From Now On

"From Now On"
John 8:1-11


In terms of just plain dealing with people, I have always been impressed with how Jesus is able to cut through the stuff and get to the heart of the matter.  He does it so artfully, it looks too easy.  Sometimes I succeed at it.  Other times, when I wish I could leave people shaking their heads (as they did with Jesus) they just end up shaking their heads in disbelief at what came out of my mouth.  Maybe I just need to keep a bag of sand handy, so I can stoop down and draw in the dirt like Jesus did.  That would give me time to think before I spoke.  But people might not appreciate the mess on their living room rug.

Jesus was just so good at bypassing the issues that were tossed at him like rotten tomatoes.  He was able to get people to the point of seeing the real issues that needed to be dealt with.  It must have been frustrating for people who came to Jesus with their pressing problems.  They had to say to him, in effect, "No, that's not really your problem; here's the real problem."  It is just as interesting to me that it was the super religious types who Jesus di that to most often.  That fact alone gives me a lot of pause for reflection.

I say all this by way of introduction to one of my favorite stories in the life of Jesus:  the woman caught in adultery.  The super religion guys brought to Jesus this big problem.  But before the hubbub of this spectacle is over, Jesus will have let the religious leaders know what the real problem was.

In the drama of this scene, a woman is made crudely visible.  Then she becomes amazingly invisible.  And then she is made visible again.  The movement by which she moves from visibility, to invisibility, and back to visibility again is what this story is about.

The display of the woman caught  in adultery starts out with pulse pounding intensity.  Jesus was quietly teaching in the outer court of the temple.  The women's court.  The place where anyone could come and listen.  Suddenly a crowd approaches like a swarm of bees.  A woman is thrown at Jesus' feet.  She was stripped naked as a sign of her shame.  If this scene were in a movie, it would have to be R-rated.  Maybe her head would have been shaved as a further sign of her shame.  Most likely spit upon.  Taunted and humiliated.  A display that only the super religious guys could have pulled off best.

Who was this woman?  If you were living back then, she would have been your neighbor.  She wasn't a prostitute, or nobody would have cared.  She wasn't a slave girl.  Again, nobody would have cared.  Instead, she would have been someone you knew.  Maybe even someone you cared about.

But now she is only a woman, standing naked and exposed, humiliated, ridiculed and tongue beaten.  I confess I'm trying to generate a little sympathy for the woman.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not trying to minimize what she did.  It was wrong.  No two ways about it.  I am merely trying to point out how visible this woman was at that moment.

Then she disappears.  Not literally, of course.  But just as quickly as she was forced front and center, she is pushed aside.  The spot light moves from her to Jesus.  To Jesus and his interchange with the super religious guys.  The quickness of how she is thrown at Jesus and then pushed aside must have told Jesus something.

There's a mystery here.  The accusation the religionistas hurl at Jesus, along with the poor woman, is that she has been, "...this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act."  She was caught in bed with another man.  She was caught in a sexual encounter with another man other than her husband, by these religious leaders.  What does that tell you?  It must have told Jesus a bushel basket full of information.  How would these religious police know when to jump in through the bedroom window and catch her in the act?

The answer to that question can probably be answered best by the missing person here.  Who is missing in this whole religious soap opera?  (They guy!)  Whenever I teach this story in an adult Sunday School, that is the question almost every woman in the class asks:  "Where is the guy?"  Where is the other adulterous person?  Jewish law was fairly explicit in cases like these:  Both parties in an adulterous sexual relationship were to be killed.  By stoning.

So let's answer both questions at the same time.  How did these religious guys know when to break into the bedroom?  And, where was the guy?  My theory about this mystery is that the guy went free because he was in on a plot with the super religious guys.  The woman was being used in a slippery scheme to trap Jesus in a no-win situation.  The woman must have begun to understand what happened to her.  Jesus, I think, understood what happened to her as well.  But her good neighbors had already collected a rock pile and they were ready to use them.

Jesus understood that the woman was not the target.  Jesus was the target.  The woman was just being used in the backest of back room frame-ups.  Imagine how long it took to come up with this slime ball scheme, set it all up, and gradually work it out.  They would have find a man who would entrap the woman in a fake relationship to the point of having sex with her, only so they could be "caught" by the super religious patrol.  All that for the sole purpose of trapping Jesus with a seemingly no-win scenario.

Here's the trap.  If Jesus said, "Yes, stone her," he would immediately loose face with the everyday folk with whom he was so popular.  He would appear to be siding with the bad guys--the religious Pharisees.  He would lose face with the crowds, and slowly go away.

But, if Jesus said, "No, don't stone her," then he would be branded as a law breaker, and would be open to immediate arrest.

That's why the woman disappears, becoming invisible for a time.  She is not the main objective here.  Jesus is.  He is the target.  He is the one they are looking to stone, not the woman.  If she gets stoned in the process, tough break for her.  She was used in a heinous plot, and she can only have the sense that she is doomed no matter how Jesus answers.

Jesus is in a tight spot.  He must figure out a way to save both his and the woman's life.  He writes in the dust at his feet.  All the while he is being badgered by the morality patrol about what to do about the woman:  "What's your answer.  C'mon.  Hurry it up."  The fact that they're trying to hurry him up also tells Jesus something.  So he takes his time.  Jesus can be kind of aggravating some times, in a fun sort of way.  That is if you're a supportive onlooker.

Jesus just doodles.  Or, as some have conjectured, Jesus is writing all of their names--those religious guys.  Or even more interesting, some have suggested Jesus is writing their names, and beside each name a list of their particular sins.

Or maybe Jesus is trying to help these Pharisees remember, who should know their law, that it was the finger of God that wrote the 10 Commandments on the stone.  That it was that same finger of God they were all dealing with at the moment.

Finally, Jesus stood up.  He looked them all in the eye and said, "Go ahead and stone her..."  The religious leaders smiled a sickly pleasurable smile as they thought their trap had been sprung.  Jesus was caught.  The net was being let down.

But then Jesus finished his statement:  "He (notice the male singular) that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."  The lowering net quickly stops.  The super religious guys mouths drop open.  They have been caught by a cunning more powerful than their own.

What Jesus said can't be totally captured in English as it is in Greek.  There is a shade of meaning in the words he used, a slight of hand, a hidden force of words that doesn't come through quite as clear, because it's not clear.  A possible way to say in English what Jesus said in Greek is, "The man who has never sinned in this manner throw the first stone.  The man who is sinless of this particular sin cast the first rock."  To put it plainly, "The man who has never also committed adultery gets to throw the first stone."

Notice how they went away.  "And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last..."  No man there was guiltless.  With one deft phrase, Jesus took the rocks that loomed over this woman's head and hung them all where those rocks belonged: over the heads of the woman's good neighbors and the religious police.

When Jesus was done doodling, everyone was gone.  Everyone except the woman.  This is where she becomes visible again.  Jesus has made her visible by making everyone else invisible.

She thought she was a goner.  Jesus made her a gainer.  She thought she was dead.  Jesus made her alive.  She though she had used up all her chances.  Jesus gave her yet another chance.  She though she was unacceptable.  As usual, Jesus was more accepting than her good neighbors.  She thought she was invisible.  Jesus made her visible.

Jesus, as a Rabbi, wasn't even supposed to be talking to a woman.  That also was strictly forbidden.  Jesus just seemed to be breaking rules all over the place that day.  On the woman's behalf.  The woman caught with her hands in the cookie jar of adultery.



This sermon series has been about being emptied and being filled.  Sin empties us.  Sometimes we can get away with making bad choices that kind of go, for the most part, unnoticed by others.  But there are other times when the bad choices we make, and the sins we commit make, us very visible to everyone else.  Like having a scarlet letter tattooed on the forehead. Or having a big neon SINNER! sign with an arrow pointing at you, following you around.


Embarrassing visibility.  Like being paraded naked in front of everyone.

But then, Jesus in his graciousness, moves the spotlight off of us, and lets it fall on him.  He takes our sinful visibility, and allows himself to be the target instead of us.  All the pointing fingers.  All the morality police.  All the embarrassment of being caught red-handed at whatever it was we did.  He makes us invisible so he can deal with that sin that emptied us so piteously.

Then, when that's done, Jesus makes us visible again.  But we're different.  We're cleansed.  Forgiven.  Washed of our shame.  Giving us chances when we thought we had erased all of ours.  Not only turned the SINNER! sign out--Jesus threw it away.  Feeling totally empty, Jesus filled us with a new self.

And bids us go, and from now on, sin no more.