John 20: 19-29
By the Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
John, Peter, Joanna, and Anna traveled with the hearse to pick up Jesse’s body at Eagle Pass. When they arrived, they had to pass, once again, through reporters and distraught crowds. Jesse’s pale, slightly bluish body was arranged on a metal morgue table, covered by a sheet from the chest down, over which could be seen the “y” incision made by the coroner.
At the sight of her body, John, Peter, and Joanna all gasped and began to cry. Anna, a doctor, looked on dispassionately. “John, Peter,” Anna said, “Could you leave Joanna and me alone with Jesse for a few minutes?”
After they’d left, Anna and Joanna uncovered Jesse’s body. Joanna had to work very hard to control her own grief and revulsion, but she did so for Jesse’s sake, following Anna’s lead. Anna gently inspected the “y” incision and the bullet wounds in Jesse’s hands and abdomen. Then the two of them washed Jesse’s body and wrapped it in lightly perfumed white cloth, after the manner of Islam, Anna’s religious tradition. Anna and Joanna then crossed their arms across their chests and Anna recited the Salaat al-Janazah, the Islamic funeral prayer. She said it in Arabic, but had told Joanna what it meant:
“Allahu Akbar! …O God, honor her rest and ease her entrance to Paradise; wash her with water and snow and hail, and cleanse her of sin as a white garment is cleansed of dirt. O God, give her a home better than her home and a family better than her family. O God, admit her to Paradise and protect her from the torment of the grave and the torment of Hell-fire; make her grave spacious and fill it with light.”
Two of Jesse’s prominent followers, the rich man and the political operative who’d hired her attorney, pulled strings and were able to arrange a private ceremony, protected from press coverage, at Oakwood Cemetery. The rich man’s private security kept the paparazzi off cemetery grounds until the service was over. When it was done, Jesse’s friends, family, and her companeros cercanos exited and John, the former mega-church pastor, spoke for them to the press.
“Jesse’s death was more than tragic. It was a loss to the world. It’s no surprise she died saving the lives of others. That ethic of loving neighbor, putting others first, and self-sacrifice was at the heart of her nature, and at the heart of her message. Jesse taught that God wants to heal the world. People didn’t like to hear that, because she wasn’t afraid to point out the ways the world is sick. Jesse taught that by putting the needs of all the people first, instead of just our own needs, and by standing in humility before the God of love, we can bring about la Ciudad de Dios, the City of God here on earth.
“It was a message that the world was ready to hear only if it was sugar-coated like children’s candy, dressed up in the flashy clothing of celebrity, or treated as if it was criminal or crazy. It’s hard to understand why. Everybody says they believe in God’s love and peace and the whole world living in harmony. But when someone comes along and actually says, ‘this is practical, this real, we can do this, and God actually expects it of us,’ we minimize her, we condescend to her, we say she’s impractical or unrealistic or crazy. And then, ultimately… This is the result.” Tears came to John’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I can’t continue.”
A reporter said, “You mean you can’t continue this statement… or you can’t continue Jesse’s work?”
John looked at him angrily. “Of course we’ll continue Jesse’s work! Jesse didn’t die in vain!”
But all of Jesse’s companeros cercanos suspected the same thing: that the reporter had, uncomfortably, horribly, asked exactly the right question.
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Marisol, Jesse’s assassin and president of her fan club, had been locked up in the Federal holding facility at Carswell Naval Air Station in Fort Worth. She was locked up in a padded cell, in a straitjacket. She’d tried killing herself multiple times, once taking keys from a guard and attempting to cut her wrists. She threw herself again and again against the padded walls; she began to bleed from her head and guards had to put a helmet on her head. Conflicting voices murmured everywhere around her: some told her that she’d done the right thing killing Jesse and others told her she was beneath contempt, unworthy to live, because she’d killed God’s daughter. Some seemed to be laughing at her and others crying for Jesse; but none of them, she knew, liked her or cared for her. All the voices agreed that Marisol was a pawn in some great cosmic game. She had a role to play and now had no reason to live anymore, and every reason to die.
Marisol huddled in a dark corner of her padded cell, her hands bound, unable to cover her ears from the terrible voices, when one quiet, kind, authoritative voice said, “Marisol.”
The other voices were silenced. Marisol looked up. In the darkness she saw the figure of a woman. The woman stepped forward and knelt in front of her. It was Jesse. She smiled and wiped the tears off of Marisol’s face. Her hand had a hole in it. “I forgave you, remember? And now, look at me. I’m alive. Tell everybody.” She kissed Marisol on the forehead, then turned around and walked out the locked door, leaving it open behind her. Marisol rose and tentatively walked through the door and into the hall. She startled a nurse dispensing meds from a cart. “Hey,” Marisol said, “I think I’m ready for a regular cell now.”
Jesse was nowhere to be seen.
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Anna was working the midnight shift at John Peter Smith, the county hospital. JPS has an advanced trauma unit, and Anna was a trauma specialist. It was early Sunday morning, while it was still dark. The night had been crazy—a gang war had broken out and the staff was recovering from treating dozens of gang-bangers with trauma injuries. Anna was just taking off her scrubs when two female nurses ran up to her, followed by a male nurse pushing a gurney. One of the female nurses said, “GSW, looks like an automatic weapon, severe but weird—she’s in shock or something, talks normally, and her wounds aren’t bleeding.”
”Huh,” Anna said, and snapping rubber gloves on, went over to look at the patient. To her surprise, the patient sat up and said, “Hello, Anna.”
Anna stepped back, stunned. “Allahu Akbar! Jesse! How is this possible?” Anna looked around, as if she was afraid it was a trick. The nurses looked confused, unsure what was going on.
“Mi Papa has raised me from the dead, Anna.”
“That’s impossible, Jesse,” Anna said sharply, and even as she said it, she realized the very absurdity of saying it, as if she was having one of her normal theological debates with Jesse–only this debate was itself impossible.
“You of all people know that nothing is impossible for God,” Jesse said.
“Doc, do we need to do a mental status for the patient?” one of the nurses said quietly.
“No,” Anna said, “But you may need to do one for me when this is over.” Anna was quiet a moment. Anna was a person of deep faith, but she was also scientist. She said decisively, “Jesse, unbutton your shirt. Guys,” she said to the nurses, “we’re doing a complete physical. Oh, and bring a camera. We’re going to need pictures.”
Anna first checked the wounds. She took Jesse’s hands and looked at the bullet hole in each one. Gently, she put her finger in one. “Does it hurt?” Anna asked.
“No,” Jesse said. “Not now.”
Anna next inspected the three wounds across Jesse’s abdomen. The male nurse was taking pictures while another nurse was making notes on her computer. The third was filming Jesse’s physical with her phone.
“What in the world?” said the male nurse. “These wounds aren’t bleeding. They don’t show any sign of infection or swelling or healing. They’re like the wounds on a dead person.”
Anna shone a light into one of the holes. “Through and through,” She said. “I can see the contents of your stomach.”
Jesse shrugged. “I’ve been dead three days. I was starving. I stopped at Taco Ernesto’s.”
“The ‘y’ incision is gone,” Anna noted. “Why it and not the bullet wounds? For that matter, you’ve still got the scars on your elbows from when you fell off your bike as a kid.”
“Nothing that happens to your body after you’re dead happens to you,” Jesse said, “so you aren’t raised with it. But the wounds of your life, they are a part of your identity. You wouldn’t be yourself without them. So when you’re raised, you’re raised with your scars.”
The nurses brought over various monitors. They took Jesse’s heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure. Anna percussed Jesse’s chest and back and listened with her stethoscope. Anna looked up Jesse’s nose and down her throat and into her ears. “You are not only alive,” Anna concluded, as Jesse was buttoning her blouse, “but except for the bullet holes, you’re as healthy as the proverbial horse. You could live forever.”
“Exactly,” Jesse laughed, and was gone. The nurse filming swore and dropped her phone. “What happened? She just—disappeared!”
Anna said, “That was Jesse, the Cowtown Christ, and God has raised her from the dead.”
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That morning the news reported that someone had dug up Jesse’s grave and stolen her body. People had been leaving flowers and notes by the graveside, and they’d arrived Sunday morning to find the grave neatly dug up with the coffin open and empty at the bottom. Reporters had been badgering Jesse’s companeros cercanos for comment, but they’d stayed holed up in the storefront John had rented to start his new Jesse church, shades closed to the paparazzi clamoring outside the door.
Most of the companeros were there that morning, looking at the pictures and the video Anna and the nurses had taken. The nurses had come with Anna. They said, simply, “We saw it with our own eyes. We believe.”
Peter opened his arms in frustration. “I don’t know what to make of this. I was just getting used to her being dead. How can she be alive? Anna, you’ve got to have made a mistake.”
“These pictures don’t lie,” Anna said, and her nurses nodded their agreement. “And look at this video! Insallah! You know as well as I do that’s Jesse!”
“Pictures and videos get faked all the time,” Nate said.
“Are you calling us liars, Nate?” Anna said, starting to stand.
There was knock and Joanna peaked through the shade to see who it was. Then she opened the door. Glenda, Jesse’s schizophrenic homeless companera, was at the door with another woman, obviously homeless, elderly and frail, with long grey hairs on her chin. She was bundled up like it was winter in the middle of Texas’ summer. The elderly woman refused to come in without her shopping cart. “She’s afraid that crowd out there will steal her stuff,” Glenda explained.
Nate looked at the shopping cart. It was filled with black plastic trash bags filled with what looked, to Nate, like trash. He sighed. “Glenda, this is not the best time to be taking in strays.”
“You know what Jesse’d do if she was here,” Joanna said, and began to tug in the cart. It was too big for the door, and had to be angled just right. Nate tried to help but the old woman kept getting in his way. She was quite fragrant. He wrinkled his nose and felt bile in his throat, but he worked the cart with Joanna until they got it in. The whole time reporters snapped pictures and shouted questions that none of them answered.
They shut the door and turned to Glenda and the old lady. “Gracias,” the old lady said, smiling a largely toothless smile, and then the old lady unzipped and fell to the floor like a gigantic dirty overcoat and there was Jesse.
There was chaos in the room, with Glenda as surprised as anyone else. People were uncertain what to do, starting toward her to hug her and then stopping. They weren’t sure if she was real. Then Anna gave Jesse a huge hug. “See?” She said. “Not a ghost.”
People talked over one another until Jesse put up a hand to quiet them.
“I’m alive,” she said. “I am raised from the dead. I won’t be here long. But my resurrection means this: the healing has begun. The greatest evidence of the sickness of the world is death, la muerte, and today it’s defeated. All the future and all the present and all that’s been have come full circle to this moment. I’m like the first domino at the beginning and the last domino at the end. Since I’m raised, then all will be raised. And I am raised because the healing has begun, and I’m the ultimate proof of it.
“You are going to go out in the world in my name, and tell people God loves them, and show them that love and forgiveness and reconciliation and vulnerability and service and helping the helpless are powerful and practical because God’s new world is arriving. Not many will believe you. They’ll say the world isn’t sick. Or that the sickness of the world is too deep, and it can never be healed, and certainly not by love and kindness and what they view as weakness.
“So when you doubt, remember this. I am alive. I’m the proof that the healing has begun.
“Hold hands with me.” They held hands in a circle. “I am here, always; but I’m also with mi Papa now, and that’s why I can give you mi Papa’s power. It’s the power of me living in you. It is me living in you. I give you now a power that is uniquely God’s, the ultimate act that only He can perform, and I give it to you. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. By forgiving, you heal the world.”
“But Jesse,” Joanna asked, “What is forgiveness? Who do we forgive? Where do we start?”
Jesse smiled. “It’s more like, where does it end? I can best explain it to you when I live in you. Then, when you’re in that situation where you’re not sure, we can sort it out together.
“So in a way, I’m leaving it up to you. You’re adults now, and I’m giving you an adult responsibility. You have to forgive, but you have to figure out for yourselves what forgiveness is. But never forget: you are acting in the name of God. Forgiveness is what will heal the world. Forgiveness, and you as its agents, are the healing antibodies of God’s shalom that make la Ciudad de Dios a reality. To forgive, or not, is a wonderful and terrible responsibility. And I leave it to you.
“And now. Time to go.”
Her companions began to cry. They hugged her and hugged one another. Jesse cried, too, even though she knew she would never really leave them. “And, just before I go,” Jesse winked, “Let’s have a little fun.”
Jesse opened the door and stepped out in broad daylight. Her companeros cercanos followed her and stood behind her. There were gasps from the crowd of reporters and cameras snapped. Reporters shoved microphones at her. Jesse threw out her arms in an all-encompassing gesture and said, “I have an announcement. La Ciudad de Dios is here!”
And there was a flash, and Jesse wasn’t.
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For weeks video footage of Jesse’s astonishing reappearance and even more astonishing disappearance aired all over the world. Breathless reporters told “I saw it” stories. Investigations were launched. Jesse’s companeros cercanos were accused of staging the entire thing. People even said that Jesse had staged her own death. Nothing could be proved. It was great fodder for those who believed in conspiracies.
For decades there were Jesse sightings all over the world. “Jesse found alive in Buenos Aires Slum!” “Jesse Living in Wealth with Colombian Drug Cartel Lover!” Supermarket tabloids found her more newsworthy than Bigfoot and Elvis combined.
The video of Jesse’s physical was posted to YouTube and continued to receive hits as long as YouTube existed. It outlasted the televised footage of her disappearance after she’d appeared to her companeros cercanos. When different incarnations of video-sharing developed, the video of Jesse’s physical was one of the few that kept getting remastered and shared, as long as technology existed, along with only a few other videos from this period of history, mostly cat videos.
Jude, the psychologist who’d once been a companero cercano, started a program of spiritual, emotional, and physical wholeness that he called “Living la Ciudad de Dios.” He became friends with Oprah and was a regular guest on the Today show, talking earnestly to Matt Lauer about the fact that even though Jesse and her other followers were sadly troubled and demented, still many of her teaching enabled people to get in touch with their inner “Papa God” and discover that each of them was a ‘Child of God,” like Jesse had claimed herself to be. When he talked about God, it wasn’t a God who called us to responsibility, but a feel-good self-help God who seemed only to feel sorry for us and think of us as helpless little children. He didn’t emphasize, as Jesse did, societal change or healing the whole world. The world, he said, didn’t really need healing—that’s where Jesse was wrong, he pointed out—it just needed for each of us to unlock our hidden potential. After all, that’s what had happened to him, and look how well he was doing!
Marisol was ruled not guilty, reason insanity, and served time in treatment. She wisely didn’t tell anyone of her vision of the risen Jesse until she was released. She then made an awkward pilgrimage to Jesse’s companeros cercanos, where she asked their forgiveness and asked, too, if they would accept her as a companion. It was a hard decision. They discussed and prayed. But in the end, they knew what Jesse would do, and they accepted her.
This of course, only confirmed for many how crazy and off-the-wall Jesse’s message and disciples had become. Controversy would always dog them. People would debunk the videos and pictures and there was much speculation that the companeros had dug up Jesse’s grave themselves, even though numerous investigations both by the police and legitimate private agencies absolved them of responsibility. As to their message and teachings, those who viewed Jesse as a crazy person or a cult leader or a flash-in-the-pan celebrity found them easy to dismiss or minimize or criticize.
But those who listened to the message, those who kept an open mind, and those who had desperate need would find themselves aware, as they listened, that they were being touched by something higher than themselves, something more powerful, something that encompassed the entire world and had the power to make it whole, and to make them whole. And those listened, and those heard, and those changed, and those acted. And the world was a better place for their faithfulness. Long after Jude’s movement had died the death of every self-help movement, long after the companeros themselves had died, and the disciples and the children of the companeros had died, Jesse’s followers lived on and propagated and acted as healing agents of God’s shalom, a reverse contagion of health, peace, and wholeness, in the troubled world. Long after the people who lived the story died, Jesse’s spirit that lived in them, lived in those who followed them. And the world, try though it might to extinguish the message, or institutionalize it, or nationalize it, or minimize it, could never succeed, because the hope of la Ciudad de Dios was stronger than the cynicism and self-involvement and hopelessness of the world.
And one day, Jesse came back. And God ruled everything. The wounds in the relationship between God and humanity, and human and human, were forever healed. War was ended and loved reigned supreme. God was all there was, and God was in all there was, and we were all one. All the dead were raised to a new, healthy, cosmos of shalom.
And we all will see it.
The Cowtown Christ and The Cowtown Christ Comes Back copyright 2013 Fritz Ritsch.