Monday, April 7, 2014

3rd Passiontide 2012, Strength for Deeds


3rd Passiontide
Dore
John 8: 1-12

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives; but as soon as day dawned he was already in the Temple court, where the people flocked to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees led in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand in the middle, and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this only as a trap, in order finally to have a reason for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down, and started to write something in the earth with his finger. When they kept on pressing him with questions, he stood up and said to them, “Whoever among you is without sin, let him cast the first stone at her.” And again, he bent down and wrote in the earth.

When they heard this, their conscience began to stir within them, and they went out, one after the other, beginning with the eldest. And only Jesus was left and the woman who stood in the middle. Jesus stood up, and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one passed judgment on you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I judge you,” Jesus declared. “Go now, and leave your life of sin.”
3rd Passiontide

March 25, 2012
John 8: 1-12

If we were to go to the beach, and write ‘I love you’ in the sand, the letters would be washed away. The words would disappear. But their meaning, the love itself, would still exist.

Our deeds are the letters we write into the earth. Whether public or secret, they may seem to disappear. But their meaning remains.

A modern poet writes:

…it's wrong to think people are a thing apart
from the whole, as if we'd sprung
from an idea out in space, rather than emerging

from the sequenced larval mess of creation
that binds us with the others,
all playing the endgame of a beautiful planet….[1]

Jesus bent down and started to write something in the earth. The story doesn’t say what he wrote. But it certainly had something to do with deeds and their meaning for the earth.

Christ’s whole life, His death and His resurrection have inscribed their meaning permanently into the earth. And their meaning still speaks: I love you, He says. I recognize your deeds. And I love you. Let my love for you shine before you. Let my love give you the strength for deeds of worth.






[1] Alison Hawthorne Deming , “The Enigma We Answer by Living”  in Genius Loci


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