Missing persons
Phil Cobb
Karen Fulton First Presbyterian Church Elder
Tonight is New Year’s Eve and some of us are partying as much as COVID-19 will allow. Some of us are making New Year’s resolutions about the things we will do better in the coming year. All of us are hoping for a better 2021.
The story of the unnamed woman in John 8: 3-14 is fundamentally a story of hope. It is usually described as the story of “The Woman Caught (or Taken) in Adultery.”
A group of Pharisees and scribes followed by a mob of men bring a woman before Jesus and say she was taken in adultery and the Laws of Moses say she should be stoned. What does Jesus advise? The authorities are attempting to trick Jesus, of course, and he answers them first by writing on the ground and then by saying that the person without sin should cast the first stone. The accusers disappear and Jesus refuses to judge the woman telling her to “Go and leave your life of sin.”
Someone is missing from this story. The Laws of Moses (Deut. 22: 22-24) make that clear. “If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must be killed.” If a man is sleeping with a betrothed woman, both are to be stoned. And if a man sleeps with a virgin, only he shall die.
The prime subject of the Law of Moses, also called Mosaic Law, is the male as actor. He is the first to be stoned. Yet the story has been turned on its head in John. The Pharisees do not bring a male to Jesus. Only a woman.
Of all the sins, adultery is clearly a two-person crime. It takes two to tango and two to commit adultery. She is caught in the act of adultery with someone. An equal participant. Yet she is brought for judgment alone.
Where is the other?
Jesus does not cite the Law of Moses, which he could easily do, and ask where her partner is. Instead, he writes on the ground. What he is writing is one of the mysteries of the Bible. Is he writing the same words as on Belshazzar’s wall “mene, mene, tekel, upsharshin,” (numbered, numbered, weighed, divided) numbering the mob, weighing it, and dividing it? Or does he write “Judge not lest ye be judged?” We will never know.
What about her missing partner and the missing individuals who have become a vengeance-filled mob? As they hide in numbers and shadows, what are we to make of them.
I used to view them with scorn, but I have come to see them with pity. Because, unlike the woman, they hide from themselves and project onto others, they are not, as she is, freed by her encounter with Jesus. She is made whole and given a future while they slink away into darkness and do not face their own shortcomings. They condemn themselves to live in fear, while she becomes a symbol of hope.
She is ready to begin a new life while they are forever missing persons.
