Some say Jesus wrote the names of the woman’s accusers in the sand. I agree, but I also believe that, in doing so, he included a line between himself, the woman, and her accusers. Not just a line, but the line. Some will say it didn’t happen; others will attempt to leave it out of the Book. But I believe Jesus drew the line that has persisted in our collective experience for centuries. When we were kids, the line showed up on every playground, in every yard, and in every gym the world over. It was a challenge offered by bullies and the bullied alike. It dared, taunted, and accused. It was Godlike in its ability to make a person decide the worth of things and the value of nothing.
It defined people in ways they have never been able to shake. The line was not arbitrary; it was sent by God, no matter who drew it, as it had to be acted upon. The line imagined a world in which things were yes and no, in and out, and right or wrong. It signaled an event we call “a time to put up or shut up.” That line caused stupid men to lose fortunes and power-hungry emperors to forfeit their kingdoms.
When Aunt Between yelled, “Well, you have crossed the line now!” I knew that shooting the rooster with my BB gun wasn’t a good idea and that making a run for it was. This much I know: I’ll never shoot another rooster!
The line also appears in office spaces and businesses, drawn by those in charge tasked with upholding its sanctity. But there are many missteps by those who toe the line of policies and rules, so that in many places the line is no longer solid, becoming instead a hodgepodge of dots and dashes that seem to signal maybe instead of yes or no.
We used to know where the line was. Now we don’t, and a generation has grown adept at demanding that no lines be drawn, no expectations be expounded, and no limitations on freedom be declared. Maybe too many lines were drawn, and people just got tired of being dared to step over, or maybe the lines were despised as a make-or-break proposition that should never have been proffered in the first place. Why let anything of oneself be defined by an idiot who can’t even draw straight marks in the dirt?
One day, Gimp Justus drew a line and told Jesus that if he stepped across it, he would give the Redeemer a butt whippin’ the likes of which he had never seen before. Gimp drew his line out of disappointment, anger, and shame…Jesus crossed it because he didn’t want him to be alone in his misery. Gimp drew it to formalize the separation and to declare his independence from God. Jesus took the dare.
The real problem is that we have gone through life mistaking a line for the line; it is the one that has always tried to separate us from the very one Gimp Justice wanted to whip. It is an invisible line-made so that it can move in relation to where we stand with Jesus. Yes, moveable and invisible yet real, and one that we encounter each day in thousands of different ways. We live lives of adjustment as this line appears in our hearts, beckoning us to step across and embrace the eternal dare of union with God.
Gimp knew there was distance; he felt it when his doctor said he was HIV positive due to a blood transfusion, when his wife left him, and when his daughter died in an automobile accident. Now that distance had turned to anger toward anything that smacked of God and had become a solid line of separation—just the kind a savior desires to cross.
In Isaiah 63:9, it says, “In all their suffering he also suffered, and he personally rescued them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them.”
He rescued them; he redeemed them. Who is them but everyone who suffers affliction? His love and mercy, of divine necessity, step across the line to save all who are afflicted from wicked ownership.
The only way Gimp or anyone else can truly understand God in life is through the cross, by which the suffering servant crosses the line to end conflict, forgive the unforgivable, and restore relational brokenness. Lines drawn out of hurt, anger, and resentment toward others, and lines drawn to entice us into battles for things, fade away into oblivion when we finally realize the line that really counts- the one that divides our hearts- is always being crossed by one who will not leave us alone in our suffering.
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