Our Scribbles and the Truth Surrounding

Do you ever pick up a pencil or a crayon and just scribble, wiggle it around on a blank sheet of paper? Seemingly going nowhere? Did you ever take your finger and just wiggle it around on the frosted windshield of your car, or the mirror in your bathroom? Just doodling, passing time for no reason why?

In today’s Gospel, we don’t know the Who or the When. We don’t even know the Where! But we do know Why – and What! The Gospel this Sunday tells us that the reason for this unnamed woman to be flung into the midst of Jesus’s presence was more about Him than it was about her. These Scribes and Pharisees were hot to trot to cause Jesus to fall in His mission. They were scholars of the Law. Wise Men supposedly. But they were also fearful of the “crowd size” power of Jesus, and determined cut throats, attempting to insure their own status within the temple culture, they used this unnamed woman as bait for their plan…to trip Jesus up. To find Him guilty of NOT following the Law. 

The scripture causes me to smile every time I read what happened next.

He bent down and started writing in the dirt. His response to their question was doodling! Whenever Jesus was about teaching the will of His father, whenever He had people who came to hear His message, whenever He taught any of His followers about the Love of God, he sat. And He spoke. About God’s love for all. The scriptures – the Gospels – proclaim the love of God again and again – scroll after scroll. And Jesus preached it to any who would listen. Any time and any place. On the mountain, in the valley, by the sea, and in the temple. Today’s Gospel tells us He had just come from the mountain and was now in the Temple area. Already people were coming to hear Him preach … and He was seated, teaching them, when the Scribes and the Pharisees boldly begged their question about the LAW, and the consequences prescribed by Moses when that LAW was broken. So Jesus, hearing their charge, responded with the most perfect example of WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) that I have yet to hear. 

I love His response. I smile every time I think about Him, bending to the ground, doodling in the dirt, seemingly ignoring their outburst, and then hearing them ask again, he replied with another doodle in the dirt, and then standing, looking at all of them, spoke simply and directly, not at all what they expected to hear. “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”. 

The curious ingredient in this Gospel text is that pause to write in the dirt. I call it a doodle. A kind of mindless scribble, biding time, providing the moments necessary for the speaker to really speak the truth to power – when action is crucial. It’s like grace blooming at the end of his fingertip, and pointed not at the unnamed sinner at all, but right back at all who came to accuse. Jesus did not respond to the LAW of Moses; He replied with the LAW of LOVE. Knowing that ALL have sinned and ALL are loved, by God, All Ways. Thus, standing and looking directly at the accusers, He speaks the words that actually touches their hearts – and they, knowing their own sin, are unable to throw the stone. One by one, they turn, quietly they fade away. Interestingly, the oldest heads off first.

Jesus’ action teaches LOVE. His life teaches LOVE. His teaching teaches LOVE. Always and everywhere, example after example, Jesus teaches the steadfast love of God for ALL of God’s children. And that promise is one we can count on. Forever. Pope Francis preaches this truth time and after time, too. In “The joy of the Gospel”, (aka Evangelii Gaudium), Pope Francis writes, “Everyone needs to be touched by the comfort and attraction of God’s saving LOVE, which is mysteriously at work in each person, above and beyond their faults and failings”. (p44) The Gospel this Sunday tells this same truth in the words of Jesus who says to the Scribes and Pharisees exactly what they need to see themselves truly, and turn to mend their way, the oldest and then the others, seeing their own faults and failings as they quietly depart. 

 And today’s Gospel Jesus asks those beautiful life-giving words to the woman caught, “Has No One Condemned you?”, and her reply, “No one Sir”. Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on do not sin anymore”. 

What He scribbled with His finger in the dirt we will never know. And we don’t need to. The art of the deal, the actual doodling of His finger, led to say exactly what He needed to say to the accusers that would cause each one of them make a necessary turn around, a metanoia in their lives, and the woman, likewise. May we embrace that forgiving love with great joy in this beautiful season of turning. May we embrace with open arms the love God has for each of us, in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Today. Tomorrow. And Always. No Matter What.

De Colores, All of Them! 

In it with you,

Patty