You might not know it from the photo, but the girl and guy above don’t care much for each other. The scene is the West Bank village of Bil’in, and the protestor, from Europe or the United States, most likely, is trying to take a shield away from an Israeli soldier. The picture almost seems gentle, and so it is not representative of what was actually happening. This fence and this village is a place where people are arrested, injured, and sometimes even killed.
On the other hand, the picture reminds me of Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” and so maybe it is representative of what was happening. What do the Sistine Chapel and the outskirts of a Palestinian village have in common? They are places where hands create.
Just a few miles from Bil’in, and many centuries earlier, we’re told that Jesus, during a confrontation of his own, used his hands to create. Face to face with religious leaders and an adulterous woman whom they had cornered, Jesus listened as the leaders said, “The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”
It was true. The law commanded that a stone, perhaps many stones, fly at this woman until she was a bloody corpse. In response Jesus bent down and used his finger to write in the earth. A moment later he straightened up and said something along the lines of, “If any of you are perfect, go ahead and hurl a rock at her.” He then bent back down and continued writing.
We’re never told what he wrote, but when one by one the religious leaders had walked off and only he and the woman remained, he asked the woman, “Has no one condemned you?” No one had. And so Jesus continued, “Neither do I. Go now and sin no more.”
Throughout the ages, the movements of hands have made things. Lines in sand, art on ceilings, meals on tables, and so on. Like the soldier and the protestor, or Jesus and the adulterer, we each are participants in an ongoing creation. Which is to say: there is a little Michelangelo in all of us.
What do we create, and why? For what principles, projects, or people do our hands move?