Woman caught in adultery

A couple of our kids were gone today to a sports competition in Guangzhou, but both of their moms came anyway. One brought her other daughter, as usual, but the other mom came all by herself! A first time; she once said she only comes because her son "makes" her come. I'm thrilled!

So: Jesus is at the temple when a group come leading a woman with her hands tied in front of her. They tell Jesus they caught her in the very act of adultery (so where's the other guilty party, eh?)

They ask Him whether they should stone her like Moses' law says. They really want to trap him. If He says no, they can say He doesn't obey the law of Moses; if He says yes, then He's going to lose a lot of popular support. So what does He do? Perhaps He needs a little time to think—he leans over and starts writing in the ground with His finger. (We chose Man Chun to be Jesus, partly because he needs more practice at leaning over. I had to physically push his head down. If I had this to do over I think I would have slowed action and explained carefully to him that he needed to bend over, as I'm sure he wasn't paying much attention to the narrator saying "Jesus leaned over…" So that he would have had more of a clue as to why I was pushing him down. Not that he got upset, he just laughed.)

So anyway, then he sits back up and says whoever has no sin can be the first to throw a stone. To add more visible action, we had one fellow pick up a large stone (a chunk of concrete from some local demolition rubble), look at Jesus, look at the others—and then put the stone down and leave. One by one the others also left. Then Jesus is allowed to straighten up again and asks where everyone went. "So no one condemned you?" He says. "Neither do I." He unties her hands and says, "Go in peace, but don't sin any more."

We don't throw stones at people nowadays if we don't approve of their behavior. But often we will throw ugly words at people. For our game, we set up four double-sided dolls (all with the sad side showing) around a stool. Threaded through the hole on top of the stool was a block on which was written [恨惡] or "hatred." The kids were supposed to get the string swinging so that the words could knock the dolls down. (I had come up with this as a way to avoid actually throwing the words, as one of our boys is just too enthusiastic about throwing things once he gets started. Wouldn't you know, that was the boy who went to Guangzhou—oh well). It took a lot of patience and coordination, so for some of the kids we turned the stool upside down and it was still enough of a challenge for them to swing the string in the right direction. So that worked out well.

Since Jesus wrote something in the dirt, we also wrote something in the "dirt" (squares of clay), and then made them easier to read by pressing little beads into the words we'd written with toothpicks. In contrast to the "hatred" we wrote the words for "peace."