Learning the Lessons I Teach

 I was scheduled to teach High School Sunday School by Zoom last Sunday. 

The lesson was on John 8:2-11, about the woman caught in adultery. 

The story comes after several confrontations between the Pharisees and Jesus. Jesus is teaching in the temple. He is interrupted by a group of Pharisees and scribes bringing a woman caught in adultery. The religious law requires her to be stoned. Does Jesus agree?

 Jesus doesn't speak, but bends over and begins writing on the ground. After a bit, the leaders insist that he respond. He says, "Let the one without sin throw the first stone." Then he begins writing in the dirt again.

It doesn't say how long he waits before he looks up and sees that everyone is gone. It does say that the oldest were the first to leave. He asks, "Did no one condemn you?"

The woman answers, "No one." 

"Then neither do I. Go and sin no more."

****

When reading this story these things caught my attention. 

First, Jesus didn't respond initially to their question. He heard the question, bent down, and wrote in the dirt.

This is such an unusual way to respond. He had been teaching. He had the floor when they came in.  When they try to entrap him, he doesn't speak at all.

He could be de-escalating. He gives them physical space, making himself lower than them, and he chooses not to engage in an argument. 

He could be allowing the focus to be completely on them because the horror of what they are doing will be most obvious if he just gets out of the way. Maybe the offensiveness of their actions became clear even to them.

They stand there in silence with a woman they have publicly humiliated. They look like bullies, insincere bullies who don't bring both adulterers. It seems possible to me that they never hoped to have a stoning. They want an argument, not a stoning. Jesus does not give them an argument. He gives them time to recognize what they are doing. 

So they try again. They question him again, and he still leaves it in their hands, but gives them a way out. Which one of them would dare to claim they are without sin? 

It takes a while. Coming to a place of humility isn't an easy thing, and it makes sense to me that the oldest are the ones who are most aware of their own faults.

 He continues to stay low. He doesn't watch them. He allows them to make their decisions without escalating them at all. They are left in front of the people, still with this woman they have humiliated, and now, also realizing their own humiliation. At some point they are all gone. 

We don't know what Jesus wrote on the ground. We don't need to. His being on the ground, writing in the dirt, allowed a woman to go home physically unharmed. 

The other thing I felt from this story, even though it isn't written in, is a sense of exhaustion in Jesus, a deep weariness, and maybe sadness as well. Maybe I'm projecting. 

So, that is how I've seen this story after sitting with it this week. 

But what are the lessons in it? 

I'm sure there are many, but the one for me came unbidden as I was driving home after school on Thursday afternoon. It had been a long day. The kids were tired. I was tired. As I left their house and started the drive home, I decided to practice centering prayer as I drove. I took a deep breath and mentally began to silence my thoughts.  

Before I was a mile down the road, this thought came:

"Who would you bring to Jesus for condemnation?"

Of course, I knew. In these days of such heightened political animosity, I'd like Jesus to publicly take a side, my side, in an obvious way. No one should be stoned. Just straightened out a bit. 

I am still sitting with that.