In the Midst (08/28/2008)

Warren Sentinel "Weekly Pulpit" (08/28/2008) 

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground.  John 8:6b-8 (ESV) 

These verses are found in one of the most contested, and yet one of the most beautiful and powerful, accounts in the entire Bible (John 7:53-8:11).  This passage is often referred to as “The Woman Caught in Adultery.”  

Theologians have long debated what Jesus might have written on the ground that day.  But the best they can do is speculate.  But more importantly than what he wrote may be the fact that he bent down to write. Not just once, but twice. 

Jesus had been teaching a crowd of people who had gathered in the temple courts.  Teachers of that day  generally sat down in the midst of the group they were teaching. And when the woman was dragged in, we read that she was placed “in the midst” of those gathered there. 

The scribes and the Pharisees had dragged this woman in hoping to trick Jesus into saying something that they could use against him.  They knew the Law of Moses well and they knew that Jesus knew it well.  And they thought they could use this situation to trap him. 

But Jesus knew their hearts and their minds and he did something absolutely astonishing.  He bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  Singer/songwriter Michael Card beautifully describes what Jesus did with the lines, “It was silence, it was music / It was art, it was absurd / He stooped and shouted volumes / Without saying a single word.” 

When Jesus bent down to write he was, I believe, acknowledging that he understood that it was he that they really sought to punish and not just this woman.  He was making it clear to them that he was willing to receive not only the words that they hurled at him, but the stones that could soon follow. 

Jesus was willing to die – to be stoned – right alongside this woman.  And so Jesus knelt down next to her, right there in the midst of the crowd, and was willing to die an undeserved death right then and there.  But the woman's accusers, now also Jesus' accusers, all immediately departed convicted of their own sinfulness by Jesus' words and actions. 

It is only when the accusers had left that Jesus stood back up.  Jesus, the Son of the Living God, was born into the midst of humanity.  And Jesus lived and died in our midst.  And as Jesus' disciples, I believe that we too are called to live (and even die) in the midst.  As disciples of Jesus we are called to live out the gospel – the good news of Jesus – in tangible, life changing ways right in the midst.