About the Statue of Jesus on the shores of His Hometown & the Longstanding Biblical Charge

J

ust on the edge of Jesus’ own hometown, there stands this statue and no one would be surprised if you almost missed it— I nearly walked blithely right by it.

“The exposed feet of the homeless guy bears nail wounds.”

Because the statue isn’t any lofty, neo-classical crowned figure, isn’t any robed goddess with arm stretched out as a beacon of light, isn’t a patinated icon of particular optimism.

The statue is this homeless figure sleeping on a park bench, huddled up under a thin blanket for warmth.

Face and hands shrouded under this blanket pulled around him tight, the figure seems nameless — until you see his bare and uncovered feet that the blanket can’t reach.

The exposed feet of the homeless guy bears nail wounds.

The nameless man is the homeless Jesus.

I had wanted to touch His feet.

“If the Son of Man didn’t have a place to lay His head, was He standing sufficiently on His own two feet to welcome to our table?”

I had wanted to reach out and cover His feet, somehow offer the God Man some kind of shelter. To somehow warm the sojourner who pulled a thin cover up over Himself with the cold reality that: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

The life of Jesus is the life of a homeless wanderer.

I’d stood there, struck that the statue to honour the God of the universe right outside His hometown depicts a Man who had no home. The guy who came to grant us liberty — and welcome us Home — was in reality homeless.

If Jesus qualified as homeless, is there something shamefully disqualifying about needing a home and the help of community?

If the Son of Man didn’t have a place to lay His head, was He was standing sufficiently on His own two feet to welcome to our table?

Do those who believe in His all-sufficient grace support welcoming only those who are self-sufficient?

A couple of hundred feet away, in the centre of Jesus’s hometown of Capernaum, St. Peter’s Church rises above an archeological dig that discovered a first century church — what is now regarded as the “first church in the world.”

“To grow deaf & blind to the plight of the afflicted is to commit the gravest injustice. To rise to aid the down-trodden has always been the choice of the greatest.”

Just beyond the church — I could hear it — the waves of the Sea of Galilee lap endlessly, begging to be heard here at the feet of the first church… here at the feet of the Homeless Christ.

If some statues stand as a symbol for an idea — maybe in Jesus’ hometown, this statue of the Homeless Jesus laying down on a park bench is about the laying down of our lives to embrace the idea of welcoming in.

Maybe the Father of Exiles, the Exiled Man Himself, is asking us to see His presence amongst the exiles, to wake and see His face amongst the desperate wanderers of the world, to hear the aching cry of “Why is there no safe place for Me?”

To grow deaf and blind to the plight of the afflicted is to commit the gravest injustice.

To rise to aid the down-trodden has always been the choice of the greatest.

Making one’s own interests always first is a way to end up eternally last.

“Give Me your tired who can’t find a place to lay their head, your direly poor who are struggling to stand on their two feet, so they can know the love of those who are the hands & feet of Jesus, who never refuses those treated like refuse. Give Me those who need someone to stand with them, because it is the standing together that makes the Kingdom stronger, so why not make the table longer?”

I had knelt down right there by the the homeless depiction of Christ with his bare and scarred feet exposed to the elements. I’d looked across to the world’s very first church that stands on the teeming shore of Jesus’ hometown.

Can the world still hear the heartbeat of the Homeless God Man under the sheet, hear the welcome of His Church:

“Give Me your tired who can’t find a place to lay their head,

your direly poor who are struggling to stand on their two feet,

so they can know the love of those who are the hands and feet

of Jesus, who never refuses those treated like refuse.

Give Me your huddled and homeless because who of us isn’t on the shore of eternity, yearning to help as many break free into the hope of forever?

Give Me those who need someone to stand with them,

because it is the standing together that makes the Kingdom stronger

so why not make the table longer?

Give Me those who believe

there is a beacon of possibility that still blazes bright only because

it’s hospitably open to the oxygen of opportunity beyond itself,

only because it believes that if it shutters itself closed under a basket,

it will wane away in the dark.

Send Me those seeking a roof for their wounds, courage for their crises, hope for their hunger,

Send these, the homeless, trauma-tost to Me,

Because I am the rising Light, I am the open door!”

Before I could bring myself to leave the Homeless Jesus, before reluctantly walking out of Jesus’ hometown carrying with me Jesus’ mandate of liberty and hospitality, something in me opened wider, something like a Biblical charge that I couldn’t blithely ignore:

“As you did it to one of the least of My brothers and sisters, you did it to Me.” 

 

Related: About Where We’re All From & Refugees & Where We Are All Headed