In July of 2007 President George W. Bush granted a pardon to I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, sparing him from a 2 ½ year prison term in a CIA leak case. Libby was the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. He was convicted in March of lying to authorities and obstructing the investigation into the identity leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame. And while the president left the $250,000 fine in place, it was still very controversial. U.S. presidents receive upwards of 600 petitions for forgiveness a year, and because of the political fallout they usually wait until the last moments of their office to grant the pardons. Pardons and forgiveness are not always popular. Handing out justice seems much more to people’s liking.
The story we have read in the Scripture today is another controversial pardon. The setting is the temple courts in Jerusalem. Jesus has just sat down and begun to teach the people who have come to worship in the temple. All of a sudden there is a commotion with shouting, pushing and shoving. A woman with disheveled clothing is thrown in front of Jesus. She stumbles and struggles to remain on her feet. John writes, “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group” (John 8:3). There is a tone of shame in the words of John. They made her stand in front of the group as they announced her sin publicly: “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery” (John 8:4). Caught? I wonder about that. I wonder if they had been stalking her. It could have been that they set her up and had someone seduce her. It could even have been that someone forced himself on her, and then blamed her. They said to Jesus: “In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” (John 8:5). Stoning women for adultery, and much less, still goes on in the world today. There have been any number of stories in the news about people in the Middle-Eastern culture who still go by these kinds of values. Under Taliban rule in Afghanistan women were regularly stoned to death for adultery, or merely the accusation of it by a jealous or vindictive husband. One story that made the news recently was of a young woman who had the audacity to want to marry a young man from another family group. Her brothers and family gruesomely stoned her to death. So this is very much alive today. And even though we in the United States do not literally stone people, Christians often practice the same kind of rejection that the woman in our story experienced — at the hands of religious folk.
In effect, what the religious leaders are doing is trying to trap Jesus. “Hey Jesus,” they say, “Don’t you believe in the Scriptures? The Scriptures say to stone adulterers. Here is an adulterer. Now what do you say to do? Do you follow the Scriptures or not?” The dilemma they placed him in was that if Jesus had said not to stone her, he would have been breaking Jewish law, but if he had said to stone her, he would be breaking Roman law. They were trying to put him in a lose-lose situation. But what is surprising, as a part of the backdrop of the story, is that Roman law is actually kinder than Jewish religious law — as it was interpreted by the Pharisees. It was actually more fair and gave room for grace. It took people’s humanity into account. First, Roman law said that you could not condemn anyone without two or three witnesses. Secondly, the death penalty could not happen without going through a trial in the Roman court system where people had a chance to defend themselves. Jewish religious law could be harsh, as Jesus experienced. It is interesting that in the trial of Jesus, it is Pilate who comes to Jesus’ defense and tried several times to release him. He said to the Pharisees: “I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him” (Luke 23:14). It is a thief on a cross who says, “We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:4). It was a Roman soldier who said, “Surely this was a righteous man” (Luke 23:47). But all the religious leaders could do was to shout, “He deserves to die. Crucify him.”
How is it that supposedly good, religious people can be meaner than those who do not know God? How is it that the Roman government could be fairer and kinder to people who had done wrong than those who were supposed to be the people of God? But this same kind of judgmental, graceless religion can still be found in the church today. Perhaps we need to learn the truth of the saying, “The one who casts stones should be aware that he may be losing ground.”
John continues the story by saying, “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. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her’” (John 8:6-7). Wouldn’t you love to know what Jesus wrote on the ground? I always had in mind that it was the names of the Pharisee’s girlfriends. Perhaps it was nothing, only a way of letting the heat of the moment cool off. But eventually Jesus looked up and said, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” After all, they were acting as though they had no sin of their own. It is amazing how ready we are to point out and punish the sins of others and how easily we dismiss our own. I have discovered that the people who are most willing to cast stones are the ones who seem to have the least insight into their own faults and sins. They are also the first to whine when someone tosses a stone their direction.
It is significant in the story that John tells us: “Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. 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” (John 8:8-9). The older they were, the more they understood their own sinfulness. It’s called maturity. It’s called honesty. The youngest, and least mature, were the last to drop their stones and leave.
You know what I find interesting? As I read the Gospels, the books of the Bible that tell about the life and teaching of Jesus, I can’t find any time where he condemns sinners — at least the kind of people we commonly think of as sinners. In fact, the main complaint the religious leaders had about him was that he was the “friend of sinners” (Matthew 11:19). He frequented parties where there was drinking, prostitutes and other notorious sinners. Never once did he denounce them. A woman of ill repute pours perfume on his feet and then strokes them with her hair. She is roundly condemned by the righteous, but defended by Jesus. Why do you think Jesus did not take a stronger stand on sin and speak out against it more? Why did he hang out with sinners more than the religious leaders? I think it was because the sinners were honest enough to realize that they were sinners. They never tried to deny it. The problem with sinners was they did not believe that God cared about them. They thought they were hell-bound and there was nothing they could do about it. What they needed was the attention of Jesus, and the message of forgiveness and hope. They did not need words of condemnation, they needed words of redemption. They needed to know that God still cared about them and wanted them to come home to him. They needed to know that they could be a part of the kingdom of God. Jesus wanted to draw them in, not drive them away.
Of course, Jesus did not endorse the sinful lifestyle of people either. He said to the woman, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8:10-11). He did want her to move away from her sin. He wanted her to cease and desist from the things that were destroying her life, her relationships with other people and most of all her relationship with God. He wanted her to know that she was not beyond forgiveness and redemption, and she certainly was not beyond the love and care of God. God wanted her to come home to him.
As I read the Gospels I am struck by the fact that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is the New Testament equivalent to the Old Testament giving of the law on Mount Sinai by Moses. Both marked the inauguration of a covenant. Both were handed down on a mountain. Both were given by the religious leader of the day. Both were the laws of the covenant — Moses giving the Ten Commandments, the laws of the Old Covenant, and Jesus giving the Beatitudes, the laws of the New Covenant. The laws of Moses, the Ten Commandments, always begin with “Thou shalt not. . . .” The laws of Jesus always begin with a positive blessing: “Blessed are you . . . .” The Old Covenant pronounced judgment, the New Covenant of Jesus pronounced blessing. The apostle Paul wrote, “He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant — not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). Living by the letter of the law can never give life. It misses the spirit of the law. Only by being honest about our failure and coming to God for his grace do we experience life.
What if the church today was in the business of pronouncing blessing? Instead of worrying whether we are taking a strong enough stand against sin, what if we worried about whether we were taking a strong enough stand on the blessings of the transformed life? What if people once again would say about the people in the church: “Behold, how they love one another!” What if they marveled at our ability to do good to those who are different from us, and even those who may be our enemies. I was shamed a few years ago as I read about the first time a Hindu chaplain, Rajan Zed, attempted to offer a prayer in the Senate. He was booed and shouted down by three Christians in the gallery who bellowed out Scriptures to the man and anyone else who could hear. They screamed: “No Lord but Jesus Christ,” and “There’s only one true God.” They called the prayer by Chaplain Zed an “abomination.” They took a stand for what they considered to be the truth, but in so doing brought disgrace on the name of Christ. I hardly think it was pleasing to Jesus. Jesus was not threatened by the man’s prayer. We have a hard time with those who are different from us don’t we? I think a lot of it comes from fear. Perhaps if we were more confident that Jesus Christ will triumph in the end, those kinds of things would not happen. Perhaps if we believed that no amount of evil, sinful acts or prayers to other gods can thwart the plan of God, we would relax and not think we have to correct every moral or doctrinal error we run across. Perhaps if we saw that our love for people was more important than correcting people, our witness would have more impact, and the peace of God would come to the church and to the world.
Do we really believe that the Spirit of God is at work in the life of every person whether we can see it or not? Even in the worst of sinners, God is busy trying to draw them to himself, so it is important that we not make his job more difficult. I mentioned that Jesus did not condemn sinners and speak out about specific sins in a condemning way. That is true as far as the sins we usually think of, but there were sins that he was very hard on: the sins of the religiously arrogant – the self-righteous. Jesus was relentless in his judgment about the self-righteous who saw the sins of others so clearly while failing to see their own. He spoke out against religious pride and arrogance. He spoke out against hypocrisy. He said to the religious people of the day: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to” (Matthew 23:13-14). “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matthew 23:23-25). “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:27-28).
Never does Jesus use this kind of angry language against the sexually immoral, drunkards and the rest. What is the reason for that? Certainly he was not excusing their sin or saying that it did not matter. I think there was a reason. And the reason was that the sins of the flesh are not nearly so serious as the sins of the spirit. And why is that? It is because religion can be used as a convenient cover up for sin. It is because the veneer of being a practicing Christian, or being “saved”, can cause us to be proud and blind to our own sin. People addicted to sex, alcohol or drugs usually understand that they have a problem. Christians sometimes do not understand that they have a problem, because they see themselves as being “right with God”. They feel superior to others, while at the same time failing to see the sins of the spirit like their judgmentalism, unkindness, lack of mercy and forgiveness, greed and self-indulgence. Like the Pharisees, we clean the outside of the cup and fail to clean the inside. Jesus’ words call for humility and a willingness to look honestly inside ourselves before we look critically at others.
If anyone had a reason to feel good about themselves it was Ruth Bell Graham. She was the daughter of missionaries to China, where she lived through her childhood. She was the wife of Billy Graham, whose ministry to the world has possibly had more impact than any other individual in history. T. W. Wilson, an associate evangelist to Graham said, “There would have been no Billy Graham, as we know him today, had it not been for Ruth.” She was a faithful and outstanding mother — raising children who have faithfully followed the Lord, and many of whom are in full time Christian ministry. At her memorial service, her pastor, Richard White, said, “If you’re here today and say, ‘Ruth Graham was a great woman,’ you missed the point of her life. The reason Ruth Graham was a great woman is because she had a great Savior and a great love for Jesus Christ.” Many do not realize that Ruth was involved in prison ministry, going to the least and the lost. She fed many of them in her home after they were released. I was impressed that she was buried in a simple plywood casket — the same kind of casket in which the prisoners are buried. The man who led the team who made the casket was called “Grosshopper.” He had come to know the Lord while serving 31 years in prison for murder. Ruth could have easily looked down her nose at these sinners and been glad they were getting what was coming to them, but instead she saw herself as an object of grace along with them. She went to them and ministered to them in humility. She wanted them to come to know the Christ she loved and served so faithfully. For that reason, Billy Graham said at his wife’s funeral, “It doesn’t seem to me like we’re at a place of burial. I feel like it is a place of rejoicing.”
May it be so with us.
Rodney J. Buchanan
August 12, 2012
Amity United Methodist Church
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
