From Now On, Do Right

Sermon at North Hill, October 30, 2010.

In John chapter 8, we read a story about Jesus that was so famous in the early church that it was at different times and places included in two different gospels: Luke and John. (No manuscript has the story in both John and Luke. It is in either John or Luke.)

Because of this textual anomaly, scholars have argued about whether the story is authentic. Today, we're going to take the story just as it reads without worrying about the complicated matters of manuscript analysis.

The Story

[After spending the day teaching in the temple in Jerusalem,] Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them.

As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and Pharisees brought a woman they had caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.

"Teacher," they said to Jesus, "this woman was caught in the very act of adultery.
The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?"

They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.

They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, "All right, stone her. But let those who have never sinned throw the first stones!" Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to her, "Where are your accusers? Is there no one left to accuse you?"

"No, Lord," she said.

Then Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and don't sin again."

Jesus said to the people, "I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won't be stumbling through the darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life."


Jesus agreed with the woman's accusers that her sexual liaison was sinful. Note his words, “Go and don't sin again,” clearly implying that what she had been doing was sinful. Jesus disagreed with the woman's accusers that she ought to be condemned. Instead Jesus called her to new life.

Last week, we studied John 9, where Jesus' disciples, facing the tragic life of a man blind from birth, asked whose sinned caused this situation. Jesus answer was that no one had sinned in connection with the situation. In fact, the question, “Who sinned?” was simply the wrong question. It was a question that was impossible to answer with truth. The question itself had to be rejected.

In this story, we push Jesus' rejection of the question, “Who sinned?” or in modern vernacular, “Who goofed?” to its most extreme. When faced with an incontrovertible situation of sin, Jesus rejects the normal Christian impulse to pass moral judgment on what has happened and compels us to ask instead about the way forward.

The woman's accusers asked Jesus how he stood in relation to Moses' prescription for dealing with adulterers. Jesus compelled these questioners to withdraw. They were asking an inappropriate question. Officially, the accusers were demonstrating their zeal for righteousness and rectitude. Surely, an upright and moral community would react with outrage against such flagrant violation of God's law. But their eagerness to condemn the woman blinded them to their own need for moral growth.

Jesus stooped to write on the ground with his finger, a poetic reflection of God's writing the law with his finger. The law properly understood is never owned by any human individual or institution. The law that we cite in our condemnation of others points with cold inflexibility at us as well.

Jesus wrote with his finger as a defender of the law and silenced the accusers who would use the law as a tool of their crooked purposes. Then he addressed the woman who had been “caught” in the double sense of “caught in the act” and “seduced.”

“Are any of your accusers still present to condemn you.”

“No sir.”

“Good. So we don't have to worry about that. Now what are you going to do? You are going to live a new life rejecting the false promises of lust and giving yourself instead to the genuine goodness of love. That's what you're going to do. Now, go do it.”

How does this apply in your life?

How frequently and vigorously do you pass judgment on others who are engagement in behavior that you would never even dream of doing? Does your fascination with their evil blind you to what the law says about your own need for growth and transformation?

Maybe we can turn the question just slightly. Are you both the accuser and the “one caught”? Do you find yourself frequently condemning yourself? You fail to live up to your ideals. You act in ways that are inconsistent with your faith and with the teachings of Jesus. What is your reaction to your failure? Do you stand in the circle of accusers, with a few rocks in your hand, ready to pelt your poor miserable self?

Jesus urges you to drop the rocks. Quit wasting precious energy condemning yourself. Instead, hear the words of Jesus: Neither do I condemn you. Go live. And by the way, quit sinning. Don't do it again.

Jesus' response to human failure is always to call us forward to a new life, to another attempt at goodness.

This week, reject the messages of condemnation that come from others and from your own conscience and give yourself to a renewed pursuit of goodness and love.