John 8:1-11
In the story between Jesus and the woman caught in adultery I have mostly centered in on the interaction between the two of them. But this time, while reading it, I noticed the Scribes and the Pharisees. They generally come as a group to question, argue, or deny Jesus. They usually remain in charge of the interaction. This time something different happened. They were right in their assessment of the situation. The Law of Moses does say women caught in the act of adultery should be stoned to death. Jesus didn’t deny that. But he did say something different. He wrote something in the ground, gave them the OK to do that, with the stipulation, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Then the miracle happened, bigger than any one he had previously done…”they went away, one by one, beginning with the older ones.”
They HEARD him, not as a pack but as individuals, and one by one they walked away. They OBEYED him and did not carry out the Law. Something confronted and convinced these great religious leaders, who usually saw themselves free from sin, and would not allow any of them to throw that first stone. What was it that caused this amazing reaction? Did they somehow see that they were as guilty of sin as this woman; were there secrets hiding somewhere beneath their robes of righteousness that no one but God could have known?
We can never know what Jesus wrote in the ground. But it is certainly one of those questions I want to ask when I see him face to face someday. What was it that he said that broke through the pride and arrogance of these religious leaders, these men? What was it that hit each one individually, starting from the oldest one, that got right to the root and dispelled the Law they as a group were the defenders of? What did Jesus write on the ground that touched the heart of these men and saved this woman’s live and eventually her soul? Only God’s love can break up the fallow ground of a soul.
Maybe that is what Jesus was writing in the ground. Maybe he was writing moments that these religious men knew God’s love for them. That was what awakened the Pope when St. Francis encountered him. The Pope remembered a sweet, more innocent and simpler time before the affairs of the church overwhelmed him; a tender moment when he knew God’s love and it warmed his heart.
That is the most important ministry of those who love God and follow Jesus. Pointing them to God’s love; not condemning, not judging; but being light and salt, creating a hunger and a thirst for God.
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