Hefeweizen Jesus

El Hefe by Morgan Burke, flickr

In a darkened arthouse cinema pub on a Saturday night, the women watch a documentary film called Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, about a beautiful, famous man who tragically dies. The women sitting at two adjacent tables close to the exit are known to each other, but they prefer the anonymity of the darkness and use it as an excuse to ignore the women who are not seated at their table. At one table, there are two sisters who are close and frequent the cinema. At the table adjacent is a table of women variously known to them from previous interactions at houses of worship, at children’s school functions, at events in the community. All of them relish the cover of the darkness and a self-deluding belief that they are in fact invisible to these others who know them. For once, they want to experience being someplace else that is not their large yet also small town. They want to escape.

All of the women have believed or have told themselves they have “known Jesus” in some form though the authenticity of their “knowledge” could be up for debate. All are in some stage of divorce. When the elder sister at the table of two sisters was going through divorce, her younger more religious sister became angry and judgmental, and yet when the younger sister started divorcing, they began to more fully reconcile, having bonded through a similar experience. A woman sitting at the table behind them had lectured the elder sister about how to stay married, yet years later, this woman is divorcing as well.

Together, and yet separate, they watch the clips of film of the famous man, a story of his rise in popularity, his wild boy nature which reminds them of their sons as well as men they thought they loved. They cry in their separate spaces; they eat gourmet flatbreads and drink wine. At some point or another, each has judged another in their number. At some point or another, under the guise of faith, each has been rejecting.

Jesus sits in the back. He watches the beautiful man on film. He cries for the man who would kill himself. He knew it would happen all along of course, but he wishes people would stop asking questions about his omniscience and omnipotence: If Jesus knew the man was headed for disaster, why didn’t he stop this man from hanging himself? He knows if the women had known the fate of their lives and the outcomes for wild and beautiful men, they wouldn’t have sung when they were young children in choir about His beautiful being:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.

Jesus cries in the back of the theater because he really doesn’t know why the man killed himself. Jesus cries in the back of the theater because clearly, the man made a fool of himself with his last very young girlfriend and that crushed him because, by then, the man was old and lonely. Jesus cries as the women cry, out of catharsis, out of something personal, because of something lost: the man’s lost beauty, the women’s lost beauty, a loss of desirability.

There are no old hymns anymore, thought Jesus, And not as many people believe in Him, or not in the old way.

Jesus orders a Hefeweizen.

Jesus knows his own fate as surely as the women know theirs. The women beg lawyers to help them find a way to survive, attempting to stave off the inevitable. Jesus sees his fate clearly as the man saw his: The man, who in imitation of Kurtz entering the Congo, films a dramatic, if not actual, descent into insanity. Jesus knows fewer would turn to him, even in homelessness and plague. He knows of the coming dark.

He orders the spinach artichoke dip, a pear gorgonzola flatbread, and another Hefeweizen.

Corporeality isn’t everything, but sometimes it takes the edge off.