By Jeff Kunerth, The Orlando Sentinel.
Homeless Jesus rests on a park bench in a little alcove between an oak tree and a brick column on Jackson Street. He is made of cast bronze, a $40,000 sculpture commissioned by First Presbyterian Church of Orlando and unveiled Wednesday.
He is largely ignored. Pedestrians walk by him talking on cellphones or plugged into their headphones. They are picking up their children from the church’s private school or getting off work with their identification badges swinging across their bellies.
Most are busy, too busy to contemplate the meaning of Jesus imagined as a homeless man.
“We can’t talk because we are in a hurry,” says a mother with her children.
Soon, three teenagers pause to look at the sculpture created by Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz who has signed his name on the statue like it was carved into the wood of the bench.
“Is that God?” one asks, pointing to the nail holes in the bronze feet protruding beneath the blanket.
Sharon Darin stops. She has seen the bronze marker on the brick pillar containing the scripture that inspired the sculpture: “The king will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'”
She looks at Homeless Jesus.
“I think it’s thought-provoking,” she says. “I don’t know what its purpose is other than that.”
The purpose, said First Presbyterian Pastor David Swanson, is to see Jesus in a different way and, in turn, to see the homeless in a different way.