What would Jesus doodle?

In John 8, it’s recorded that the scribes and Pharisees hauled a woman in front of Jesus, telling Him that she’d been caught in the act of adultery and that, according to the law Moses gave, she should be stoned to death. The Scripture tells us that rather than answer them straightway, Jesus stooped down and started writing or drawing something in the dirt. Eventually, He stands up and says, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her”. And one by one, they’re all convicted and slink away.

Then He tells the girl, “go and sin no more”.

But aside from two of the more famous lines in the Bible, this account contains one of the great puzzlements in Scripture, and often I’ve heard people musing on it. “I wonder,” they say, “what Jesus was writing in the dirt? Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to look over Jesus’ shoulder and see what He was drawing?”

I’d thought of that, myself: one of those angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin posers that occupy our time every once in a while and then we move on to other things.

Then, just over a week ago, I got gobsmacked with the answer: it doesn’t matter.

John himself writes that Jesus did so many things in His time on earth, that there isn’t enough ink and paper in the world to write them all down. So evidently, when John wrote his Gospel, it was more or less a highlight reel of Jesus’ ministry. What he put in was enough for us to believe, so “that believing [we] might have life through His name” (John 20:31), and what he left out was not important enough.

So what Jesus wrote or drew wasn’t important. What was important was the fact that He was stooped down, drawing in the dirt.

Jesus lowered Himself below the level of the adulteress and got His hands dirty.

The “good” people stood off – a stone’s throw away, literally – and couldn’t even bring themselves to threaten her up-close-and-personal. Jesus dirtied His hands. What’s more, He made Himself vulnerable. In the story of Gideon in the Book of Judges, we read that God instructed Gideon to send home those soldiers who went down on their knees to drink and made themselves vulnerable to attack.

That’s more or less the essence of ministry on the Downtown East Side. We need to lower ourselves so that we’re not higher than the people we serve*, and not worry about whether we’re vulnerable. We need to be prepared to get our hands dirty. And there’s one more thing we can learn from this passage.

Was Jesus being rude or cavalier in not responding immediately to the Pharisees? No: He was doing something the other three Gospels tell us He told us to do; wait for the Holy Spirit.

See, there were other things Jesus could have done -- things the world might have expected any man with an ounce of compassion to do, given the same situation.

• He could have stood valiantly between her and the accusers and shielded her from the stoning. He could even have dared them to take Him out first. Somebody might have done that, too; heaven knows there were enough people ready to stone him, too. But even if He had done that and everyone had left without throwing anything, that wouldn’t have accomplished God’s purpose.
• He could have called them on the fact that the man involved had not been arrested and pointed out that Moses’ law was gender-blind. But that would only have convicted them to find the guy and then they’d be right back where they’d started – namely, discussing whether they both should be stoned -- and wouldn’t have accomplished God’s purpose.
• He could have shown the world’s version of compassion – sympathy – and lectured the accusers on the hard life the woman probably had and how they had to cut her a break. But considering that God is no respecter of persons, that wouldn’t have accomplished God’s purpose.
• He could also have gotten “legalistic” on them and reminded them that Roman law prohibited them from killing anybody – something the chief priests told Pilate when they wanted him to crucify Jesus – and that could have defused the situation right there. But that wouldn’t have accomplished God’s purpose, either.

Instead, He waited for the words the Holy Spirit would give Him – just as He told us to do when called on to defend our faith. Then, He spoke the word of God over the situation and His purpose was accomplished, namely:

• The accusers were convicted to examine their own hearts
• The woman got a new chance on life – with the proviso to “sin no more”

It’s interesting that John’s is the one Gospel that does not record that instruction to us, but he shows Jesus actually setting the example. And that’s an important example for any ministry – especially places like the Downtown East Side.

See, when we’re faced with issues like drugs and crime, poverty and prostitution, homelessness and the other ills of urban poor areas, the human, worldly response is to Do Something. And when that doesn’t work, then we want to Do Something Else. And that leads to such dangerous concepts as safe injection sites, and other concepts that are billed as helping people but rather enable them to continue along their slow death, rather than bringing real healing.

Don’t just DO something – stand there!

We need to remember that when the world is yelling all around us, challenging anyone to come up with a solution; we need to go quiet, drop down to the level of the people we’re helping and spend some time on our knees doodling in the dirt, waiting for the word of God to come to us.

It will always be right, and right on time.

Always.



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*In The Passion of the Christ, the scene shows the woman being flung onto the ground at Jesus’ feet and staying there. That’s a more dramatic interpretation, certainly, but according to John, she remained standing in the midst of the crowd with Jesus beside her, even after He’d bent down and after all her accusers had slunk away.

Disciples more than dollars - no: really!

"The harvest truly is plenteous, but we don't have enough money and our work falls through the cracks of any government programs."
-- Jesus, upon looking at the multitudes with compassion.
-- Not.

Actually, in Matthew 9:37, Jesus says the problem is the lack of labourers, and the resurfacing of Cherie yesterday at The Lord's Rain hammered that home for me again. Cherie is a woman whom I mentioned back in March in a blog posting, and she's sadly typical of one of the challenges we face on the downtown east side.

For all the optimism of that post, Cherie still appears to be lurching through her life from day to day, from fix to fix, from "customer" to "customer" -- you get the idea. She had that "hard" look on her face, that cracked briefly with a smile, but got paved-over when we refused to put more sugar in her coffee (I'd say 90% of the people at the Mission actually do respond to and respect the boundaries we set -- and these boundaries are purely economical -- but there are some who pout more than somewhat).

Anyway, you think you've found a chink in someone's armor, a way to crack through and reach them with true, unconditional love; but once they step back out onto the street -- into the world, with its constant temptations and its reminders of how they've fallen before -- without the support of others ministering that same kind of love to them, they slip again.

Often, I believe it's not the "fall" that does the damage to a person who's begun to find their way to the Lord: it's the guilt trip that comes from believing that they're just as rotten as they'd thought they were, they're really not worthy of any kind of forgiveness or new life, and that they'll never be able to make it back now.

All of which is The Big Lie and is easily countered by Grace. Just as love never fails, Grace trumps everything. But even if you get that message through to them, they need other people around to encourage them and build them up, especially when temptation looks like it's getting a foothold again. When I see Cherie -- or some of the others, even those that I've known for years -- slip, my first thought is that I wish I'd been close to hand to try to talk to them, encourage them and otherwise Be There for them.

Then I realize that there's only so much of "me" to go around. I can only speak for myself, but I'm pretty sure that, if you ask Barry or anyone else ministering in Christ on the Downtown East Side, you'll hear a similar reaction. After all, we have jobs and families -- don't forget that the Apostle Paul had a job and the Apostle Peter was married. Other laborers are needed to pick up the slack, to water the seed we've sown and to sow new seed themselves; to be the "fresh legs off the bench".

Or even -- the right legs: there's no guarantee that, even if I had been there with Cherie or whomever, I could have said anything more or different than what I'd said already. Sometimes, people need to hear a variation on the message, in order for it to sink in deeper. Case in point: when our late sister Candy gave her testimony about how Jesus saved her from drug addiction, it got through to some people who'd been hearing me preach for over two years. The testimony of another sister, Charisse, also struck home where the words of others had just bounced off.

Having more labourers also proves to people in the area that ministry in Christ is not just being done by a handful of sin-busters out to save the world with Bible in hand. Knowing there are multiple people who care and are motivated by the same thing can have a major impact by itself.

All of this is by way of encouraging people to consider forming teams to operate The Lord's Rain on early Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings. This would give people in the area more opportunity to stay off the street during those hours -- especially those in shelters, who get booted out a few hours before other programs open. When The Lord's Rain is available, they get invaluable exposure to what Pastor Barry calls "Jesus with the skin on" -- love, experienced through serving one another. You might even want to pitch it to your churches and see if others are interested.

It doesn't take much: the best team size would be four -- two is the minimum; the early-morning hours (6:30 or 7 until 9) would work well for those with jobs downtown. I believe you'll discover gifts that you didn't even know you had.

It's all about building relationships, really. That, as much preaching the Word, helps instill the hope they need. Indeed, I can't think of a time when Jesus quoted Scripture at people -- save for the times when He used it to bring up the religious leaders on their own hypocrisy. Instead, the Gospels tell us that Jesus reached people through fellowship: eating with them, walking with them, sitting beside a well, standing them a round of drinks at a wedding.

It's through relationships that love starts to grow; and it's through love that hope takes root; and it's through hope that people start to experience true transformation in their lives.