I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Dr. Kellie Brown’s reflection A Liturgy for the Mini Jesus.
I’ll admit that when the one-inch molded plastic Jesus figurines began to circulate a few years back, I rolled my eyes. I thought they were tacky, and there was something about how they casually but intentionally showed up in places that reminded me of the evangelical tracts from my childhood with their garish type that yelled from the cover—JESUS SAVES. When I looked theologically at this plastic Jesus’s representation of mass-produced consumerism, I wondered if it cheapened grace and pointed to our own stinginess in contrast to the example Jesus gave of the widow’s sacrificial giving of all she had. So, when the mini Jesus began to appear in places and situations of deep grief for me, I struggled with the dissonance.
It all started in May 2025 when my father suffered a stroke, which doctors first predicted would be mild in its impact, but instead took a downward turn rendering his cognition, personality, and behavior irreparably harmed. Since my father was the primary caregiver for my mother who had Lewy body dementia, his stroke triggered a line of falling dominoes that ended with both being placed into a memory care unit at a skilled nursing facility.
As their only child, everything fell to me—making good healthcare decisions for them, assuming responsible control of their finances, and cleaning out their hoarded home. I had dreaded the day I would have to deal with the hoard that had accumulated from decades of unchecked mental illness. All of this caused my faith and the seeming unjustness of such suffering to collide head on. It was further complicated by the reality that much of the hoard was religious material (books, Bibles, sermons on cassette and CD, etc.) that had harmed me as a child by its toxic doctrine, rendering me hypervigilant about sin and falling out of God’s favor.
It was during this clean up that I encountered the first mini Jesus. I found him collapsed face down on the nightstand of my mother’s bedroom amid scattered pills and cracker crumbs. It was a diorama that appeared staged but wasn’t. I yelled, “Even Jesus has given up on this house!” And yet, that tiny Jesus in his purple sash, came to symbolize the savior, prophesized as a man of sorrows who would be no stranger to grief. I began to recognize in this figurine the Jesus who comes as a compassionate helper willing to meet us where we are, even if that means lying down beside us in the messiness of life.
I shared this experience with a close friend. A few weeks later, she texted me a photo from a local craft store, where under the label of a choking-hazard party favor, you could buy the mini Jesus in bulk,12 for $2.99. That led to another question—What does it mean to buy Jesus in bulk? Again, the dissonance rose up in me.
After my parents had been in memory care for seven months, my father asked for a lightweight jacket, saying that he felt cold sometimes. I retrieved a tan windbreaker from his closet in their mostly empty house and wrote his name inside with a black permanent marker. When I presented it to him, he gave it a thorough examination as if he didn’t recognize it, then slid his hand in the pocket and withdrew three plastic Jesus figurines, a trinity of Jesuses. My mother sat in her wheelchair next to his bed while he tried to explain the meaning of the different sash colors. She, however, showed no interest in their possible symbolism. Her focus was only on possessing them. A purple cosmetic bag that she carried as a purse had become her only source of hoarding, and she greedily tucked them inside like a magpie’s trinkets.
The week before Easter, my mother began a sharp decline, becoming lethargic and preferring to sleep rather than roam the halls or eat meals with my father. On April 20, the hospice nurse declared that my mother’s status had changed to active dying. They moved her to a private room so there could be quiet and the opportunity for family to gather. Of her belongings, the staff only transferred the purple cosmetic bag to the new space. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when upon arrival, I was greeted by a wee Jesus, as Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama might call it. Jesus, in the blue that represented his humanity, keeping vigil on the empty dresser, bearing witness to my mother’s transition from human life to life eternal. Three days later when I exited that room for the final time, I left empty-handed except for that Jesus tucked in my pocket.
Dr. Kellie Brown is a violinist, music educator, and award-winning writer. Her words have appeared in Earth & Altar, Ekstasis, Foreshadow, and others. In addition to 35 years of music ministry, she serves as a UMC lay minister and is pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Theopoetics at Bethany Theological Seminary.
