Darcey Steinke - Jesus Saves

Ginger opened the closet and took down the shoe box from the top shelf that held all of the sympathy cards they received when her mother died. Most had little animals on them, blue birds and bunnies’ or a Jesus in soft focus looking wise and demure. One woman wrote in a shaky cursive script that God needed her mother in heaven, that he'd looked down from the clouds, seen her suffering, and decided she'd be better off with him. She took a skirt from a hanger and pulled it up around her waist, fastened the button. The floral skirt was the one piece of her mother's clothing she'd kept and though she knew the people at the church thought she was crazy, she wore it there almost every week.

She needed to hurry; if she wanted to get to church before the sermon, she'd have to start walking now. It was late enough to walk along the highway in peace, without members stopping to ask if she needed a ride.

* * *

The hymn swelled, one of the old ones, its melody ponderous and Germanic. The usher pressed a bulletin into her hand and she slid into the last pew, a position saved for latecomers like herself. She was lucky. There weren't many typos in the bulletin this week. In the announcements that counted — the special thank you to Herb Clayton for making and donating the guest-book stand in the narthex, and the notice for the youth group dinner featuring com dogs, and the Martin Luther movie Wednesday night — everything was spelled correctly. She'd seen that movie a hundred times, always admiring Martin's short earnest hair-do and the part when rain blew in the window and he fainted because he was so afraid of God. The altar flowers, white carnations, yellow mums, red gladiola in a pulp paper vase, were given by Mr. Mulhoffer in memory of his beloved mother, the legendary Eva Mulhoffer, whose sauerbraten was as important to the history of the church as the founding ministers. It was Mulhoffer who put up the money for this new church. He argued in congregational meetings that the downtown area was dead, filled with drug addicts and petty criminals and that the future of the church was in the suburbs, where his pressed-wood furniture factory was located, down the highway, not far from the interstate entrance. He'd made a fortune in cheap colonial bedroom sets, Formica dinettes, couches that looked like overweight lazy-boy recliners. It was junky stuff, but Mr. Mulhoffer was not an unappealing man. He wore his white hair short and his pants pulled up over his big belly, and he was charming and friendly to everyone. But Ginger didn't like him because he believed unequivocally that anything new was better than anything old. His wife shared her husband's fanatical love of the new. Every Saturday she came by the church to urge Ginger's father to wear the new vestments, the minimal alb and the thin red stole with the machine-embroidered Alpha and Omega. Her father told Ginger that in the new vestments he felt like an alien in a bad sci-fi movie.

She watched him sitting on the wood slab suspended from the white brick wall, jotting down notes on the pages of his sermon. He looked anachronistic in his silk-lined robe, the cuffs edged with ornate lace; these vestments looked better in the old stone church, with the detailed cherry-wood altar and the gold glass lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

The organist pressed hard on the crescendo shoe and the congregation bellowed.

And though they take our life / goods, honor, children, wife / yet is their profit small / these things shall vanish all / the city of God remaineth.

The lights dimmed for the sermon. The stained-glass windows cast red, yellow, and lime green auras over members sitting at the edge of the pews. She'd never get used to the white brick walls and geometric stained-glass windows of the new church. Her father told her the building was modeled after some modern church in France. The original probably had an exotic feel, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern, but this replica, with its track lighting and wall-to-wall red carpeting, felt generic as an airport.

Her father made his way up into the pulpit, laid down his Oxford English Bible, spread out his sermon, flattened the folded crease with his hand, and put on his half-lens reading glasses. He was handsome in a faded Scandinavian sort of way, with his long face and high coloring. She sat up so the points of her spine rested against the wood pew, aware that she hadn't showered and still smelled of smoke and sex.

Bowing his head, her father intoned, “Lord, we offer this message in the name of your son Jesus Christ our Savior, Amen.” He looked over the members, his face relaxed, somewhat confessional. “You know, you can learn a lot from studying dreams. Last night I had a dream. I was driving cross-country, my eyes strained by the piercing headlights of cars in the opposite lane and the monotony of the highway. From a thermos I poured and drank one cup of black coffee after another. I had no real idea of my cargo or my destination. Whenever I glanced up through the top of the windshield into the starry night, I saw the silhouettes of ravens curving wide figure eights.

“In the deepest part of the night, I needed a break, veered off the highway into a rest stop, got out, and walked around the back of the van. As I looked up at the deserted brick pavilion that housed a bevy of snack machines, it occurred to me that I had to be careful, that I didn't want anyone to see my cargo, and that's when I realized Sandy Patrick was inside the van and that it was I who had kidnapped her.” The pews creaked as the congregation shifted uncomfortably.

“But how could this be? I had no memory of the kidnapping, no memory even of loading the girl into the van. My first impulse was to move away from the van, then run out into the highway, stick out my thumb, and try to hitchhike home. But then a sound came from inside the van; curiosity overwhelmed my fear and I unlocked the back doors and pulled both open. Laying on the cold metal floor was a body. Flesh so pale it glowed a fuzzy blue and seemed to hover in the dark. The white bloodless feet and purple toenails were closest to me, ankles bound with polyester cord. I was relieved, for it was not a woman's body but a man's. Head shaved, one eye badly bruised and swollen shut. Dried blood obscured his features; clear packing tape flattened his mouth and distorted his lips. But the ruined face was familiar and as I studied the features, I realized it was Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Looking at him I had a feeling of such fear and complicity that I woke up screaming.

“For hours I lay awake, trying to decipher the dream. Am I complicit? Small things happen. We tell fibs, withhold love, cheat on taxes, use condescension and hasty class consciousness to shame both strangers and friends. Do these minor sins multiply and allow evil into our world? Could I be complicit in something as macabre as the abduction of Sandy Patrick?

“Who here does not know the story of Sandy Patrick?” He looked at the faces in pew after pew as if somebody might actually answer. “Her mother says she has a dreamy side, that she collects stuffed animals, reads fantasy novels where horses fly and fairy princesses wear gowns made from flowers. Neighbors told reporters that she's a shy but loving child, always bringing home stray cats. One lady remembers how she took in a hurt bird, kept it in a shoe box, and force-fed it dog food on a Popsicle stick.

“But can this sensitive girl be a suitable stand-in for Christ? Must I accept my complicity in her abduction? Does each one of us have to come to terms with the evil that resides within us?

“The answer to both questions is of course yes. Yes, this girl, all rainbows and unicorns, is Christ. Just as much as that tiny baby in the manger was our savior. And yes, each of us must look into our hearts and acknowledge the darkness there. That's the shocking truth! The evil power that abducted Sandy is not just the exception to the rule but rather part of the fabric of human reality, of our reality, a dark fabric with which we are all clothed and which we cannot cast off. Each of us is scarred with the inheritance of Adam and Eve, that tainted couple who separated themselves from God, who began our long and bloody journey.