Stones

For the woman caught in adultery and dragged out into the open, stones will never be the same again. She almost lost her life that fateful day were it not for Jesus parting the waves of righteous anger and giving her a way out of her hidden and hardened past. He seems to have done this not by some writ cast in stone, but by simply writing whatever it is he wrote on the ground.

Strange that the gospel writer never really tells us what Jesus was scribbling on soil. Perhaps he was just doodling or drawing, the way we sometimes trace stuff on shifting sand. Perhaps he was playing an ancient version of tic-tac-toe (or OXO), and pondering a way out of the stalemate of crisscrossing X’s and O’s. Perhaps he was listing sins, clients, the cast of supporting actors, supply lines, the entire value (or disvalue) chain, and merely connecting the dots. Whatever the script was, he was writing something on their hearts.

Let the one who has no sin cast the first stone at her.

That was a masterpiece of a sentence and a sentencing on the part of Jesus. But we must hand the honor as well to those who were stoned into silence. For all their righteous anger, the stoners were at least aware of something adulterated in their own lives. For all their unholy plots to trap Jesus, they were at least mindful of the snares that had entangled their lives. For all the racket raised by their indignation, there was still enough silence inside that allowed them to listen to themselves.

Sin does not become powerful and dreadful just because of the scandals it spawns. Its sorcery is found not in drama but in subtle delusion. Its ultimate power is in its duplicity and in its devious ability to morph and blend itself in the woodwork. This adaptive and plastic power is what enables sin to endure and to hurt. When the sin no longer disturbs, then is the sin consummated. When the sin is no longer unsettling, then do the stones start flying.

The stoners could have seen that the stones they were about to hurl were as hard and heavy as their hearts. They knew this or at least they eventually got to see it. The writing on the ground may have helped in the self-discovery, but whatever it was that brought them to their senses, they were somehow made to gaze at themselves, with the adulteress as mirror.

Interestingly enough, it is not the sinlessness but the sin of others that brings us to our senses and to a confession of our own sinfulness. It is in the encounter with broken people and disordered dreams that we discover the actual and potential disconnections in our lives. When we are confronted with the infidelity and adultery, we realize we too have what it takes to be unfaithful and unkind in the face of fear and adversity.

This sober awareness of self and sinfulness is the grace we can seek during these holy days of Lent. May this grace of self-honesty not ensnare us into self-absorption and self-stoning where there is no way out. Instead may it lead us to our Lord who “opens a way in the sea and a path in the mighty waters.” It is a crossing that takes us away from “the events of the past, the things of long ago” into a future of healing and hope.

When he opens a way out for this woman of the night, we know this opening to be the way of mercy and compassion. When no one is left standing to condemn her, we know it is forgiveness that empowers her to let go of her furtive past. It is forgiveness that is ultimately liberating. When Jesus bids her to go and sin no more, we know this to be more than a command to be immaculate and angelic. We know this to be an offer to hope and to heal, an offer to pardon and be pardoned, to love and be loved without ever looking back or glancing sideways again.

May our lenten journey to the truth of who we are lead us to Christ who is the mercy and compassion of God. So that while we “do not consider [ourselves] to have taken possession [of Christ],” we can with St Paul continue running the race for the prize that is Christ, even as we forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead.

Today, through the prophet Isaiah, we are told that a way is being made in the desert, and rivers are winding their way once more in the wasteland. God is “doing something new.”

Indeed, even stones are given new meaning and purpose. To the woman caught in adultery and to “us sinners now and at the hour of our death,” stones will never be the same again.

Fr. Jose Ramon T. Villarin SJ is President of Xavier University, Ateneo de Cagayan. For feedback on this column, email [email protected]