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[20
April 2008]
John 8:1-11
It was a trap.
They caught the woman in the act of adultery and it wasn’t good
enough.
The man involved must have been important or had good friends because
he’s vanished, protected by his position – well good on him I say.
But the woman – this good for nothing woman – is in trouble.
You can’t have women like this in the community her accusers were
muttering and I agree. She’s a disgrace and a…well I have to watch
repeating such things in church. She’s a fine looking woman, and again
we won’t go into details, but that just makes her more of a threat to
both the men and the other women.
The smug righteousness of her accusers is evident. “We caught her in
the very act”, they proudly announce. I heard one of the crowd honestly
mumbling to his mate, “thank God they weren’t snooping around my back
door. I’m not into adultery but I’m far from perfect”. Well none of
us are I guess, but what has that got to do with it. Wrapped in an ill
fitting sheet the woman sobbed, but lady it’s too late for that now. It’s
as if a great searchlight has been turned on and she is there exposed
fully for all to see. She’s been caught in the act, she’s crossed the
line, and now she is a bad woman who no longer has a place in our
community. Bad women lead us all astray, bad women destroy families, bad
women must be punished. The law is clear, punishment is the ritual act of
stoning, the public way of dealing with bad people who are no longer fit
to be part of the community.
But someone has another idea. We can kill two birds with one stone so
to speak. We can use this woman to trap that other nuisance who doesn’t
really belong in our community - that Jesus. Let’s use her to get him.
If he says “stone her” we’ll report that he gave us the word to the
Roman authorities who don’t allow this punishment, and if he says “mercy”
then we’ll have him for being soft and his credibility will fall right
off.
We’ll stone her anyway because we have to for the good of the
community. She deserves to die for what she’s done – that’s the
rules. We have to keep the standards high, and we have to weed out the
sinful bad people. We have to decide who is in and who is out and we must
protect the ways of God – our ways. So no matter what this smart alec
Jesus says she’ll die….and maybe he will too!
I’m not a violent man, but there’s something about this whole thing
that feels good. I haven’t been caught committing adultery and she has.
Stupid, stupid woman.
Stoning people was a cruel way of killing them. It usually started with
just one or two stones but soon others would join in as people connected
with the group mentality and the thought that they were doing something
good. People egged one another on, and the stoning could become quite
frenzied with no-one stopping to reflect on the life that was being
killed. Slowly the person sunk to their knees and under an increasingly
heavy barrage of stones the life was ended. Afterwards there were usually
some who began to wonder if this was good and right but once the deed is
done it is done.
In our time it’s different isn’t it? We don’t throw stones –
that’s for uncultured brutal people in the past. Is it?
Someone’s kid gets a little wild in church, and we pick up a stone
saying that’s not how my lids behaved.
Someone does something amazing and good, and we find some way of firing
off a stone that will bring them down to their knees.
We hear some people with a different coloured skin speaking another
language, and we pick up a stone saying why they are in our country?
Someone gets some special attention or help, and we pick up a stone
saying why should they have it good when I have to struggle?
Someone does something differently, violates the code of this is how it’s
always done, and we pick up a stone saying don’t they like the way we
always do it!
Someone fails in some way, and people pick up stones.
It’s rarely done openly, but it’s done with a carefully selected
word of criticism or gossip. Often it’s even cloaked in compassion. “oh
so the marriage is over, and he’s off with another woman….poor kids
they are the ones I feel sorry for.” In reality no action is taken to
help the kids, or to understand the pain and journey of those affected. We
find some subtle way of putting someone down and reducing them to their
knees. We find our own ways of picking up the stones and garnering the
support of others for our deceitful destroying of life. It happens so
easily and so often there is a satisfaction underneath that says well at
least I’m better than they are.
Jesus said don’t condemn others and God won’t condemn you. Judging
and condemning others really got up his nose and he makes it quite plain
that God will treat us as we treat others on this score. Judge and you’ll
be judged, forgive us father as we forgive others. He told us that we
humans were often very good at seeing the speck in someone else’s eye
but at the same time we couldn’t see the log in our own eye.
And so after some careful thought he says to the stone throwers, go
ahead throw your stone, but just let the first person be someone who has
never wronged God or someone else. One by one the stones gently thudded to
the ground and the eager stone throwers melted away. The woman was left
alone with Jesus and in that intimate moment of love and compassion he
says “I’m not going to accuse you either, go and sort your life out
with God.”
The apostle Paul in his letters would say later that in Jesus there was
no condemnation. Jesus simply refused to put people down. In another
letter he said that the heart of this was that it didn’t matter who you
were, a slave at the bottom of the heap or a businessman with wealth or
power, you were all one and equal in Jesus’ eyes because each one of us
is a child of God. He valued every individual equally and he accepted
people for who they were. Another Paul, the famous Christian therapist of
the twentieth century Paul Tournier commented on the fact that many
doctors came to his home in Geneva to discover the secret of his
therapeutic method. “It is a little embarrassing,” he once said, “because
they always go away a little disappointed. All I do is accept people.”
Of course Christians often forget these teachings. I have been reading
lately about Martin Luther King and the reality of how blacks were treated
in the United States. The practice of segregation is difficult to believe
but I know the Bible was used to justify this practice and I know racism
and racial prejudice is alive and well in every country on this planet
including our own. We pre-judge, we box people, and we fail to see that
others of different colour and race are children of God. We do not
practice the acceptance of Jesus.
His acceptance was quite simple. Acceptance is the ability to
communicate to someone else that you think it’s a very good thing that
they are alive. You want the best for them. Acceptance certainly isn’t
tolerance which masquerades as acceptance but is very, very different.
When I tolerate someone I’m saying under my breath and I wish they would
shut up or go somewhere else. I have no great interest in what is best for
them, but I will at least be polite. I’m just hanging in there because I’m
not honest and truthful about how I really feel. The body of Christ is not
built on tolerance; putting up with people. The body of Christ is built on
genuine acceptance and for Jesus that meant he told the woman to go and
sort her life out with God. For her sake there were some difficult truths
about her behaviour she needed to face. But she knew this comment from
Jesus was uttered in deep love for her – it wasn’t a put down, and it
didn’t make her feel smaller or less of a human being. It was a comment
offered in compassion and love in the privacy of a face to face meeting
with no other person present.
So if we are to be the body of Christ we too need to practice
acceptance, the deep acceptance that we see in Jesus. The acceptance in
which there is no condemnation, the acceptance that sees in every other
person the presence of God. In the body of Christ we see every other
person as someone valued by God and we know that there are gifts of God
within them. We will search and look and listen hard for those gifts. We
will not look to cut someone down because they are better at something
than we are, rather we will rejoice and affirm them and encourage them.
And when we find failings we will forgive and gently and in compassion
confront. We will do so smiling for we know that we are all human.
So my word of challenge for you today is to ask if you are carrying any
stones you need to let go of. It may be an old grudge or a new grudge. It
may be some gossip you have been spreading, or some jealousy you hold on
to. It may be a hurt you hold fast to looking for a way to get even.
Whatever your stone may be I invite you to let it go and take up the way
of Jesus in whom there is no condemnation. Go to be compassionate and seek
the best for all whom you meet.
Dugald Wilson
20 April 2008
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