Meister Eckhart, a theologian in the early church,  says that Jesus is the very compassion of God. Jesus is the compassion of God. 

In this gospel we hear about Jesus’ compassion, his love, and his forgiveness. How important it is that we be people who are willing to forgive and to accept forgiveness from one another.

Here’s a woman who’s caught in the act of adultery and she’s brought before Jesus and before all these people and they shame her and they call out her sin. And they said that according to the Mosaic Law she should be stoned to death. And then they say, “Jesus, what do you say?” 

And they say this to trap him. And Jesus realizes exactly what’s going on. He sees the woman who is shamed and humiliated and so he says nothing. He bends down and he uses his finger and he writes in the sand. 

And they continue, and so he bends and he writes in the sand again. Now scripture scholars have all sorts of interpretations of what this writing in the sand with the finger was all about. The one that I like the best in terms of interpretation is when Moses went up to the mountain and God wrote with his finger into the stone tablets, the ten commandments. 

The very finger of God that gives us the law in the Hebrew scriptures. Many theologians believe that that’s exactly that Jesus was doing again. 

By his very finger writing in the ground, writing in sand, writing in rock, he says that he is the new law giver and that this new law is about compassion, love and forgiveness. 

It’s interesting, isn’t it? 

In the scripture story, those who are the eldest in the group, they walk away first. Let the one of you who has no sins, you cast the first stone. The older we get, the more we know,  the more we understand that all of us are sinners.  And it’s the elderly who walk away first. They acknowledge your own sinfulness. 

We acknowledge our sinfulness,  but more importantly, we acknowledge the mercy  and the love and the compassion of God,  the forgiveness of God in our lives, how blessed and how fortunate we are. 

What Jesus has done and taught us, we are to do for others, to show compassion,  to show love and to show forgiveness.