Dust In the Wind – Steve Orr

Matters of the Heart:

It’s a hot morning in the capital city of Jerusalem. The air is thick with the scent of incense. The temple courts are crowded with the din of thousands of pilgrims gathering to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. But beneath the festive noise, there’s a cold current of malice.

Jesus is teaching about the party at hand with encouraging words.

Suddenly, the atmosphere shatters. A group of men—Pharisees and Scribes, the self-appointed guardians of God’s law—burst forward. They are dragging a woman. She’s disheveled, humiliated, and terrorized. They dump her on the courtyard floor. The dust clings to her. The crowd falls silent. This isn’t justice; it’s theater.

“Teacher,” sneering words dripping with false reverence. “This woman was caught in the very act of adultery. Moses commanded us to stone such women. What say you?”

It’s a trap crafted with the deadly precision of a guillotine, designed to trap Jesus no matter which way he turns.

If he says, “Stone her,” he directly challenges Roman authority. The Jews have religious autonomy, but only Rome has the right of execution. Jesus could be accused of sedition against the Empire and executed before sundown.

If Jesus says, “Don’t stone her,” the Pharisees will scream, “Blasphemer! You reject the Law of Moses.” It’s a plot to destroy Jesus’ reputation before the people, a no-win scenario.

The religious leaders are convinced they have cornered the Rabbi from Nazareth between a rock and a hard place, like the Egyptian chariots and the Red Sea.

Without answering, Jesus leaves them baffled by bending down and writing in the dust of the temple floor.

John’s Gospel says Jesus wrote, “as if he had not heard them.” But Jesus heard every poisonous word. He knew their hypocrisy. He saw the fear in the woman’s eyes and the arrogance in her accusers.

The silence is deafening. The bewildered Pharisees expected a legal argument. The silent suspense became unbearable. Breaking the silence, they demand, “Answer us!”

Jesus straightens up and looks each one in the eye. Behind his calm voice, a thunderstorm awaits.

“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone.”

Jesus continues writing—the Pharisees continue to stew in silence.

What did Jesus write? I’ve long racked my brain trying to figure it out. It wasn’t until I read what Jesus read that I began to see. Jesus knew the Old Testament very well, better than anyone, because he inspired Jeremiah to write the words 300 years before he, the Word of God became flesh.

Jeremiah spoke of God as the “fountain of living water.” He prophesied that those who forsake this living water for broken cisterns would have their names written in the dust.

During the Feast of Tabernacles, there is a daily ceremony when priests draw water from the Pool of Siloam, pour it onto the altar, and pray for rain and life—A physical act portraying spiritual thirst. During this ceremony, Jesus declared, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, streams of living water will flow from within him.”

The Pharisees rejected this and turned away from the Living Water. As Jesus writes in the dust, he invokes Jeremiah’s prophecy and writes down names.

Imagine the suspense. These prideful men lean in to see what the carpenter from Nazareth is scrawling in the dust. At the top, they see…

“Those who forsake the fountain of living water will be written in the dust” (Jeremiah 2:13; 17:13).

Below that, they see their names along with things like, “Stole six shekels and a dozen denarii from the temple coffers?” The accuser silently slinks away.

Jesus erases this condemning evidence and writes something else for the next man.

As they read the writings in the dust, their mask of self-righteousness evaporates. The word of god they claim to love pierces their hearts. Because of their misplaced zeal to judge, they are judged. They are the ones who have forsaken the Living Water. They are the ones who are written in the dust.

What a contrast. Are our names written in the Book of Life or the dust of the Earth?!

This beautiful drama unfolds.

John says, “When they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones.”

Why were the older ones first? Thinking themselves wise, they were eager to trap this renegade Rabbi. Their study of the Law had prepared them for this moment. Oh, the religious vanity of leadership. The young men were more timid. Perhaps their youthful lusts and sins would be exposed. They lingered until they too faded into the shadows of the temple courts.

The dead-ness of silence was profound. The crowd, thirsting for violence, had been dismantled without a word.

Jesus stands up, “Woman, has no one remained to condemn you?” He doesn’t look at her with the cold fury of the Law—He sees with the eyes of compassion. The only one who has the right to condemn her chooses not to.

She answers, trembling, “No one, Lord.”

Jesus speaks immortal words that redefine justice and mercy for all: “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.” Be the the kind of woman you were meant to be.

This story isn’t about a clever escape from a trap—It pictures the human condition.

Consider the hypocrisy of the accusers. They cite the Law of Moses, which says, “The adulterer and adulteress shall surely be put to death.” But where is the man’s partner in crime? By bringing only the woman, the Pharisees violated the law they intended to defend. They used a vulnerable woman as a pawn in their political game. They stripped this woman of her humanity to win an argument and turned sacred law into a weapon of cruelty.

As the only sinless judge, Jesus exposed the hypocrites as unworthy stone throwers who were not experts in the Law. They’re only experts at pointing out the speck in their brother’s eye while ignoring the log in their own.

There’s no mercy for Women in a patriarchal religious system. The Pharisees used her; they abused her spirit. Just as sinful men broke her body, self-righteous men callously broke her spirit.

In the midst of brokenness, Jesus restored her: mind, body, and soul! He restored her dignity and treated her as a person, not a problem.

This lesson remains for us today. Do we use our religious beliefs to build exclusive clubs like mega-churches? Or… Can we become Christ’s faithful servants and build hospitals for the spiritually sick?

The lesson of the dust:

What is written in the dust is temporary. The wind can erase it, but Jesus’ words of grace resonate for eternity. Condemnations are fleeting—Grace is forever.

In a world quick to throw stones, Jesus calls us to a better way.

He doesn’t ignore sin—He grants us unmerited favor—Grace.

This story provides a mirror for us to see the need for grace and the Savior who offers it freely.

This is the heart of the Gospel.

Come. Drink. Let us drink the Living Water that washes us clean.

Your name is not to be written in the dust of judgment, but in the Book of Life.

Let’s be among those who write new stories into the lives of others—Stories of redemptive love.

We’re the Bride of the Lamb bringing beauty to the world with each invitation to drink from the River of Life.

Love wins!—Grace conquers judgment.

Let’s be servants, not judges; forgivers, not accusers; bridge builders, not stone throwers.

We are not broken, we are healed.

We are not lost, we are found.

The woman walked away free. So can we.

“He who the Son sets free is free indeed!”

Yes, indeed! These are “Matters of the Heart.”

“More on Dust in the Wind by Greg Albrecht.”

Permit me to riff on your thoughts re Dust in the Wind.  

A few chapters earlier in John’s Gospel an iconic passage (3:16) tells us God so loves the world.

It’s the inclusive forever statement of all time. Christ-less religion hates inclusivity. Christ-less religion has always hated Jesus. Still does.

Christ-less religion loves and thrives on exclusivity. It fills its clubs and holy places with promises of exclusivity and threats against those who live the world it/they hate. Christ -less religion prefers a God who has wrath to a God who is love. 

Rules not mercy,  hate not compassion, them and us, laws not love, wrath not embrace.  

The Ten Commandments were written in stone. The grace of God regards what religion uses as a club – “sins” – behaviors, often by its own definition, which it condemns, producing shame and guilt over against the healing grace of Jesus.  

Religion ostracizes – Grace welcomes. Religion opens doors, builds fences and walls (Eph 2) and locks gates – the gospel welcomes prodigals into God’s house through open doors, indeed Jesus IS the door. 

John further explains in his Gospel. The gate to the New Jerusalem – heaven on earth – is never shut – as John records in a vision given to him.

We assume Jesus wrote the flaws and foibles / immoral, egregious and embarrassing behaviors of the hypocrites who condemned the woman in the dust. Not etched in stone. Not embedded in concrete.  In dust,  dust in the wind, the healing, embracing wind of the Holy Spirit.  

Yes / Dust in the Wind. All that we do, things we are proud of and things we hope never ever are revealed. Dust, not data banks. Mortality is dust – but God loves dust / he made the whole world out of dust and is making something beautiful and eternal of our dust as and when we walk though the Door into his big, big house.

1 “Dust in the Wind” was a 1977 Top Ten hit performed by classic rock and roll band,”Kansas.” The song was written by born-again Christian Kerry Livgren who was inspired by three scriptures: Psalms 18:42; Genesis 3:19; and a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 3:20. In the eighties, Kansas continued to perform the song in churches and in bars.

Steve Orr writes to us from Montana. After working in the mecca of technology, Steve traded the rat race of Silicon Valley for the adventures of High Tech in Big Sky Country. Steve has an MBA with experience in accounting, finance, technology, and management. He occasionally writes a little software code, but mostly he likes writing about Matters of the Heart.