“Hidden in the storm, I answered you.”
--Psalm 81:8
I’ve been thinking about the Gospel reading from John about the woman caught in adultery. It was the gospel for last Sunday, and it has been haunting me ever since. On the surface, it is a frightening story. A woman is grabbed by a mob, dragged through the streets and thrown to the ground in front of some stranger; where she hears the mob prepare to kill her. But first they are going to ask this stranger what he thinks. Take a moment and put yourself into the scene. If you were this woman, what would you be thinking? What would you be doing? Caught up in this horrible storm of anger, rage, jealousy… brutality. You are helpless and know that there is nothing for you but to scream and plead for mercy but clearly there is no mercy to be had. The mob seeks only your destruction. Or so it seems. Because, as the gospel tells us, they bring the woman to Jesus because they want to put Him to the test. I look at this scene and wonder—if Jesus had given them the “wrong” answer, would they have tried to stone Him as well. Would they have accused Him of a different kind of adultery? Adulterating their law, their faith, their God?
But, instead Jesus defuses the situation by refusing to engage in their anger, their wrath; by refusing to become fuel for their storm. Instead, he grows quiet and kneels down and begins to write on the ground. I love that we don’t know what He wrote. I love that the author knew enough to leave that out. To my eye, that seems a sign of divine literary inspiration. Of course, over the years, many scholars and saints have considered and proposed possibilities. I think it was Augustine who suggested that possibly Jesus was writing out the sins of the people standing before Him. That seems as good a guess as any; but I prefer the mystery.
For me, the most important element here is the example Jesus gives us of not entering into the argument, of refusing to add fuel to the fire. He gathers the focus of the crowd away from the woman and onto Himself through His silence and his enigmatic action. They are—in a way—stunned by the unexpected strangeness of what He does. And then, instead of debating them, He concedes their point, recommending only a minor stipulation: Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone.
Then He returns to His work--writing on the ground.
At this point the crowd disappears, dropping their stones and walking away. And Jesus is left alone with the woman, her heart still bursting with fear. And He asks her, Woman, where did everybody go? Is there no one to accuse you?
And she says, No one.
And Jesus replies, Neither do I. Go and sin no more.
I love that image of God’s mercy showing up so quietly and so tenderly and so beautifully unexpected. It reminds me of a verse from Psalm 81:
“Hidden in the storm, I answered you…” (81:8)
In the book of Job the voice of God is literally hidden in the
storm; it comes out of the tempest. And in this story from John's gospel we see the presence of God calmly waiting for us in the storm of suffering, the storm of rejection, the storm of confusion.
Think about it. We are about to observe Holy Week, Good Friday, the Passion of Jesus, when the whole world came crashing down upon Him. We see it all right there: the storm of the Cross becoming the silence of the tomb… But, we are blessed to know how the story ends.
This Easter morning, perhaps you could rise early and step outside into the early morning light; take a moment and just sand there. Listen to the quiet as the day begins, the first hesitant singing of the birds, the stirring of the leaves in the morning breeze; witness the awakening of the world to the Love that does not condemn, the Love that has the power to calm all storms, the Love that died for us that we might live. As the old hymn says:
No storm can shake my inmost calm,
While to that rock I'm clinging.
