My land-lady Marie has a vege food store that I’m taking care of while she’s away in California. About a little while back, 2 freezers went down and $700 worth of vege food was lost. I called Marie and explained the situation to her.
A few days ago I was led in prayer to scrutinize my actions. I reached the painful and frightening conclusion that I needed to bring all of the facts to light for Marie. Right when I learned that there was anything wrong with the freezer, had I diligently worked to monitor it and communicate with Marie, much food probably could have been saved. My parents were here, and my dad, when we realized the freezer wasn’t freezing the food as it should, turned it to its coldest setting. I figured that would take care of the situation for the time being, and that there was no need to bug Marie about it immediately. Like I said, a few days ago I realized my actions were wrong, and that had I acted more diligently, who knows how much of the $700 loss could have been spared. Thoughts started running frighteningly through my head that night, how am I going to tell Marie? The fear of rejection set in, she’s going to be furious, or at least think horribly of me. I’m going to lose my reputation of being a responsible young man, and people are going to see me as negligent. I’m going to have to compensate the San Marcos church for the money that they lost. I went to sleep with those thoughts in my head, not looking forward to the morning but knowing that regardless of the outcome I had to do what was right. I’ll get back to my story later.
In the middle of the night, they burst through the door, met with gasps of horror by the one-night stand lovers who thought that nobody knew what they were doing. They storm up to the woman and pry the adulteress away from her one-night stand married lover, wrap a sheet around her, and drag her through town to one of their homes. “Tomorrow” they say, “we’re taking you to the one called Jesus. You know what Moses said to do to adulterers, we’ll see what He says.” It seems like all hopes of a promising life are coming unglued. Even if you’re a cold hearted man, when faced with death uncertainty and fear are bound to creep in. The uncertain events of the next day loom heavy on her mind. She’s messed up. There’s no getting around it! She was caught in the very act. Feelings of death and condemnation crept into her heart. This is it. What have I done with my life? I’ve told myself that someday I would change, get my life together, really do it right, but now all she feels is despair. At the very least her reputation is going to be absolutely drug through the mud, and she knows that she deserves it. Everyone is bound to turn against her when they learn the truth, when the truth about who she is comes to light. She cannot defend herself; she knows she’s defenseless. What can she possibly do? What hope is there? Moses offered no hope to adulterers. They were to be stoned. She can’t sleep. She tosses and turns.
Read John 8:2-5 (story of the Adultress woman drug before Jesus) These men had beaten her down, demoralized her, condemned her, and degraded her. They’d brought her into the middle of an on-looking crowd and mercilessly exposed her vulnerable fresh wound. And then they challenged Jesus…the Law of Moses said to stone her, what do you say.” It’s kind of what the Law does to us. We’re sitting around, minding our own business, and we feel moved to pick up the Bible and start reading. Well, that would be a good thing to do, God likes it when I read the Bible, and I usually feel better after I do, so we pick up the Bible and start reading, and we get to some hard passages; they’re hard not because we don’t understand them, but because when we compare our lives with what’s written we know that we’re not living them. We start looking for a way out. “Honor your father and mother that your days may be long upon the earth.” Anyone who curses his father or mother shall surely be put to death.” We think about putting the Bible down, but know that that won’t make the truth go away. “If you’re angry with your brother you’re subject to judgment, and if you call your brother a fool you’re in danger of the fires of hell. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. “You shall have no other gods before me.” We really start to get worried. Whatever law it is that grabs us, we feel like we’ve just lost control of our lives, and there’s nothing we can do about it. The more we seek, the more the law beats us down. You probably know what I’m talking about. We’ve just sat down for a nice reading of the Scriptures, but the law has grabbed us, beat us, accused us, and dragged us before Jesus.
Read John 8:6-11 (story of how Jesus disarms the mob by writing in the sand) Oh, let me get back to my story. I woke up Thursday morning, feeling sick. I didn’t want to go through with telling Marie all the details of the freezer accident that I’d wrestled over the night before. I didn’t go into it right first thing when I saw her, but waited for a couple of hours, then I sat down and told her what was on my heart. As I explained everything to her, I thought I saw her eyes get kind of watery, and she sort of wiped them a couple of times, and in the end told me that everything was okay and we worked things out. I had been fearing rejection, anger, scorn, but I had just been unsuspectingly embraced by the arms of grace. The rejection that I’d feared never occurred. Instead of experiencing rejection, I experienced acceptance, and it was good.
I’m going to be quoting from the book Messy Spirituality by Mike Yaconelli. “In a book by New Zealand author Mike Riddell, Vincent has met and fallen in love with a young girl named Marilyn. Neither one of them is seeking a relationship, but a relationship is seeking them. Swept up by their emotions, the two become deeply involved. Marilyn, a prostitute, is not prepared to fall in love and is certainly not prepared for the honesty love requires. She must tell Vincent who she is, knowing full well that her painful disclosure will probably mean the end of their relationship.
“Vincent?”
“Mmmmm”
“There’s ah…there’s something we need to talk about.”
“Only if you want to. I’m happy just to sit here and look at you. Sorry, this looks like something serious.” Looks a lot like the intro to the Dear John speech, truth be told.
It’s about me and what I do.”
Yeah, I wondered when you were going to pluck up the courage to talk about it. Don’t tell me, you work for the CIA, right? Sorry, sorry, I’ll shut up.”
She is totally absorbed in the remains of her salad, scrutinizing it for something. Anything to avoid his eyes.
“There’s no easy way of saying this. I’m a prostitute. I sleep with men for my living. It’s a business. I’m very professional.”
Time and silence have this thing they do together. They make a chasm that has no bottom to it. And there you are, standing right on the edge of it. Aware that at any moment you may be falling and falling and falling, with no hope of recovery. At the moment they are at either side of it, each consumed by their own private terror. She looks up at last from her salad. Vincent is crying. The tears are streaming down his cheeks, and he is biting his lip to stop himself from sobbing.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to deceive you. I’m sorry Vincent. I’m sorry.”
He can’t speak. He wants to, but nothing is working. He is looking at her, at her beautiful face, at her eyes, at the slight hardness around her mouth. And weeping and weeping. She reaches a hand across to hold his. She is beyond tears, empty and bleak and barren. Vincent is mumbling something, but is incoherent through the pain. And then he begins to repeat it again and again.
“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…”
This is the worst thing she has ever heard in her life. She wants to scream, to break something, to tip over the table in rage. Instead some continental shelf rips loose within her. She begins gulping and moaning, a terrible agonizing cry from another place. And the tears are flowing. They grip each other’s hands, and lean their foreheads together. The tears are flowing into the abyss, and there is no end to them.
Marilyn expected Vincent to reject her, to pull away from her, to have nothing to do with her. In a strange and touching way, Vincent did what Jesus would do; he looked beneath her behavior, saw her longings, and all he could do was weep. She expected criticism; what she received was understanding. Instead of hearing words of condemnation, Marilyn heard over and over again, “I love you.”
When we come in our brokenness to Jesus we find an Advocate. When the law accuses and condemns, there is One who defends and offers hope. The law offers us no hope at all, no way out, no escape! The law says you shall not judge, and the wages of sin is death. It offers us no hope. But when the law condemns us, derails us, beats us, bashes us, and rejects us, we can bypass the law and go straight to the lawgiver.
This woman who was condemned by all others found nothing but love, acceptance and forgiveness in the heart of the One who had the right to condemn her, in the heart of the lawgiver Himself. Instead of laying the blame against this woman and against humanity Christ decided to lay Himself down, and He bids us to do the same. Instead of degrading her He decided to redeem her. You know what, we’re called to be like Christ. Christ was the one who forgave, while the law condemned. We’re called to be like Christ, not to be like the law. Don’t be like the law, be like Christ. We’re called to live the law, but not to be like it…instead to be like Christ who is the fullness of the law.
What the Pharisees didn’t get and what we (including myself) often don’t get is that the law is all about people. We can by all appearances be keeping the letter of the law while completely breaking its spirit. Were the Pharisees bringing her to Jesus in love? The Old Testament law said “You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:18” Whatever reproof we’re trying to bring to our neighbor it must be done in love. (Jesus’ Teachings on forgiveness and reproof.) They were zealously obeying the Mosaic law, but they were completely breaking its spirit. They got caught up thinking that the law was all about rules and regulations instead of about people, the rules and regulations were an end in themselves instead of a means to an end. Instead of allowing the law to be an instrument in the process of healing, the law became an end in itself. The law is about bringing us to recognize our broken condition so that we’ll run to Jesus for healing. You know how we were talking about the way the law beats us and bruises us and drags us to Jesus, in reality it’s not the law that beats and bruises us, the law only reveals to us the cuts and scrapes and scars that we already have. It shows us that we’re totally at the mercy of God.
It’s when we’re totally at the mercy of God, when He has our complete attention, when we have nowhere to run, nowhere else to turn, that His amazing grace shines through in a redeeming way.
*Suppose you’re a doctor and you have a son who likes to tear down the road in his brand new sports car. He puts himself and others at risk, cutting in and out of traffic, tailing people, and completely ignoring the speed limit. You keep telling him to slow down and follow the rules of the road but he won’t listen. Then one day you’re on your way to your doctor’s office, and there’s been an accident. To your horror you see that on the side of the road your son’s car is totaled. You quickly pull over, race to the scene of the wreck, and find your son desperately hanging on to life. What do you do? Do you say, man I told you this was going to happen, you should have slowed down, and then burn off in your car? No! You work with all your strength to keep your son alive. You help him out. After you’ve been at his bedside nursing his wounds and praying for his recovery, when he finally gets out of the hospital is he going to get in his car, burn rubber and tear out of the hospital parking lot? No way! Not if he’s learned anything at all by your actions…he’s going to recognize that your warnings were for his good all along.
When we, in our sin come before Jesus, He says to us… “I don’t condemn you, go and sin no more,” and redemption begins. Sometimes this is when the biggest struggle happens. We’re torn! It’s great to be forgiven, and we see if we live life the way that we used to we stand in condemnation of the law, so how can we maintain a faithful course and escape this feeling of condemnation that comes every time we fall? We want out, and we want to stay out. We know that the Devil is going to come at us with all He’s got. When we’re at Jesus feet, receiving His mercy and forgiveness it seems like anything is possible. It’s in those times that we have power and strength to achieve anything God calls us to. Did you know that that’s the only way to stay out of the mess of continual failings? The only way to get out and stay out, to get free and stay free is to stick close to Jesus. He’s the source of forgiveness, and He’s the source of strength. As we progress in our Christian walk, we’re going to have to stick closer and closer to Jesus. As we remember the mercy and grace He has for us, our hearts will find new strength to press on.
Let’s keep coming to the feet of Jesus daily for strength. Let’s not wait until the Law rudely grabs us and tosses us accusingly at His feet before we come to Him. Let’s make it a habit to bask in the presence of the one who so mercifully and graciously offers us pardon in the moment of our greatest need.
