3rd Passiontide 2021, Writing the Story

3^rd Passiontide

John 8:1-12

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives,

Cranach the Elder

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 into 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 into the earth.

When they heard this, their conscience began to stir within them, and they went out, one after the other, starting 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 Jesus declared, "Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin."

And Jesus began to speak to them again: "I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but have the light in which there is life."

3^rd Passiontide

March 21, 2021

John 8:1-12

If one were to go to the shore and write 'I love you' in the sand, the waves would wash the letters 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….*

Ninetta Sombart

Jesus bent down and started to write something
into the earth. The Gospel 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 sense 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 acts of integrity and worth, for we are writing the earth's story together.

 

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* Alison Hawthorne Deming, “The Enigma We Answer by Living” in Genius Loci

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