Herman, to say goodbye. He said, “You have great faith, my little brother. Listen and Jesus will talk to you in your new ear.”

  Herman nodded, taking Philly at his word.

  When they had all said their happy goodbyes, and Phillipa and Herman left the office, Carmen looked at Philly with a shrug and a big grin. “Well, I hope you have time to do some computer work around here, in between all the healings,” she said with a big joyous laugh. How could she be anything but thrilled at the prospects of healings in the community center, when all Carmen wanted for her neighbors was a better life and a chance to meet Jesus?