Jesus is not hard to find if you really look at the people and places around you.
Where is Jesus? Is he in heaven? Where is heaven? Is it up in the clouds? Is that why it’s so cloudy? How about when there are no clouds? Is Jesus still there? I doubt a drought could stop Jesus, so maybe he isn’t in the clouds. So then, where is he? Well, Matthew talks about a king and all his goats and sheep. Is that Jesus there? Am I a goat? Am I a sheep? What does it mean to be a goat/sheep anyway?
See, I thought I saw Jesus this morning, I thought I saw him out of the corner of my eye when I trudged out of my bedroom, just there in the kitchen, next to the stove with a spatula in one hand and eggs spluttering in a pan. It was still early, the sun barely awake as she rolled out of bed and over the horizon to streak gold and rose across the sky and through the drawn curtains of this house which lay silent and slumbering.
Save for Jesus, already awake, making breakfast for me. At least, I thought it was him. Wasn’t it him? You see I turned around again thinking I’d come face to face with Jesus, dressed in a robe of white and crowned with a halo of light and glowing like the transfiguration, and yet, when I turned around, it was Mum, cocooned in several jumpers to ward off the chill, her curly hair piled on the crown of her head, a kind smile on her lips. So then, where is Jesus? Mum put the egg and put it on a plate. Sunnyside up. My favourite. On a separate plate she put a scrambled egg for my sister to find when she wakes up.
She never forgets. Is that Jesus? And if Jesus is here, then where else could he be? Look! Isn’t that him? Setting out water in a little plastic bowl for the neighbourhood stray. Where else? Oh, there! Look at him giving a jacket to the man shivering behind a sign of cardboard and scrawled marker in that cold, damp alleyway. Or over there, can’t you see him? In the pouring rain, on the sidewalk, by the traffic lights. Isn’t that him letting that stranger share his umbrella?
How about in the hospital? Well, isn’t that him with the elderly husband, hobbling into the dementia care ward, who never forgets to visit his wife (even if she might be forgetting him)? And here, with the nurse who never forgets to say good night to their patients and make sure they’re as comfortable as can be for the evening, who always puts their patients first, no matter how long their day has been and no matter how much they ache to just climb into an empty gurney and sleep. And there again, chatting with veteran patients in the chemo ward, calming down a small girl, in a chair much too large for her, here for her first round.
Look! Look! Look! There he is! But then what about the motorist that sped down the 40 zone? What about the burglar who smashed a window and took a small business’s earnings? What about the murderer and the dictator and the rapist? Where is Jesus there? Is he there? In places of the dirty and the sinful? Yes, of course, look. There he is, sitting with a father who makes the long drive to the prison to visit his son. And here again! Look, that’s him, calling his mum on the payphone to let her know he missed her and to make sure she didn’t worry about him because she needed to make a speedy recovery so she can come and see him next visiting day. And there again, sitting with a victim and a perpetrator at a cold, metal table.
So then, where is Jesus? Here. Here is Jesus. Within you and within me and within each person everywhere. At home, on the streets, in the back alleyways, in the hospitals, in the prisons. Here is Jesus. Look. Can you see him?
Karoline Magpily