Caught
John 8:1-11 | The Center
Who will stand
between me and my trauma?
Trapped between pulling poles
of fear and revenge,
who would save the worthless
from what is deserved?
A man,
who finds worth in every grain of sand,
who writes, “love” into the very earth.
He called me into being,
He calls me to be again.
Killing stones fall
and become a place to stand.
John 8:1-11 is sometimes labeled as, ‘the woman caught in adultery.’ While I’m not a fan of this label, the wordplay of ‘caught’ reveals the juxtaposition of this powerful story. We can be ‘caught’ by authorities, but we can also be ‘caught” and rescued from danger. The current trend in my church tradition is to question whether this story even belongs in John. The story is missing in some manuscripts, and some feel this story doesn’t fit the flow of John’s narrative. Is the story missing in some places because it wasn’t originally intended to be there; or was it just considered, “too hot to handle” by some early collaborators?
When following the pattern we’re outlining in this series of reflections, we find this story perfectly fit into the very center of John’s book. When we start at the point of this story and map the book, we find on either side perfectly balanced segments reflecting each other thematically and building to these moments on the Temple Mount - at the feast of Sukkot. This story itself is a thematic crescendo. Jesus standing between a woman and her accusers, defending an individual from misled religion, putting his own life between hers and those who want to take it from her.
As one point of evidence for this being the center of John’s book, Use your imagination and think about this verse from the Hallel prayers (which likely, all the characters in this story had sung that morning).
”I shall not die, but I shall live,
and recount the deeds of the Lord.
The Lord has disciplined me severely,
but he has not given me over to death.”
Psalm 118:17-18 ESV
Imagine what may have been going through the woman’s mind as she sung this prayer again the next day. What was Jesus thinking about each time he sang this prayer? What might the people who had been holding stones be thinking the next time they sang these lines? Now take this exercise and read all the Hallel, Psalm 113-118. Look for the woman mentioned throughout these songs. Look for light and water mentioned too. Look for “their help” and “their shield.” Reading these Psalms in light of John 7 and 8 is fascinating.
Now, at the very center of this central story, Jesus mysteriously writes in the sand as the climax of this confrontation. Is this also the climax of the entire book of John? What did he write in the sand, and why?
As one possible answer, consider these quotes from Jeremiah:
”for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
Jeremiah 2:13 ESV
”O LORD, the hope of Israel,
all who forsake you shall be put to shame;
those who turn away from you shall be written in the earth,
for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water.”
Jeremiah 17:13 ESV
(emphasis added)
Passages like this lend more evidence to this story being intentionally placed at the very center of John. Jesus has just, a few verses earlier, equated himself as the fountain of living water. Is this current religious test, which winds-up victimizing this woman, the last straw for Jesus? By silently writing in the earth, is he saying something like, “okay, if you want to keep drawing water from the dry cistern of you own digging, go ahead, I’ll leave you to it. If you would rather have your names written in the earth rather than written in Heaven, I can do that for you.” Is Jesus writing in the sand a specific hyperlink back to this judgement in Jeremiah? Is this why the accusers walk away with more to think about than they bargained for? If the goal is simply to have our names remembered, engraved on a stone statue or monument (which is made of earth and really just sand on a different time-scale), Jesus can accommodate that for us. But if the desire is for life, he can accommodate that for us too - he will write us into the new story - more life than we ever imagined possible. If this read of the writing is correct, if we can see it as a kind of final judgement for the accusers in the story, we should also notice the same writing saves the woman from her death penalty. She is literally restored to life by the same act that turns the accusers away.
There is more to say about all of this, but for now:
“Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
The LORD perserves the simple;
when I was brought low he saved me.
Return, O my soul, to your rest;
for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.”
Psalm 116 5-7 ESV