What Did Jesus Write in the Sand?

In John the Evangelist’s account of the woman caught in adultery, there is an odd detail. We know the scene. A group of scribes and pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery before Jesus. They wanted to stone her to death in fulfilment of the Law and catch Jesus in violating that Law (so they could kill him too). In the intensity of the moment, Jesus does something unexpected. He writes in the sand.

I have always wondered what he was writing. The people around him probably wondered too, leaning over, arching their necks to see what the strange rabbi was up to. I imagine the woman did not wonder in the moment. Too afraid, too ashamed, too heartbroken. Thinking of the man she loved. Wondering why he was not dragged here. Perhaps, she was not just afraid of death, but of the hard thud after thud of rock striking their blows leading to a gradual fading out. No, she was probably not wondering at that moment. But later, walking away, startled by the turn of events, not yet happy to be alive because of the strangeness of this new life, she may have wondered. Knowing that everything had changed, that she had found her Lord, and that she could not see her lover again after his gentle words “sin no more” (John 8:11). In that later moment, she might have wished she could have seen what her new Lover drew.

Of course, none of us know what he was writing; St. John does not tell us. I want to imagine what it might have been, to offer a kind of midrash, which in the words of Bishop Erik Varden means an interpretation that “goes beyond the literal sense of Scripture to examine the text in every aspect, squeezing out each drop of sense in order to apply this essence to the needs of believers.” My claim in so doing is not that this is the only interpretation (a foolish claim) but one interpretation in what Augustine calls the sensus plenum, the many senses of scripture. In this, I am not the first to speculate on what Jesus wrote. Augustine, for instance, interprets the writing as related to the writing of the law and the desire for good fruits: “the law was written by the finger of God, but it was written on stone because they were hard (Exodus 31:8). And now, the Lord was writing on the earth, because he was looking for fruit.”

I also take Augustine’s sensus plenum as one of the most important rules for reading scripture. In On Christian Teaching, he explains that the regula dilectionis requires that any interpretation of scripture build up good morals and thus “our love of God and of our neighbor.” For Augustine, these odd details are not accidents. They are opportunities for the exercise of the mind or heart (exercitatio mentis/animi). The purpose of this is not exercise for exercise’s sake but to deepen our understanding and expand our hearts.

My hope in interpreting what Jesus wrote in the sand is that it will build up our love of God—because it will offer a vision of Jesus both in his youth and in his ministry—and our love of neighbor—because we will learn to love them as Jesus does. I also hope to go deeper into the life of the Holy Family such that we will aim to imitate them as well, especially that most merciful man Joseph. Much of what I will write will be shaped by a “perhaps.” I cannot know what was written there. I can only suppose in a way that hopefully builds up love while working within the guidelines of both the regula dilectionis et fidei. Thus, in the sense of the fourfold meaning of scripture, what will follow is a moral lectio divina that imagines with the text the meaning of Christ’s writing in the sand with the hope that it will further build up love of neighbor, especially love of the many women now, in the past, and alas in the future, who have been so badly treated by men.

He Wrote the Name of Mary

I think Jesus looked down with love and wrote Miriam. I can imagine him tracing the letters in the sand carefully. Perhaps, he did not just write, maybe he drew the contours of that face that he had looked up to as a nursing baby, that he looked at as a wayward twelve-year-old in the Temple, and that he turned to as a man beginning a mission at a wedding. In the future, he would look down from the cross upon her crying face. He knew that someday her tear-stained face would look down upon him dead, cradling him like a baby once again.

Jesus wrote Mary’s name; he drew her face. Perhaps, as he did, he thought back to being a boy on a long trip from Egypt to Nazareth. Trudging by a donkey, he asked Mary about how she met Joseph and how they had found themselves with child in the strangest way possible. And in the story that he knew already, he heard that his foster father, “being a just man,” had chosen not to have Mary stoned, but “planned to dismiss her quietly.” For what? For being found in (perceived) adultery. As Augustine writes in his letter 153, Joseph, “when he discovered that she was pregnant although he knew not who slept with her, he could have drawn no other conclusion than that she was an adulteress.”[1] And how could they have not perceived it that way? She was with child. It was not the child of her betrothed. The law was clear. A woman like her was to be stoned. “And yet, he did not want her to be punished.”

Writing Joseph in the Sand

The first time Jesus would have heard of a man not casting the first stone was hearing about, and perhaps from, his foster father. Joseph was not sinless like Jesus, but he was righteous. Augustine reading John’s Gospel argues that only the righteous can execute the sentence of the Law. In his Commentary on the Gospel of John, he states, “surely the law should not be fulfilled by having her punished by men who deserve punishment themselves.” But Joseph was the kind of just man who could execute a just sentence. And he did not cast the stone. As they traveled through Sinai, perhaps Mary told Jesus this story, proud of the man she had married. Was this the first lesson in mercy that Mercy Incarnate learned? Perhaps too Mary teased Joseph for planning on breaking off the marriage. “It took an angel to get him to marry me,” she might have joked. Joseph, righteous and quiet, smiles as they near a resting place on the side of the road, homeless as they had so often been.

Jesus looks up at the men around him and thinks of that man who taught him not to cast stones and he says to them, “he who is without sin, cast the first stone” (John 8:7). Perhaps as he looked down again, he wrote Yosef in the sand right next to Miriam. And then beneath his name sketched the rugged face of the loving man. Joseph was righteous and cast no stones. Jesus was the sinless one sent to redeem sinners. He could cast stones; he would not. As God that was his nature from his Father, as man he learned this from the carpenter from Nazareth.[2] Thinking back on Joseph, and trying to teach these men to be merciful, Jesus perhaps also sought to make those men around him more like Joseph. Perhaps he prayed, “Heavenly Father, make them like my earthly father, teach them to put the stones down.”

Writing More Names

As he looked down at the name of his parents, he might have thought back to the night after he heard the story of Joseph taking Mary back. Perhaps, as a boy he had nightmares of Mary stoned to death.[3] Waking up with a start on the hard ground, he sees Joseph and knows Mary is safe. But as a boy he would have learned how few women have been, are, and will be safe. Mary, without sin, in danger of being stoned to death. The adulterous woman with sin in the same danger. The women he would have seen hurt around him in Egypt and then later in Nazareth and Galilee. Women in the future, women like St. Monica sitting with neighboring women with black eyes giving them advice on how she avoids being beaten by her husband, Augustine’s father. The woman down the street from you and me, afraid of her husband, her father, her boss. The college student returning from a party, crying with no one to talk to about what he did to her, afraid of the stones others in her dorm, her sorority, her college administration might cast if she tells her story. Jesus wrote their names too, drew their faces too. Perhaps he prayed, “Heavenly Father, watch over those women, protect them, send a Joseph in their lives, bring justice to those who hurt them.”

As he looked up from the names of Mary, Joseph, and so many women from Eve down to the end of time, he was surprised. “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” (John 8:10). I can imagine them—a little wiser, a little humbler, a little more like Joseph—walking away quietly. But would Jesus not have heard them leave? Perhaps as he looked at those names in the sand, those faces threatened by stones, fists, social media rumors, revenge porn, and the long list of suffering inflicted on women, he was rapt with sorrow. “My mother could have been the woman,” he might have thought, losing himself in that thought and in his prayers.

He looks up and they are gone. He asks her if anyone still condemned her. The adulterous woman surprises us. The scribes and pharisees called Jesus didakalos, teacher or rabbi. The woman answers Jesus’ question, “no man condemned me, Kyrios” (John 8:11). How has she come to know him as Kyrios? So often it is the oppressed or the sinful who recognize Jesus as Lord. Oppressors and the self-righteous have too often see him as a cudgel, a chance to condemn as he did not condemn. He looks with love at her—he always looks with love—and says the words he would never have needed to say to his mother, words perhaps he learned from his foster father, words at the heart of his being the Word of the Father, “Then I do not condemn you” (John 8:11). In the long annals of human condemnation, the one person who could legitimately condemn us does not.

Jesus does not think what she did is just fine. No, he loves the woman too much, the woman who may have broken another woman’s heart when she found her husband’s infidelity, the woman who lived adultery in her heart and in her actions. For Augustine, in that moment all that was left was “pity and the pitiable.” Christ could condemn her, but he loves her as a person even as he hates her sin. And so he says to her, “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11). It would not be loving to say otherwise. It can only be loving for Love to say these words. He had already said them to the men so eager to cast stones. With them, Jesus had to tell them first that they were sinners so that they could drop their stones rather than throw them. She, on the other hand, already knew, had already been told without love what she was. Jesus tells her lovingly not to be what they have called her because Jesus refuses to identify her with her sin. For Augustine, what they forgot, what Jesus reminds us of, is that “There are in fact two nouns, ‘human’ and ‘sinner.’” Jesus does not want the human to perish but does want sin to perish because sin is a perishing. Augustine tells us, “God made the human being, but the human being himself made the sinner. May the human creation perish, but God’s creation be set free.” Go and sin no more.

She walks away, a woman freed from adultery, a woman who thought she was going to die and who instead found her Lord, a woman threatened by men eager to hurt women, a woman saved by a man who had learned to love women in danger of violence from his mother once in such danger and from his father who had saved her from such a danger. Jesus looks with love at her as she walks away—he always looks with love. Perhaps, he turns away, looks down at the names, and faces in the sand, remembers his mother nearly stoned, his father who cast not, so many women stoned and so many men stoning. He looks with love. He always looks with love because he is love and because he learned that look from his mother and father as they looked with love at each other recalling for him their time as betrothed. Gently, he erases all the writing in the sand, leaving us, leaving Mary and Joseph, leaving the woman, leaving all women, leaving even the many too many guilty men, with that look of love. May we too set aside our stones and look with love.

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