1829

"Jesus", says Kenny, beamng, "I am so blessed to have passed these last twenty-five years with you. Of how, living here with you has exposed all the lies that I once believed about you. And now my friends here can also be so blessed." "You are highly favoured, Kenny", says our Lord, and your presence here is a huge blessing. Would you be so kind as to see to the arrangements for dinner? I shall be present soon to assist you. "Can I help", says Sarah, rising up from her seat. "Kenny, my blessed mother and father and I have everything taken care of. I want all of you to stay here together and visit and talk together. I am sure you will have much to say to one another, and I also expect that some questions are going to arise, such as can be addressed during dinner...."

1827

"I have seen you before.  I think," says Sarah. "Many many times, you have seen me, my child."  and now it doesn't seem quite so absurd that someone who looks like a sixteen year old boy should address a woman nearly forty as his child. "I have always had trouble imagining me being close to a mature man with a beard.  Because I am a woman and because I am attracted to women.  But as I see you now, my Lord, that makes much more sense of what I felt and could see with the eyes of my heart whenever I felt your presence near me.  But now the person I see you to be is much more compatible with my sense of the Jesus I was...feeling?" "When I rose from the dead, it was only the marks, the wounds of my crucifixion that I still carried in my body.  I did not rise again to continue looking the way I did before I died, but to show forth my true form.  but since my true form was too glorious for the human flesh and eye to behold, I show to you myself in the very human form most like my resurrected self..  So, whom you see here before you, is not a teenage boy, but the essence of the beauty and purity that I was resurrected into... "Who are you really?" says Erik. "You still don't believe", says Jesus, rather than asking it. "I am an atheist.  You still haven't shown any evidence that you really are Jesus Christ." "It isn't evidence you need, dear Erik, not so much as a change of heart.  Dear Erik, you were born and raised in a country of atheists.  Sweden.  But I must also remind you of that time when you were just twelve in Humlegarden Park.  You were seated, very self-absorbed, on a bench waiting for your mother to join you.  But it wasn't your mother that joined you.  Remember?  Erik.  Look at me please when I am talking to you." And now Erik is totally in the grip of Stubborn Swede, a syndrome that I coined thanks to having Greta for a wife and him for a brother-in-law. "Erik.  Who sat next to you on that bench?" He still refuses to look up at Jesus, but remains all coiled up in his snail shell  of stubborn denial.  Jesus rises from his chair and approaches Erik, he is first standing over him, and then our Lord kneels down and looks up in my brother-in-law's face. "Erik.  Who sat down next to you." "I don't remember." "Erik, please stop trying to lie to me.  I see everything.  And I will tell you who sat down on that bench next to you when you were twelve years old, and I will tell you all of our conversation."  Jesus is now holding my brother in-law's hands, both of them in his.  "I sat down next to you on the bench, and I said, Hello Erik.  And you looked at me and said, How do you know my name?  Remember?" Erik doesn't reply, but finally is looking into the green eyes of the youthful risen Christ. "I said that both your mothers would be arriving late, by about twenty minutes.  Your mother's name was Karin.  She died, October 2001 from metastasized breast cancer.  Amanda, her widow lives alone now in the same apartment in Stockholm.  She is retired now and has become an energetic community activist for the rights of nonwhite immigrants.  She is responding well to my tutoring.  I asked you if you knew who I Am, and you said no.  So, I replied that when you were thirty-two we would meet again face to face, in  another country, and then you would know me." Erik now stares fixedly at the green eyes of the Risen Christ, and stammers,  "Now I know you.  Jesus.  now I know you." Jesus fixes his eyes on him, and Erik simply cannot look away. Then Jesus bends over and kisses the top of his head. Erik is suddenly weeping. "Lord it is you. You are not a fantasy. In Sweden we are all taught to be atheists, that you are just a fairy story. But Lord", he sputters between his tears and sobs. "Lord, it is you. It is you! I never knew. I was never taught." And Eric suddenly drops to the floor on his knees before Jesus, who lifts him up under the arms and places him back in his chair. "It is one of Satan's most pernicious tricks to spread lies about me, whether through the Enlightenment blindness or ecclesiastical blindness. The first negates me altogether through scientific materialism. The second negated me all the more insidiously, destroying and murdering those who truly love me in the name of the many lies they have come to believe and promulgate about me."

1826

His hands are no longer bleeding. in fact, there is not even a single drop of blood anywhere. Jesus is lifting with both hands Sarah to her feet. "Jesus. it's you ", she whispers. "Jesus, it's really you. So young, such a beautiful lovely boy you are, but it's you. It's you." Then looking at his hands, which she has just released, and the floor between them, she says, "What happened to all the blood?" "It is all flowing in all of your veins here, Sarah. Each and every one of you." "What happened?" "We are all here together. Sit down, please, my daughter." And given that Jesus looks no older than sixteen, it does seem hilarious that he is calling a woman more than twice his age, in fact, old enough to be his own mother, his daughter.

1825

"What happened to your hands", she says, shocked and saddened. "Who did that to you." "All of you here", the Lord answers tenderly, "And so many others." "You can't just let yourself bleed like this. You could get a bad infection. I know first aid, here ", she says reaching for his wrist, " if someone has a rag handy and a first aid kit I could staunch the bleeding." And the blood is dripping onto the floor in front of her. "Lan", says Jesus to the angel, "Be so kind please as to lift my shirt for me." Not removing her hand from Lindstrom, Lan reaches with her free hand and lifts up the left side of Jesus' white shirt, to reveal a fresh looking wound, made by a Roman spear. "Sarah, my daughter, my chosen servant, and my very stubborn girl", says Jesus, "be so kind please as to place your hand on the wound in my side." The next thing that happens, is Sarah, prostrated on the floor before the young Jesus, trembling, and repeating and stammering over and over again, "My lord and my God, my lord and my God..."

1824

Lindstrom appears completely catatonic. "He cannot answer right now", says Lan, gently caressing his shoulder. "Hi, I'm Sarah, and you would be..." "Lan is one of my servitors and she is guiding our friend through a very delicate moment right now", says Jesus. "Where are your parents", she says. "We are both right here", says Mary. "are you his grandparents?" Francois says, "It's alright Sarah. We are actually guests of our Lord and his Holy Family" "This is just all so bizarre." "Sarah", says Jesus playfully, "if you but knew how greatly you honour me by your presence here in our home. "He gets up, and approaches her with the nimble grace of a modern dancer, raising up both his hands, which are bleeding again...

1823

"And I'm the Queen of Romania. Where did you pick up this kid anyway." "We happen to be in this kid's home right now", says Carl. "Where are we and how did I get here." "Welcome to our home, Sarah", says the mother of our Lord. "Yes, welcome", echos Joseph. "Will you not take a seat and join us." She takes a vacant chair next to Lindstrom. Turning to him she says, "Hi, I'm Sarah."

1822

"Where the hell am I?" says a shocked and indignant voice that must belong to Sarah, and here she is, standing in our midst in the oval space at the centre of our arrangement of chairs. She is wearing a faded maroon sweatshirt and her signature black jeans. "Welcome aboard", says Carl laughing. Her face is her classic alchemy of shock and indignaton. "I was just opening the front door to Carol's townhouse and this is where I step into?" "Could do worse", says Jesus, smiling. "Welcome, Sarah." She turns her large brown and querulous eyes on our host and says, "How do you know my name? Who are you, anyway?" "I believe we met first in New Westminster when that unfortunate man meant to ram his truck into Christopher's car while you were in it." "I've never seen you anywhere." "Sarah", says Francois portentously, "I would like to introduce you to our Lord, Jesus Christ."