Unless You Are Without Sin…

Did everyone get a stone on the way in this morning? I want you to hold that stone tight in your fist and think about who you’d like to throw it at. Who deserves it? Maybe it’s not an individual, maybe it’s a group. Who are you sure is guilty?

Listen now for the Word of the Lord: John 8:1-11

She was guilty. Adultery – clearly a sin. Not just one of the priestly laws of Leviticus. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” One of the ten commandments of the Law given to Moses, one of the laws of the covenant between God and humanity. They caught them in the act. The punishment was stoning of both the man and the woman. But, the Pharisees only brought her. The only explanation that is within the law that they followed so carefully is that the man must have been Roman. He would not have been subject to their laws, and they would not have had authority to judge and exact punishment on him. If he was Roman, the adultery wasn’t just sexual betrayal of her husband, this woman betrayed her people and God.

As they brought her to Jesus, the Pharisees worked the stones in their hands over, squeezing, turning, stroking. It was just a matter of time until that stone would pop her flesh and make her pay – traitor – and Jesus would have to choose. Would he break the Roman law that said that Jews were no longer able to carry out executions for religious reasons? Would he uphold the law of Moses or the Roman law? Which would have his allegiance? God or Emperor?

By the time of Jesus, in the 1st Century, the full rigor of the law was rarely enforced. It wasn’t like when their grandparents grew up. This new generation did what they wanted. Morals had deteriorated. It was like everything was relative. It seemed like there was no real enforcement of right and wrong anymore, and Jesus was just making it worse with all his “love everybody” and “bad things happen even to good people” teachings. Would Jesus, faced with this women who they KNEW was guilty, be soft on her? Would he be true to Scripture or bend to culture?

He bent to them. Jesus was sitting in the temple teaching when they approached and formed a semi-circle around him and pushed her down in front of where he was sitting. He should have stood up and met their gaze, engaged them in conversation, responded respectfully man to men. Instead, he bent down. He didn’t meet their stares. He didn’t ask for the witnesses who saw the adultery to testify. He didn’t gather the facts. He didn’t pick up a rock and stand up to be the first to deliver her sentence. Instead, he pushed around the dust with his finger. Was he writing something? Maybe. Maybe he was writing all 10 laws, no law was more important or worse to commit than another. Adultery and failing to keep the Sabbath are both sins, and there is no hierarchy of sins. In Jesus’ day, they tended to judge some sins more harshly than others. But, a sin is a sin, breaking covenant is breaking covenant. The top 10 laws are clearly stated. Maybe Jesus was scratching them in the dirt. And maybe he was adding his teachings from the Sermon on the Mount: The law of Moses says, “Thou shalt not kill.” But I say to you everyone who is angry or insults his fellow is guilty and will be judged. The law of Moses says ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks with lustful intent has already committed adultery in the heart.

When they kept questioning him, Jesus stood up and I just imagine he met their glare one at a time, intentionally holding eye contact for just a moment with each one. “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” And he knelt back down and resumed writing in the sand.

Toward the end of the 2nd Century, a group who came to be known as the desert fathers took up lives of solitude and simplicity in the desert of Egypt, trying to live completely committed to Jesus. People flocked to them. In their isolation and intentional living, they gained deep faith and wisdom. One of them, Abba Matoes wrote this, “The nearer [a person] draws to God, the more [that person] sees himself [or herself] a sinner.”

The more we see our worth determined by our being children of God rather than by what we do or don’t do, the more we are able to examine ourselves truthfully, share our real lives, and experience mutual love in community.

If we do not gain this virtue, the desert fathers tell us that we will have the opposite, judgmentalism. And “Judgmentalism destroys community; it destroys those who do the judging, and…it often destroys the one who is judged. On a small scale judgmentalism destroys marriages, families, and churches. On a wider scale it provides the major fuel of racism, sexism, neglect of the poor, and national self-righteousness.” (Roberta Bondi, To Pray and To Love)

They held their judgment like a nice round stone in the hand, waiting until just the right minute to inflict her with its sting.

They flung the judgment of criticism –as they dragged her to her feet and through the town to Jesus. You’re nothing but a floozy, you harlot…probably called her worse things. They were sure they were superior to her; they mocked her, ridiculed her with the judgment of contempt.

“Now what do you say, Jesus?” they asked.

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

They couldn’t get much closer, standing right there over Jesus, rock solidly in hand, and “The nearer [a person] draws to God, the more [that person] sees himself [or herself] a sinner.”
One at a time, they couldn’t deny that they were no more righteous than she. No better. No more holy. No less a sinner. You could hear the stones sink into the sand as their fingers uncurled and they fell to the ground. And they walked away.

Until they were all gone. She was left alone, there by Jesus as he continued to draw in the sand.

He looked up and met her gaze, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir.”

And then the only one there without sin, the only one with the moral superiority to be able to judge, pronounced his judgment, “Then neither do I condemn you. Depart from this point forward from sin.”

It’s really not a very satisfying story. You still have your rock? You probably wouldn’t really throw it, right? After all, God’s the judge. Here’s the problem with this story – usually when we suspend judgment on someone we know has sinned, we expect that God will take care of proper punishment. Except evidently, that just reveals that we have already judged them, have a pretty clear idea of the kind of punishment they deserve, and are just not enforcing the penalty. She broke the law. The sentence should have been death by stoning. Jesus didn’t condemn her even though she was guilty. He just sent her on her way and said don’t do that anymore!

The early church didn’t like it, either. If you look it up in your Bible, it may be in brackets and say that it doesn’t appear in the earliest manuscripts of John. It doesn’t. As it begins to appear in the manuscripts, it appears inserted in different places. It doesn’t even sound like John. It sounds like Luke, and there are even manuscripts where it was inserted into Luke’s Gospel. You might go your whole life and not hear a sermon on it. It’s not included in our lectionary of Scripture readings in the 3 year cycle. Most of the sermons I found that were preached on it were scholarly, critical analysis of the text and its placement.

It is easier to focus on the historical placements of this passage than it is to come close as Jesus says, “Unless you are without sin, don’t throw that rock” …draw near and see ourselves…a sinner…and see that we have to let the rock drop…

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could say that this passage needs brackets because it isn’t in the earliest manuscripts of John and was inserted and, therefore, perhaps not authentic… Except, just the opposite is true. The encounter is included in accounts of the earliest oral traditions about Jesus. And we know that over time, as they copied the manuscripts, scribes made the Scriptures easier to accept, they clarified hard sayings, they took the edge off of pointed teachings. This story bounced around because no one knew where to put it; no matter where it got inserted Jesus let a sinner – who was GUILTY – get away without punishment or guilt or shame; but they knew it was true and they couldn’t ignore it.

What you do with that rock is up to you.