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Recently I’ve been working on an icon of Christ I call the Dumpster Jesus, because it was given to me by a young seminarian who found it discarded in a dumpster.
He wondered if I could do anything to save it. It was in terrible condition, with large sections of it literally crumbling away.
Frankly I didn’t know what to do about it, or even if anything could be done at all, and so I set it aside for a long time.
Recently I felt urged to take it out and start work on it. In places the gesso was gone down to the bare wood, and so had to be replaced and then painted. Areas that were relatively undamaged, I left intact.
As I worked, I found myself deeply moved to the point of tears. How was it that I, a sinner, was redeeming the Redeemer. Who does not give up on anyone, but offers redemption. Who restores the most garbagy parts of us. Who empties himself and identifies with us so much as to become Dumpster Jesus himself.
I thought of and prayed for all the people treated as garbage by our society—those deemed no good or worthless, the poor, the marginalized, the difficult ones, the forgotten, the rejected, the aborted babies, refugees waiting for some place to take them in.
His love for them is immense. So much so that he becomes part of the garbage heap himself, Dumpster Jesus. He rescues them all from the dumpster and sees the beauty there. O Lord, open our eyes!
And so my Dumpster Jesus that I feared was irredeemable, amazingly was restored much better than I ever anticipated, though still bearing some scars of its journey to dumpsterdom, just as the resurrected body of Jesus bore the wounds of his crucifixion.
Jude has been painting icons for a number of years. See the picture of the icon she restored at Sinner or Saint: I am Loved by God by Catherine Doherty posted on Oct. 3, 2019 .
