Hospital Approves Dirty Jesus

I’ve seen this painting on various walls at various church sponsered hospitals (in this case it’s the Seventh Day Adventists). It’s hard to really appreciate how amazing this picture is unless you regularly go into hospitals and have gone through some degree of training in following hospital policies on sterility.

Let me tell you why most doctors and hospital staff laugh at this. Hospital sterility is basically the grown-up version of hot lava. Picture yourself as a little kid, with a boundary drawn on the ground. You can play all around the area, even stand on its border, but one lousy trip off the jungle-gym and into the area and that’s it. You just fell into the hot lava. You’re dead.

Sterility in an OR setting works the exact same way. A perimeter is established around the patient. Everything is covered in special, sterile, blue coverings. Only those people who have “scrubbed in” (a five-minute hand washing procedure) and who then cautiously cover themselves in a sterile gown are allowed to be in the sterile area. Even then, only a small percentage of the front of their bodies is deemed clean. They wear sterile gloves, sometimes two sets. Their hair is covered. Beards are only tolerated if you wear a horrible, full-face covering called a bear hat. And think of the scrubs you see surgeons wear. They are first put on from inside the hospital, having been especially cleaned, and are not meant to leave the hospital, so that no outside contaminates might enter the OR. No person who has not gone through this procedure may enter the sterile area. Everyone is trained to be hyper vigilant about their bodies, their movements, and where they and everyone else is with regards to this area. The entire room is fed with sterile air, keeping a positive pressure in the room, so that all air flows away from the patient and the sterile area. If something is sterile, it means nothing has touched it except those few things which can stand an evil process of sterilization which kills everything possibly living. It’s all very, very serious policy stuff to prevent infection. It’s just like hot lava, except if you fall into the sterile area you don’t die. Of course, the patient may.

To give you an idea of the level of vigilance we are trained to maintain, I once had to yell across the room at a visiting police officer who was not very familiar with the OR setting. He suffered from what I shall describe as poor body awareness. He did a fair job at keeping most of his body away from anything blue, staying erect and cautious, except for a massive, rotund belly which stretched a full foot, if not more, away from his chest. I had to yell at him a number of times, seeing him bumping it into things the way a tired farmer might rest a heavy pumpkin against a fence, and watching nurses have to quickly scramble to cover or remove the now unsterile area he had contaminated.

So consider all that, the utter sanctity of the sterile area that is the absolute backbone of modern surgery. Now, consider again the image with an utterly non-sterile Jesus guiding the hand of the cutting surgeon. Apparently, Jesus doesn’t need to follow hospital policy. Much like how angels have no corporeal form and women don’t poop, we are left wondering if hospital administrators have decided that Jesus, divine, yet human in body, is technically clean and sterile. Even if He is clean, I’ve got to wonder about his divine robes. Surely Jerusalem is a holy place, but I can’t imagine its ancient streets met with hospital policy.

What I really want out of all of this is a more modern take on Jesus. I want it to be a drawing where Jesus is all scrubbed in like the other folks portrayed. After all, seems pretty unholy to disobey the first commandment of any OR: Thou shall not contaminate. In my version of the painting I want us to recognize his divine presence only by some classic, renessaince halo above his head and, maybe, a knowing wink in my faithful direction.