Lux Mundi Statue or Five Dollar Footlong Jesus

This statue is quite famous in Cincinnati, Ohio. Once a statue of Jesus from the waist up. He was called touchdown Jesus because of the position of his arms. It looked like he could be saying "TOUCHDOWN" any minute! Though, touchdown Jesus was pretty much an accidental lightening rod. And he inevitably got struck by lightening and burned down to nothing but the charred metal rods that held him together.  So the Solid Rock Church in Lebanon, Ohio rebuilt but this this time wanted a Jesus who looked like he was beckoning to the people to join him...but it just ended up looking like he was trying to get everyone to buy a five dollar footlong sub from Subway. Go figure.  In 2010, Solid Rock Church commissioned Tom Tsuchiya to design a sculpture of Jesus to replace the original sculpture destroyed by a fire caused by a lightning strike.  Tom envisioned the new 51 foot (15.8 m) tall sculpture to differ from the original one designed by Brad Coriell, who depicted Jesus’s bust with his arms raised towards the heavens. His design depicts Jesus’s full body with arms lowered in a welcoming gesture. For initial inspiration for Lux Mundi’s design, Tom translated parts of the surviving Greek texts of The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John. Using two themes drawn from the texts: "agape" (“affectionate love”) and "exousia" (“authority”), Tom posed Jesus stepping forward with his arms in an embracing gesture.  To reinforce the themes, the sculpture's shapes are modeled with a warm feeling and Jesus’s commandment from John 15:12: ‘Love one another as I have loved you’ will be featured on the sculpture’s robe.  Furthermore, the Gospels are concerned with Jesus’s message and not his physical appearance (in fact, not a word is mentioned about his looks). In keeping with that spirit, Tom avoided creating a likeness of Jesus- the physical features that is generally associated with Jesus, such as the long hair, beard and robe, are merely symbolic on this sculpture. Finally, Tom named the sculpture " Lux Mundi", Latin for" Light of the World".