His father called him “Quad,” the fourth in a line of men who shared the same name and passed it down through the generations. While in school, however, his teachers called Quad by his baptismal name, especially when he was in trouble – which happened to be quite frequently. Okay, every day. More than once a day.
Having transferred in from a military school somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon, Quad came into the middle school where I taught with an impish grin and a lot of pent-up anger. Within the first week of his November arrival, he hit girls in the head at recess – intentionally – with the 4-square ball; called one of the quiet, studious boys a name not worth repeating; and just happened to spill the teacher’s coffee all over his lesson plans and gradebook while said teacher was working with another student. It was not an accident.
When Quad’s Dad came for a conference at the end of Week 3, he sat before the middle school teachers and offered to us the following advice: “You do what you have to do to make him stop. Shame him publicly. Embarrass him. Do to him what he is doing to others. In fact, keep a log book of his indiscretions and then read them off to me at the end of the week; I’ll take it from there.”
Mr. Quad was not one to mess around.
Something with the father’s game plan for discipline didn’t sit right with me, though. Eleven-year-old Quad was wrong, no doubt about it; shaming him didn’t seem to me to be the solution.
What is it within our fallen human nature that leads us to criticize, mock, judge and publicly embarrass others, especially when they are caught in the act of sin and wrongdoing?
That’s exactly what the religious leaders of Jesus’ day are doing to the woman caught in adultery: shaming her for her sin.
What makes the entire situation even more disgusting is the very fact that the scribes and Pharisees didn’t actually care that the woman was cheating on her husband with another man (who was equally guilty, by the way); they were using her as an object to get to Jesus, whom they really wanted to silence.
Imagine using religion as a weapon.
And yet, here we are: under the guise of righteousness, the Temple leaders use a broken and humiliated human person – publicly embarrassing her and threatening to stone her – in order to get their own way. She was nothing but collateral in their war of hate. “What say you, Teacher: Stone her due to her sin (as we should) or set her free?”
Look, though, how Christ fights back: not with an eye-for-an-eye mentality, but with a merciful love that challenges and sets free. In the end, that is the definition of authentic, Godly love.
Whereas the Pharisees are ready to throw stones – not only at the adulteress but more so at the man who calls himself ‘Messiah,’ Jesus instead does two things to retaliate: he bends down and writes in the dirt beneath his feet.
By bending down, God comes to the very place where the woman is cowering in shame and fear. He enters the very space she inhabits, and lets her know she is not alone. There is someone with her, someone willing to be in the space she now finds herself. As Christ always does, he goes to the sinner and pours out mercy into the circle of incredible pain.
But he does something even more compassionate as he begins sketching letters or drawing patterns in the sand. To be honest, we will never know this side of heaven what Jesus was actually writing, not just once but twice. It has been fun to consider various options: doodling to pass the time, indicating that he was bored with the lame Pharisaical attempts to trap Jesus; writing the sins of all who stood around the adulteress ready to cast stones; or even transcribing a Scripture verse about mercy that the religious leaders would surely have known and caused them pause.
All are possible. And yet, here is an option I have never come across (although surely it exists), one which a participant in a parish Bible study brought to our faith-sharing session last Monday: what if Jesus was writing in the dirt to distract attention from the woman?
Think about it: as he is writing, all eyes turn to him; he takes the focus of shame away from the sinner and puts it on himself. The woman who undoubtedly is crouched in a state of disheveled and half-naked despair is no longer being ogled by the crowd. He begins to repair and restore her dignity.
Thus the heart of this Gospel: every time we use another person or shame them in any way – especially when they have acted out of brokenness and sin – we take their dignity from them. The stones we clutch are ones which attempt to tear-down, not build-up. Our stones are ones we use to make another human person less-than.
In a society of stone-throwers, Christ is calling us as disciples and as a Church to a much different place than the Pharisees and scribes: become one who is unafraid of entering the circle.
Enter the circle of another’s pain and struggle – even at times in the dirt-covered places of their own sinfulness – and show them mercy. Mercy-bringing is not sin-condoning. Offering mercy does not excuse wrong-doing. It does, however, open a broken heart to the possibility of being set-free through love.
Perhaps this is why Jesus bent-down to write in the dirt more than once: not only to begin to repair the dignity of the woman caught in adultery but to give the stone-throwers time to examine their hearts and lives as well, calling them to the very same merciful love He was offering the woman they were using as an object. Remember, he wants their hearts free from hate, too.
They all walked away that day, casting down their stones. The question remains, though: did some eventually return and follow Jesus in truth and freedom? Did they find the love and mercy he offered the woman?
Just like the ending of last week’s Prodigal Son story, we don’t know what the adulteress woman chose to do once she could walk away from that circle of shame and hate. But I have no doubt she left that day knowing that she could move forward in life loved by a God who challenged her in that very same merciful love to live unchained to the bondage of sin. Real love will always challenge us to “go and sin no more.”
That’s only possible when we first hear how much we are loved … and how great our dignity is worth.
Nearly 25 years have passed since I taught Quad in sixth grade. He didn’t stay with us long – his dad moved him to another military school north of Philadelphia. I would like to say that his time at our school changed him for the better; I don’t honestly know.
What I do know, though, is this: we never followed through with shaming Quad as his Dad suggested. We corrected errors and sinful behavior as best we could from a place of love for a little boy who was so very lost in life.
We did our best to show Quad the mercy of Jesus every day within that classroom.
In the end, it’s all we are ever asked to do.