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[Note: this is a completely UNEDITED manuscript from Dr. Bell's files.]

John 7:53 Then each of them went home, 8:1while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ 6They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ 8And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.* 9When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ 11She said, ‘No one, sir.’* And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

When I can’t sleep at night and find myself channel surfing in the basement, I almost always end up watching a crime show or two and sometimes three. Crime shows help me go to sleep because the plot is almost always the same. Some crime is committed by some diabolical person, some law enforcement agency unravels the case – even though “it’s hard and complicated,” the DA presses charges, there is a trial, the bad person gets what’s coming to him and goes to jail, justice is done … Nice, predictable, tidy. I feel that all is right in the world and we are all safe again and I can fall to sleep peacefully.

But sometimes, every once in a while – not often … it doesn’t end that way … sometimes for reasons that I don’t always fully understand or appreciate, the writers and producers let the criminal get away with it. In this plot, it seems that a smart, but seedy criminal defense attorney finds a loop hole in the law and the judge is forced to dismiss the case or suppress necessary evidence. The judge’s hands are tied. Justice is not done. The guilty goes free. This is disturbing.

Well, our Bible story for this morning may be as shocking to your sense of justice. Here the scribes and the Pharisees – the religious leaders of Jesus’ day – drag before Jesus a woman who had been caught in adultery. The penalty for adultery in Mosaic Law was death. The fact that she had been caught in the act is not disputed by any one present. They ask Jesus what they should do. Rather than answer them, Jesus snoops down and writes something in the dirt. They kept asking him questions, and he kept writing things with his finger in the dirt. What was he writing? There is an ancient tradition that suggests in the dirt he was writing their sins: hypocrisy, self-righteousness, perhaps greed, pride, sexism.

Jeremiah 17:13 says this, “All who forsake [the Lord] shall be put to shame; those who turn away from you shall be recorded in the dirt, for they have forsaken the fountain of living water.” Some believe Jesus was writing down their names in the dirt, fulfilling this very verse, because they had forsaken the fountain of life.

The truth is that no one knows what he was writing in the dirt with his finger, but clearly he was ignoring the question put to him by the scribes and Pharisees: what should they do with her? What should be the punishment of this woman?

Finally, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin cast the first stone.” And then he kneeled down again and resumed writing in the dirt. Of course, they went away one by one, because none of them was sinless. Jesus knew it, and they knew it. How humiliated they must have been … how angry they must have become at this poorly educated, rebellious, rural rabbi who refused to implement the law. Adultery is one of the egregious acts forbidden in the Ten Commandments which Moses received from God on Mt. Sinai. In the Books of Leviticus (20:10) and Deuteronomy (22:22), it is very clear that the penalty for adultery is death. This woman was allegedly caught in the act, but Jesus refuses to condemn her and lets her go free.

Amazing! No wonder they wanted to kill him: his action seems unjust and surely infuriates everybody involved! The guilty one goes free – that is disturbing.

This is a troubling story. In fact, some ancient manuscripts of the Gospel of John do not even include this story [Notice it is in parentheses.], causing some scholars to wonder whether it actually happened at all or it was later cut out by those with a strong sense of justice and who were offended by it.

But it would be a gross mis-reading of this text if you believe for a second that Jesus is suggesting that adultery is not bad or wrong or should go un-punished.  There is nothing written in any part of the New Testament that suggests sin is not problematic and that there are painful consequences to sin. In fact, Jesus claims that his mission is to save sinners, but the way he chose to save sinners was unique: he did not choose to stand in judgment, he did not nag or needle them until they stopped errant ways, he did not point his finger and scold sinners and he did not speak poorly of and deride sinners – or chide them, he did not pick up a stone and hurl it at sinners; no, he chose to forgive them and accept them and grant them another chance and a fresh start at life. He looked at people as righteous, extending grace and mercy and love. He came to save sinners – not condemn them, and he refused to condemn this woman as well.

This is not to approve of or excuse her actions at all: Jesus wants her to repent – to change. In fact, he tells her not to sin again. He wants her to experience a new life and take advantage of a fresh start. But what Jesus understands is that, in the words of Paul Tillich, acceptance creates repentance. It is an awareness of God’s love and God’s grace and God’s forgiveness that fills you with a desire to change. You do not have to repent in order to receive God’s love; God’s love and mercy – once realized, once perceived – result in repentance.

The truth is that none of us are sinless. None of us are good enough to withstand the judgment of God. None of us are holy. All of us fall short of the mark and God’s expectations of us. We are all like sheep who have gone astray. This, of course, is why we believe Jesus died for our sins. He died for you.

One of the most interesting passages of Scripture is the hinge between Romans 1 & 2. It is often used narrowly and exclusively to condemn homosexuals, but Paul is actually making a point about the sinful nature within all of us.

In the last part of the first chapter or Romans, Paul appears to be standing in judgment of sinners. He makes a long-list of who he thinks “they” (sinners) are and what they do. He says they (sinners) “did not see fit to acknowledge God, [and] God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. 29 They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters,* insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious towards parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.

But in the next verse, which happens to be the first verse of Chapter 2, Paul shifts pronouns and reaches a startling conclusion. He goes from preaching to meddling. After writing about them and them and those people – the ones that do bad things in his very long list of sinners, he concludes:

“Therefore, you [He shifts here from “they” to “you.” He is now addressing Christians,] have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. 2 You say,* ‘We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth.’ 3 Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”

This woman did indeed fall short of the mark of God’s expectations of her, and she was offered new life, a second chance, a living hope, in Jesus Christ – the sinless One, who chose not to throw a stone at her, not to condemn her.

But this story is really not about the women and her sin – it’s about the men and their sin. It’s about the scribes and the Pharisees. They brought the woman in front of Jesus to try to trick him, to try to fool him, to try to entrap him, so that they could have him arrested, put an end to his ministry and kill him — and all that he said and stood for. This story is in the Bible because it highlights the evil of those whose harbor hate, those who are self-righteous, those who judgmental and those who are hypocritical. A community of faith that claims to be a reflection of what God intends for all humanity does not have room for hate or hubris or hypocrisy – like these men who sought to stone a single woman for a single sin though their sins were scarlet – and legion and clearly apparent. They sought to build up themselves, to puff up their own self-importance by throwing stones at a weak woman who they chose to vilify and ostracize.

If there is one sin that should have no home in the Church of Jesus Christ it is the sin of being judgmental. Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. ‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”

I know some of you have been to my presentations on my experiences in Russia have heard this story. I went to Russian the first time in the early 90’s – not long after communism collapsed. I was there with a group of representatives from our denomination, the PCUSA, to see what we could do to support Christians in Russia. We went to St. Sergey’s monastery and were given a tour by a Russian orthodox nun whose English was very good. During the tour we expressed concern for the Russian Christians, asked what we could do to help, articulated dismay at their difficult plight and queried her about how bad things had been. Her irritation with us clearly was growing during the tour, and finally she took us into a chapel, pointed at a lovely painting and asked us what Biblical story did we see. It was actually a very funny, almost literal painting of a man with a log in his eye struggling to get a fleck of dust out of the eye of another man. It was almost cartoonish and it took us no time at all to recognize the parable. The nun looked at us and said, “If you want to help us, go back to America and get the log out of your own eye. Christians in Russia can take care of our own problems just fine.” And she wheeled about and left us. Tour over. Point made.

The one who is without sin cast the first stone.

Do not judge, and you will not be judged.

That’s not only good advice, which will help you sleep better at night.

That’s the Gospel!

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