Service by Dave Randall for St. Paul’s, Sunday April 18, 2021
 

Call to Worship – Matt 11:28-30
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Prayer of Confession
Almighty Father; we enter your presence confessing the things we try to conceal from you and the things we try to conceal from others.  We confess the heartbreak, worry, and sorrow we have caused, that make it difficult for others to forgive us, the times we have made it easy for others to do wrong, the harm we have done that makes it hard for us to forgive ourselves.  Lord have mercy and forgive us through Christ.
Amen.
Words of Assurance
The Lord Jesus Christ has no pleasure in the death of sinners, but would rather they should turn from their wickedness and live.
He has given authority to us, his ministers, to declare to his people when they repent that their sins are forgiven.
God pardons and absolves all who truly repent and believe his holy gospel.
So we ask him to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, and that the rest of our life may be pure and holy, so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Message      Who Condemns You? – John 8:2-11
2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.  3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.  They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.  5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women.  Now what do you say?”  6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.  7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
 9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.  10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
  11“No one, sir,” she said.  “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
There have been some things that have always puzzled me about this passage.  First, and most importantly, why did Jesus let her off the hook?  She was obviously a sinner, committing what would rightly be seen as a very serious sin and immoral act.  She was clearly guilty, as she had been caught in the very act.  So, why did Jesus say, “Neither do I condemn you.”?  We will get back to that.
The other question that came up for me: if she was “caught in the act,” where was the guy?  They would have both been “caught in the act,” so why was only one brought to Jesus?  I have a few other questions, but we will get to those in a bit.
So, Jesus is in the temple courts with a large crowd gathered around him to hear him teach. The Pharisees and teachers of the law come dragging this woman who had been torn, as is, from the bed of her lover, to humiliate her and try to trap Jesus.  They have a ready audience.  People are there to hear Jesus.  They are interested in the things of God and what Jesus has to say about them.  They all know what the law says.  And the Pharisees start asking Jesus, “The law says to stone her.  What do you say?”
What does Jesus do?  He stoops down and starts writing in the dirt!  You have to wonder what he was writing!  I heard a comedian say once that maybe he was writing down the names and phone numbers of their mistresses.
And when they press him again for an answer, he says, “If any one of you are without sin, let him cast the first stone.”  The stones start to drop to the ground.  The Pharisees, one by one, turn in what seems like embarrassment, and walk away, the older ones, then the younger (I find that dynamic revealing.)
And what does this all mean? Recently, and very sadly, I had a bit of an “aha!” moment that immediately gave me insight to what I felt was happening here in this story.  A very famous man, who professed not just to be a Christian, but as a teacher of the word and defender of Christianity, was revealed as living a double life.  He had set up companies and organizations to entrap young women, providing them with employment and housing, for the single purpose of engaging them for immoral acts.  He used his position, power and money to victimize young women who were vulnerable.  And if they tried to leave, or expose the situation, he would use his power and position to silence them and further victimize them.  In the fallout, some of his supporters initially said, “let him without sin cast the first stone” and this is when the light came on for me.  Too many times that verse gets used to try and sweep sin under the rug, to gloss over sin.  Jesus used it to excuse her sin, he used it to convict them of their sin.
The woman caught in adultery was there, in the temple courts, naked before Jesus and a host of onlookers, to be humiliated because she was one of their victims!  She was to serve as a reminder to all the others, “Don’t mess with us!”.  And if they could trap Jesus in the process, so much the better. They knew where to find her.  They didn’t bring the guy, because he was one of them.  The victim becomes a victim all over again.
How many prostitutes do you think intentionally set out to go down that life path?  Or rather, are they coerced because of circumstance and out of necessity to survive.  How many are forced into that life by violence, threatened with beatings or death if they don’t comply?  How many find themselves in abusive relationships, only to be cast off and abused by the next one to come along?  How many victims seek out the life they find themselves trapped in?  She was dragged into the temple courts, and Jesus saw her for what she was, a victim, a slave in need of being freed, and he had compassion on her.
But the only way of her being able to “go and sin no more” was for Jesus to turn the power dynamic on its ear.  An oppressor can only have his way if he has power over the victim.  Jesus took away the power.  Their secret sin was exposed.  When he said, “Let any one without sin…,” the word for sin he used wasn’t the word for transgressions or errors.  It literally meant “sinless.”  Some scholars think it may have implied “without this same sin.”
There are a few of things that really jump out at me when I reread this passage.  First, there are two ways portrayed here of how we can become a “slave to sin.”  I can be enslaved by the sin committed against me, like the woman in this story, or I can become enslaved by the secret sin I want to continue in, like the Pharisees.  The answer to both of those things is “light.”
 In exposing their sin to the light of day, Jesus gave them the opportunity to repent and turn away from their sin.  The truth was out.  They could admit their guilt and seek forgiveness, or they could continue the charade and try to eliminate the one who exposed them.  I think we know how that turned out.  But remember, over 2000 years later, we still celebrate Him, and worship Him, and strive to be like Him, not them.  So, who won?
In exposing their sin, he also took their power away to victimize the woman.  We are given a beautiful picture of God’s grace in Jesus’ response, “Neither do I condemn you.  Go now, and leave your life of sin.”  In the Greek, condemn is used as a legal term here, and the word for sin is different than the one used earlier with the Pharisees.  This verse literally means, “Although you are clearly guilty, I am not going to pass sentence on you.  Go now, and this time live your life so as not to miss the mark and lose your inheritance.”  Jesus gave her the new opportunity to live free from sin.  He didn’t let her off the hook, he gave her a second chance.
Although I don’t think I have ever been in the place of a victim as the woman was, if I am honest with myself, I am sometimes like one of the people in that crowd.  I can be eager to see someone get their just desserts.  I can sometimes hear myself say, “Serves them right.”  I can even be like a pharisee, willing to condemn others while ignoring my own sin.  I can certainly be accused of not having the eyes of Christ.  Christ saw the dynamic, not just the sinner.  He saw the position everyone held there in that scene, and how they got there.  He saw if it was out of necessity for survival, the powerless bent to the will of the powerful.  He saw if it was from lust and greed seeking to fulfill their own desires.
But it doesn’t matter if you are the woman caught in sin, the Pharisee guilty of so much or the crowd eager to see “justice” done, God has a message for you.  Use His eyes, extend His grace, call out the oppressor for the wrong they do.  Expose the secret sin in you to the Light of the World, and in love, help others to do the same.
Benediction:
To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore!
Amen.