As we jump into this story from the gospel according to John, I have to start first with a little bit of nerdy Bible history. And this time (because we know I do love some nerdy Bible history) it’s a little less about the history in the Bible and more about the history of the Bible. If you were to turn to the 8th chapter of John in most modern English Bibles (including those in our pews – feel free to do so right now if you want to see for yourself) you would find this story in a section with brackets around it. The brackets include verse 53 of chapter 7 and continue through verse 11, that we heard. The brackets mark a footnote that reads something like this, “The most ancient authorities lack 7:53-8:11; other authorities add the passage here or” and the note lists some other spots in John or even Luke. “[S]ome,” it continues, “mark the passage as doubtful.”
[[What this points to is the reality that in the 1600 years since the Christian canon was set, early manuscripts are occasionally discovered that challenge what we might think the “original” Scriptures were. In the case of this story, when we look at all the different versions of John’s gospel that have been discovered, the earliest manuscripts, often considered to be the most reliable examples of what the original writer wrote, do not have these verses. It doesn’t appear until 5th century copies of the gospel, after the early church decided what to include in the New Testament.]]1
But even knowing this today, editors and scholars choose to include it in our Bibles. Whether or not “John” wrote it, they decide, it seems to fit in the broader point and story the gospel is trying to tell about who Jesus is and how he is received.
At this point in the story, Jesus and his disciples are in Jerusalem for the Festival of Booths, a Jewish holiday commemorating the wilderness wanderings of the ancient Israelites. Jesus and his disciples actually traveled to this festival separately – the disciples first, then Jesus following in secret, having declared to them, “I am not going to this festival, for my time has not yet fully come.” The narrator tells us that people in the crowds were looking for him, and not all in a good way.
In the middle of the multi-day festival Jesus changed his tactic and began to appear publicly, teaching in the temple. Some were astonished and, recognizing Jesus as one who some had been trying to kill, asked fairly innocent questions, such as “How does this man have such learning, when he has never been taught?” In other words – who is this guy? He has no credentials!
But others confronted him more directly. They heard where he was and what he was doing, teaching in the temple, and sent police to try to arrest him. The police wouldn’t do it though, themselves intrigued by the way Jesus spoke, and the religious leaders seem stuck.
They can’t quite catch Jesus the way they need to in order to rein him in. They can’t quite get him on the record in the way they know they need to, the way they are certain they will, to prove that he is working against their purposes, what they understand God’s purposes to be. They hear the words he says, the teachings he proclaims, the identities he claim, and these don’t fit into the belief system they have been taught, the societal structure they have always known, the one, it has to be stated, that supports their positions of authority.
In these ways, I actually sometimes find them to be sympathetic characters even if we have been taught to “boo” them like villains in a silent film. They are trying to protect their faith and tradition from what looks to them like an outsider coming around telling them to believe something different. The teachings they are hearing, they have familiar notes, but the variation of the tune is just different enough that they are certain it must be a completely new song, a song that creates dissonance in their ears and lives – so much so that they are certain they are right and Jesus must be wrong. Just look at what they’ll do when they want so desperately to be right.
Insert, literally in this gospel, this story about Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees, and, really somewhat tangentially, a woman caught in the act of the adultery. The woman it turns out, the one who is usually front and center in the artistic depictions of this story, the one for whom this story is named in most of our Bibles that have names for such stories… The woman, it turns out, is not really the center of the story. The men who have come to trap Jesus have dragged her into it, not so much because they seem to be worried about her the state of her soul, but because they are trying to trap Jesus, trying catch him in a legal or moral misstep. They are challenging his mastery, his knowledge and application of, the law of Moses. They aren’t so concerned about the redemption of this woman, except as her potential punishment or non-punishment will help build their case against Jesus. She is a pawn in their 3-D chess game, the goal of which is to capture the one the soldiers will later mockingly call the King of the Jews. She is, as we say in times of modern warfare, collateral damage, in the conflict among men. Just look at what lengths they’ll go to when, confronted by the gospel Jesus proclaims, they want him to be wrong.
When do we want Jesus to be wrong? When are we hesitant at best and militant at worst about pushing back against the law of love and redemption that he proclaims? Our answers as religious regulars probably aren’t all that different from those in John’s gospel. When do we want Jesus to be wrong?
- When he is for the people we are against
- When he forgives the people we want condemned
- When he welcomes people we want excluded
- When he shows mercy to the people we want to suffer
We want Jesus to be wrong when he loves the people we find it hard to love – people on the opposite side of the political aisle, people who act out because of fear and past pain, people who feel different from us, people who remind us of our faults, people who feel like competition for resources, people who have hurt us, people who have challenged our beliefs, our comfort, our stability.
New Testament scholar, the Rev. Dr. Karoline Lewis talks about this tendency toward judgment and comparison in a commentary about John 3:16 this way, “We live in a world that likes to judge others — even thrives on it. The sin of superiority reigns supreme in our society….The fear of exposure of our own mediocrity controls our behavior. We seek out those whose supposed faults are the low-hanging fruit that we pick to feel better about ourselves.”
When we do this we, too, end up using people as pawns for our own gain. We end up debating theories about bathrooms and sports and college admissions and trade routes and health care and strategic targets and peaceful protests and marriage and voting rights and border security as if there are no human beings impacted by our words or our decisions. We raise the stone of our debates at those who are in vulnerable positions, denying them dignity just so we can be right in our position, just so that we can avoid being challenged by a good news that will stretch our minds, expand our hearts, and activate our spirits for the work of Jesus Christ in the world.
The woman is merely a prop to the people who are trying to trap Jesus in some theoretical argument, and yet he is unwilling to accept their challenge and treat her in this same way. He is unwilling to overlook her humanity. He is unwilling to unjustly condemn her when her partner in the very act in which she was caught is no where to be found, when these men have brought her to be stoned just so they can win their own theoretical debate, just so they can feel justified in their discomfort with, their opposition to Jesus. Instead, he sees her as a human being worthy of not only spiritual salvation if we want to use that word (he doesn’t), but literal, physical salvation when there are those who would see fit to end her life.
Jesus doesn’t rush to answer the question of those who came to trap him, but kneels to the ground to write in the sand. Oh, how much do you want to know what he wrote in the sand? I sure do. Some muse that maybe he started writing down the sins of the men around him. I’m not really convinced. Jesus doesn’t even dwell a whole lot on the sin of the woman. I don’t think he’s trying shame the men the way they shamed the woman. Jesus isn’t really into a tit for tat ministry. Some say that the writing was just to prove his learnedness to answer those who wonder if this backwoods Galilean really has the smarts to be telling them anything. Oh, I can’t wait to find out someday what he wrote, but at the very least, Jesus slows the pace down.
He gives everyone a chance to hear themselves, what they’re really asking of him, before he turns the whole scene back on the religious leaders. This is a story about them, not about a woman, not matter what her faults may be. This is a story about religious leaders who want to be right more than they want to be effective.
And yet, even these he does not condemn. He leads them to a moment where they have to judge for themselves – judge themselves for themselves to see where they, too, belong in the stoning circle – in the outer ring with rocks in hand, or on the ground wincing and waiting for that first jolt of condemnation.
And yet, even these Jesus does not condemn, but instead invites them to consider their impulse, consider their own temptation to sin, to pick and choose which people deserve condemnation and which don’t even get brought in for questioning, which people deserve dignity, and which are just examples for them to use however they wish, for whatever argument they want to win.
Even these Jesus treats with dignity allowing them to walk away from their own worst moment, not condemned, but invited into self-reflection, invited into a journey of mercy, not unlike the very real and life-giving mercy he shows to the woman right in front of him. Mercy that is grounded in God’s faithfulness to God’s people. Mercy that calls for justice, not simply fairness, but justice that lifts up those who are tossed down, justice that redeems those who have been discarded. Mercy that is at the root of the good news of Jesus’ proclamation.
The good news is that Jesus sees us – all of us – as worthy of dignity, as worthy of love, as worthy of second chances and new life – not because of what we have done or not done, not because we have earned it through our right understanding of the rules or our superiority over others, but because God alone has claimed us as God’s children, because God alone has called us good and made us worthy. Jesus invites us to put down our stones and stand up from the center of condemnation. Jesus, in justice, mercy, and faithfulness, calls to see our own human dignity and the dignity of others that we may know and show God’s love for all of creation.
In divided times, how can we honor human dignity better in our words and actions?
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- Early manuscripts of this sermon included this further nerdy Bible history: What this points to is the reality that the New Testament, and really the Bible as a whole, didn’t just show up in history one day as one uniform, unified book that was exactly the same all across the Christian communities of the ancient world. Instead, for several hundred years different manuscripts of mostly the same text of the different letters and gospels and writings circulated independently, with different communities of Christians seeing some and different communities seeing others. Not only did they see different versions of the manuscripts, they weren’t always even looking at the same books. Eventually, in the late 4th century and early 5th century, the books that we know of as the New Testament were solidified as the books Christians find authoritative, but even then, different communities used different versions. ↩︎