God be with you.
It is amazing how Jesus changes situations and history and turns absolute evil into eternal good. Here I can’t help remembering the Gospel of the woman caught in adultery and imagining how Jesus knew what would happen that day as he walked along, waiting for the moment he would meet her (John 8). She had spent her whole life going from man to man, trying to fill the emptiness inside her and waiting for someone to love her without an ulterior motive. She didn’t know that Love itself was waiting for her, to offer her all of its love, even to the point of dying for her.
How strange human beings are: from the moment God breathes life into them until the moment they die, they keep waiting for someone to love them. Do you think it’s because human beings are created from the overflow of God’s love? The answer is yours…
Back to the woman. This poor woman, from the start of her trade, had been trying to find love in every man she was with, but in vain. Worse still, all those men would stand up that day and condemn her, because she made them feel guilty and they wanted to get rid of her by any means, since she reminded them of their own sin. They chased her with stones, wanting to carry out the Law they had learned while forgetting God’s mercy toward them. They dragged her through the streets, gathered around her and shoved her until she reached Jesus. They thought they could make him responsible for their lack of mercy toward her and act like Pilate, who washed his hands of Jesus’ blood.
Proudly they said to him, “Teacher, this woman is an adulteress, and the Law says we must stone her to death.”
Jesus bent down to the ground and began writing in the dust, perhaps so they would remember that God made us from dust and to dust we shall return. He wrote with his finger; I imagine he was writing, “Father in heaven, forgive them their sins.”
The woman is thrown on the ground. Imagine with me how she felt in that moment, and put yourselves in her place: everyone is judging you, everyone wants to stone you, and you are waiting for a word to plead for you. Your whole life flashes before your eyes in a moment that might be the last of your life, as happened to this woman, who regretted every moment of her life and saw that her whole life was not worth one moment of standing before God full of sin. She saw that there were many good things she should have done and didn’t, and many bad things she shouldn’t have done and did.
Someone asks Jesus, “Teacher, what should we do?” As if he answers: if you call me Teacher, then I know the Law, whose purpose is mercy, you hard-hearted people. And he added, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”; otherwise, have mercy on her. It’s amazing how, with Jesus, it all comes down to a dot: in Arabic he removed the dot under the letter “jīm” (ج), turning it into “ḥā'” (ح), and instead of the word “irjumhā” (“stone her”) came the word “irḥamhā” (“have mercy on her”).
Don’t be afraid, my brother, my fellow human: however many black spots you have that would call for you to be “stoned” (“tinrijim”), come to me, and I assure you that you will be “shown mercy” (“tinriḥim”).
Jesus, I love you, and I can’t live up to your love, but I know you are faithful to your promise that however black our sins are, you can make them white as snow. Jesus, I say to you:
“I trust in you.”
Prepared by Elie Abou Zeidan
