Selfies with Jesus

The first known Selfie with Jesus. Starring Patrick and Jesus Christ (circa 2014 A.D.)

A story of innocent sacrilege, perfect for this Lenten season. Written in January of 2014. The year was off to a sparkling start.

Patrick and I had this idea for a website. It would be called “Selfies with Jesus,” and in it, people would be able to post their selfies with Jesus.

The idea reared itself in the midst of a pretty serious community reflection, something we Bon Secours Volunteers take part in once in a while, in those moments of weakness when we elect to feel like real human beings.

We were reading something by Margaret Silf about Ignatian Spirituality. Companions of Christ is the title. It is yet another book edited by Phyllis Tickle, who seems to have her hands in every book ever written on Catholic faith, probably just so people have an excuse to put the name ‘Phyllis Tickle’ in a published work.

At one point in the book, Silf challenged us to imagine how we would respond if Jesus, in this very moment, approached us in person and asked us to follow him. Just knocked on our front door, addressed us each by name, and said, “Come with me.” What would we do?

A bunch of hackneyed answers ensued. All the, “I mean, I would want to say yes, but I do not know if I could just uproot my life.” You know those trite responses that try to be vulnerable without really being candid? I think I came up with the first one. “I would probably have to ask where he was going, what his plan was, which in essence means I would not be ready to leave,” I claimed. How profound of me.

Julie shot something a little more refreshing into the conversation. She said she would ask Jesus to wait as she went to retrieve her cell phone. What she intended to mean was she would have a hard time leaving everything behind completely, and her cell phone would be the anchor to keep her close to the shore she was comfortable on. Jesus seems like the type who would know of a more picturesque shore to take us to—with softer sand and clearer waters—but it would still mean having to leave, and that is frightening.

What Julie said about the phone actually made a lot of sense. It was honest, and I liked that. But Pat and I had a slightly different interpretation of her comment. Our interpretation put the proverbial kibosh on what was finally shaping up to be a fruitful conversation. All for a worthy cause, I’d say.

Patrick went on to enact a phone conversation between a surprised invitee of Jesus, and maybe his or her mother. “You’ll never guess who is here. No, no, no. It’s Jesus. No, not Montero. Christ. Yeah, the Redeemer of the World and Son of the Most High. Yeah him. Mmhmm. Yeah he just showed up. Um I guess he looks pretty well kept? I know it’s new carpeting, but Mom, come on. Mom…Alright alright.” Now with his hand over the mouthpiece of his invisible phone, “Jesus, do you mind taking your sandals off? It’s new carpeting.”

As Patrick was wrapping up this monologue, I got another idea for why the cellphone was retrieved. I put one arm around Patrick, extended my imaginary cellphone at the other arm’s length, puckered my lips, and imitated the capturing of a selfie—in which Patrick was Jesus and I was me. Thus was born the Selfie with Jesus.

Sr. Nancy was leading reflection that morning. Let’s just say she was all three wise men to the birth of that special moment, bearing gifts of old comic sense and mirth. I would be willing to bet no Catholic nun has ever laughed as hard. Granted, she was the happiest little lady in the Mid-Atlantic pretty much all of the time. I think the only way she could frown was by doing a headstand. Still, none of us had ever seen a sister guffaw with such raw ferocity. She thought the selfie with Jesus thing was wonderful.

Later that day, while at our sites in the hospital, Patrick and I took our first selfies with Jesus. They were not very well composed, but they were something and occupied data on our smart phones, so they definitely existed and were worth something in that sense.

After that, the idea just wouldn’t go away. It kept infiltrating my thoughts, like my phone data was linked with the data in my brain. And the more the idea hung around, the better it looked—just like that girl in your college lecture class.

At the beginning of the semester she is just a girl. Cute, sure, whatever. But the more you see of her, the prettier she gets. By the last day of classes, she is gorgeous and the site of her leaves you paralyzed, and you hope you will have another class with this gift to your world, and in that one will muster up the courage to say something to her. She goes from ‘cute, sure, whatever,’ all the way to gorgeous just by not missing class and sitting in the same seat. This was sort of how the Selfies with Jesus thing worked. The more it came around, the sexier it got.

I started thinking genuine thoughts about how this could really catch on. Later in the week we even mentioned the idea to Shannon, our program director, and she seemed to believe there could be some sort of profit in it. I don’t know if she meant financial profit or what. Shannon is pretty adroit when it comes to partial disclosure.

Either way, we took Shannon’s failure to utterly sneer at the idea as sufficient affirmation to get it going. I am not exactly tech-savvy, so we asked someone who is, and Tumblr was the recommended forum for making it accessible to the deserving public.

Feeling guilty about this idea’s being so vain and shallow and mainstream—the third being the worst of the three—I told Shannon we could probably spin the idea into something with commendable spiritual merit. The outlook on this seemed bleak, because it was an idea which centered on taking selfies with Jesus, but we were committed to this cause. People would not need a good reason to post a selfie with Jesus, but if we could give them one, that would really be something.

This was what Patrick and I came up with; and what we wanted to be on our site:

SELFIES WITH JESUS

If Jesus knocked on your door today and asked you to come with Him, how would you respond? Would you drop everything and follow? Would you be ready for his call?

Nope. I’ve been thinking about it, and I would love it if my conclusion read a little differently, but I would not follow Jesus. I’ve got bills to pay. Websites to start. No way, Jesus. It’s a bad time.

I think what most of us today would really say is, “Hold just one second, Lamb of God. Let me go grab my cell phone,” and then proceed to take a selfie with Jesus.

That is just what this site celebrates. It provides a space to celebrate our darkness, our doubts, our insecurities, while celebrating the fact that Jesus will always be willing to wait, will stand by our side as we fail to find the truth in His love. It celebrates the fact that as confused as Jesus might be, as frustrated as He might become with our actions, He will never run. He knows how important each and every one of us is to making God’s Kingdom a reality. He will remind us that the invitation is always open.

If you live in this world today, which I assume a majority of you do, it is pretty clear that God needs us, and Jesus is happy to show us the way. He knows we are all worth the wait. If we want a selfie with Jesus, he will put an arm around us, smile, and allow us to take a selfie with Jesus. He will forgive us for our shameful posturing, and then He will say, “Now come on, we’ve got work to do.”

So post your Selfie with Jesus—because He loves us, and we love selfies—but let it be a reminder to walk out the door and follow Him, because together we’ve got work to do.

#baltimore