They Keep Asking Me If I Know Jesus

There was a smart wrap on the door yesterday afternoon. As with the telephone and those damn telemarketers, I try to avoid answering these intrusions into my privacy. There are generally not all that many possibilities as to what these folks might want. I know it’s not my neighbors; they are fine neighbors. I haven’t a clue about them and have no reason to believe they own any greater awareness of me. Were we to ever meet I am convinced we would assure each other we like it that way. I suspect that the reason we have not met is due to the mutual fear we might be mistaken on this very point. Not being Halloween quite yet, I figured it was probably the girl scouts, who I have absolutely nothing against, given they are mostly pretty as a picture, but I really don’t care for their cookies as compared with the six pack I have to do without when I do humor them. But to tell you the truth, for reasons I just can not fathom, it is more often than makes any sense, given that it makes no sense at all, people wanting to know if I know Jesus. 

For a long time I just told them no and shut the door. One woman actually knocked again and told me that I had shut the door on her, to which I assured her that she was brighter than she looked and promptly proceeded to reprise the act.

Some years ago, after I became acquainted with the grunge kids that use to hang around the park, I was able to modify my tune a little. When they showed up I would tell them that sure I know Jesus; he doesn’t hang around here, but you may find him with a fellow named Jorge down at the park. Once when Jesus was hanging out with Jorge I asked him if he knew why everybody was looking for him. He told me that he owed some people some money; people who you don’t want to owe money to. He got a worried look and asked me if I told them where he was. I lied and told him I didn’t.

One time I was talking to my Veronica and told her about all these people looking for Jesus, and while shaking her own, she called me a knuckle head, and told me they were talking about our Lord and Savior. The guy on the cross? I asked her to make sure. Well, now I was really stumped, but the next one that showed up, instead of saying no, being that I was a retired janitor at Sacred Heart elementary school, I told the young lady that I knew a whole bunch of the Sisters of Saint Joseph and would that due? Now it seemed like it was her turn to be confused, so I took to simply saying I was Roman Catholic, and that seemed to suffice until yesterday.

You see, one time when I was dry mopping the hallway, this nun was giving the class hell with how she was sure that some of those kids would grow up and deny the church like so and so did. That was the thing for that good sister. There was none of this business about denying Jesus. Back in in that fifties day Jesus stood in the back of the line behind Mother Church, the pope and, if they were feeling particularly feisty on a given day, the cardinals and bishops. They would pull Jesus out if someone was talking or maybe didn’t do their homework, and it was never the miracle Jesus or the infant Jesus, but the Jesus on the cross. How he had been scourged and wore a crown of thorns for the pathetic likes of you people who can’t even manage to keep your useless mouths shut in class?

Of course these were tough immigrant kids and you should of heard them making fun of the nun in the line after school as they headed for the crossing, which was a damn risky thing for them to being doing given the propensity of the holier than though future nuns in the line to head right back to the office with all the details. But like I said they were a tough bunch. They didn’t just talk about strutting like that guy in the White House. When they walked down the street all those protestant public school Yankee kids would cross to the other side to avoid the possibility of a conflagration that would cause them to know Jesus long before the schedule allowed.

So you can imagine my surprise when I opened the door yesterday to this young lady whom I would guesstimate was somewhere between the age of 18 and 35, given that as each year has gone by it simply gets harder to judge these things, and at the age of 92, having been born in 1915, anybody under the age of 70 gets the spry chicken award in my book.

I knew what was coming, and she didn’t disappoint. She asks me if I knew Jesus, and I tell her that I am a Roman Catholic, and she says that she is as well, and for that very reason she has a relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So I tell her that I’ll be damn and enquire as to whether she was educated by the good Sisters of Saint Joseph. She tells me that she had a few nuns, but there are really not that many teaching these days. So I ask her if she knows that all those good sisters are married to Jesus, and they may not appreciate her messing around, and asked her for good measure whether she thought Jesus might be a closet Mormon with all those wives of his. In all seriousness she says no, no; no way that Jesus is a Mormon, completely leaving aside the whole issue of his philandering with her.

So I offered her some milk and cookies, and we talked about how if I could see my way to taking Jesus into my heart I might be better prepared for the day, she indicated with a charm and tact that truly impressed me, that was not all that far away for me. So with as much tact as I could muster in return, I told her that the room in my heart had been filled by two fine women in my life and that as in the old story there was no room left at the inn, and that we would have to leave it at that.

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