Dirty with Jesus

Breathing life into dirt.

Dragged into public, she was about to be stoned to death. Her life was about to be cut short. The religious elite were about to take her out of this world because she’d slept with someone other than her husband.

Proudly standing on their feet, the religious elite were there with stones in hand ready to pelt her to a slow death because she had broken their customs.

And Jesus…

He was there too.

Bending to the ground on his knees he began writing in the dirt with his finger. Maybe he was thinking about the Garden when for the first time he breathed life into dirt and forth came Adam.

And here he was again, about to breath life into dirt again.

She was the dirt of the town, an adulterous woman, about to be returned to dust at the hands of the religious elite.

They stood in the dirt, stones in hand. Jesus down in the dirt, ready to bring life again.

Jesus stands, with power to breathe life into dirt, and he dares the religious elite to throw the first stone. If you’ve never messed up, you’ve never screwed up, if you’ve never done anything wrong in your life, if you are perfect in word and deed, by all means, one of you throw the first stone.

By all accounts that day, the dirt of the town, an adulterous woman, she walked away more alive than she’d ever been.

I sit here writing this and I wonder how many people I’ve considered dirt in my eyes. People that I have thrown verbal stones against.

People who are adulterers. People who’ve abandoned babies to death before they were even born. The atheist that wants nothing to do with God. The pervert shamefully demeaning women. The porn star trying to make a quick buck. The CEO who made it to the top by tramping over everyone else. Dirty people that if the Church is honest with herself, we’d want to disappear and wash away.

And Jesus looks at the dirt, at dirty people, and says, “I can breathe life into that.”

Let us be the church down in the dirt with people. Let us not be found standing upright ready to cover up the dirt with our stones. Let us be a church not comfortably upright in our pews. But let us be found bending towards the hurting. Bending towards the broken. Let us be found bending down into the dirt believing that Jesus has the power to breathe life into them again.