John 6:51:58   Broken people

Several cities around the world, including Vatican City, have a ‘Homeless Jesus’ statue. The sculptures, created by artist Tim Schmalz, depict Jesus as a homeless person, asleep on a park bench. The face of the blanketed figure is obscured, but the wounds on his feet reveal his identity. In Dublin, the statue is located on the grounds of Christ Church Cathedral; however, a poll in a national newspaper found that readers would have preferred Molesworth Street, at a location near where homeless man Jonathan Corrie had died. The forty-three-year-old had been sleeping rough in a doorway, just meters from the Irish Government Buildings. Speaking about the sculpture, Schmalz said, “Jesus did not say ‘love the wealthy’. His ministry was to the suffering and the poor. The heart of Christianity is to love the broken people, and this is where you find Jesus.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of himself as the ‘living bread’. This extract is part of a much longer passage in which Jesus reveals the intimacy of his relationship with us. Just as bread nourishes us physically, Jesus, the ‘bread of life’, nourishes us spiritually. In Hebrew, the expression ‘flesh and blood’ refers to the whole being. The gift of bread is Jesus himself, whose body was broken on the cross. It is in this ‘broken’ Jesus that we meet in the Eucharist, and who meets us in our own broken state. This broken Jesus challenges us to love the broken people we meet. The representation of Jesus as a homeless person challenges us to reflect on the paradox of the broken, marginalised Jesus who gives us life. May we see and love Him in others.

Copyright © Triona Doherty & Jane Mellett 2022. The Deep End, A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Matthew.