A Finger in the Dust

Last sunday's reading was taken from St.John's account of the woman found ou in the act of adultery (Jn.8.3ff). This is the woman whom the Scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus, saying: 'Master, Moses in the Law directed that a woman guilty of adultery should be stoned: now, what do you say?' Jesus did not reply. Instead he knelt down and started writing in the dust with his finger. But the Scribes and Pharisees persisted and finally Jesus stood up and delivered himself of the most famous line 'Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.' Then, says John, Jesus knelt down again, and went on writing in the dust. At this, the Scribes and the Pharisees dispersed, one by one, leaving Jesus and the woman alone. 'Where are your accusers?' asked Jesus, 'has no one condemned you?' 'No' said the woman. 'I don't condemn you either' said Jesus, 'now go home and behave!'.

The question that occurred to me with rather unexpected force was what Jesus was doing, writing in the dust with his finger? Was it merely a gesture of contempt for the Scribes and Pharisees? A refusal to dignify their malicious and insulting strategem with his undivided attention. Well, that's what I used to think, but last sunday I began thinking more carefully about the context and wondering whether my response was more characteristic of the way in which I would have behaved than the way in which the Saviour did.

In the Gospels, Jesus is more than once seen as the new Moses, most pointedly, perhaps when he gave the Sermon on the Mount. The blessings which Jesus there bestowed on the poor, the despised, and the rejected make a pointed contrast with the rugged injunctions and prohibitions delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai. Jesus is generally portrayed as concerned to uphold that law (Matt.5.18), but his attitude to its nature and purpose shows that this concern was not such as to make the observance of the Law an end in itself. Questioned by the Pharisees on the circumstances in which Moses had permitted divorce, he said 'This he did for the hardness of your heart' (Mk.10.5): elsewhere he showed what the Scribes and the Pharisees would have considered and unbecoming levity in realtion to the strict observance of the Sabbath (see Mk.2.27). The law, he seems to imply, was necessary, but not sufficient: it had to be interpreted in the light of the two greatest commandments: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and all thy soul, and with all thy might' (Deut.6.5), and 'Thou shalt love thy neighboour as thyself' (Lev.19.18).

The second of these commandments was particularly apt to the situation of the woman taken in adultery, for it is preceded by the words 'Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people.' The exaction of any penalty was not to be a source of secret satisfaction, but was a matter for the Lord (Deut.32.35).

If one sees Jesus not simply as the new Moses, but as the Son of God himself, the situation becomes more heavily freighted with irony.

Here are the representatives of the Jewish church and state 'tempting' Jesus, or 'putting him to the test.' This, had they acknowledged whom Jesus was, would itself have been a breach of the Law, which stipulated that' You shall not tempt the Lord thy God' (Deut.6.16, Ex.17.7). Moreover, Jesus, as the Son of God, was the one person present who, being without sin, would have been in a position to carry out the sentence imposed by Moses. That he chose not to condemn the woman was consistent with the doctrine of forgiveness which he taught during his life, and which he reiterated on the cross (Luke 23.24).

Exodus 31.18 describes how, on Mount Sinai, 'God gave unto Moses... two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.' When Jesus wrote in the dust, a person disposed to see him as the Son of God might have been struck by the parallel.

Stone was, and is still, an image of the permanence of lifeless things, dust the image of the impermanence of life, and, especially of human life. Adam was made out of dust; his given name means 'dust'; and after the Fall, God was to remind him that dust he was, and that unto dust he should return.

By writing with his finger in the dust, Jesus may have been saying something about the relationship between God, the Law, and Humanity. What had been written in stone had become set in stone; Man had begun to exist for the Law, and not the Law for Man. The point had been reached where Man's interpretation of thw Law was being used to justify what might, in common sense, have appeared no more or less than the breach of it (Mark 7.11).

In writing unspoken words with his finger in the very stuff of humanity, Jesus was, perhaps, asserting the life giving relationhip between God and man that was at the very heart of his Gospel: he came, not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it (Matt.5.17-18).