John 8.1-11, Ash Wednesday 2024.
I’m super excited to be able to preach this evening. I’ve not been able to come to an evening Ash Wednesday service for 7 years. Every Year on this day I have found myself giving a Church History Lecture to 2nd term trainee Clergy and Readers and Preachers. By about this time we are into the early medieval period where the central church has seriously lost its way and we see the flourishing of the ordinary women and men who seek a life close to God through the monastic system.
So that’s a good starter for Lent. To draw close to God.
Interesting that this evening is also St Valentine’s day. Valentine was martyred for his faith in 269. But by the 1500s there had come this idea that by mid-February could be the beginning of Bird Nesting season and so there is the connection with love.
But it fits well to have this day of Love to launch us into Lent. And here we see a calm and fierce Love at work.
In our Gospel reading, We hear the noise and bustle of a crowd : some are eager to see Jesus fail, some are eager to see Jesus win in this evident set up. No one is there to see the Woman as a woman.
Pause for a mo and ask yourself – What’s the minimum number that you need to commit adultery? So where’s the Man?
Was he quicker to get away? Faster out the window? Do you think of him as a coward for not being here, or as someone who got lucky?
Or that he was never the target, the woman was always their target. Or even that this mystery man was a plant, deliberately setting up this woman because the plan was always about trapping Jesus, it was never about the man, or the woman.
Oh this whole situation should be making your blood boil.
Let’s look at the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law. Note the smirks that they cannot fail to hide.
They don’t care about whether a marriage or two have been broken, they want to know if they can show that Jesus is anti-Torah and pro Caesar who has said “No” to mob violence.
Later we will see the Religious Authorities taking Jesus to the Romans because they do not have the power to execute Jesus.
Ah but here, its okay to have a lynch mob.
And that’s because if they can show that Jesus is pro-Torah but anti-Caesar then that will be a nice quick way to get rid of Jesus even sooner.
So here we are with these Pharisees and they don’t see the woman as a woman, she is a Thing, a weapon.
If they really cared for her or for the man or for either of the marriages – then wouldn’t they start with a quiet warning, perhaps taking one of them aside and saying ‘How’s life? How’s your marriage?’ No, that’s not their intent.
This was never about the woman; it was always about showing up Jesus as a hypocrity. And that ought to make you cross.
Torah says, a couple of witnesses, that’s enough for a stoning. Ah, There are times when we like being Right.
We love being Right so much that we don’t care who gets mown down in the process.
There are times when we’re so cross with someone that if we get a chance to make them look a fool then we will grab it.
It is fun being a Pharisee. But it slowly chokes.
Here we are, Ash Wednesday,
Remember that we are Dust and to Dust we shall return. Lent is a good time for us to check how we are growing as Christians.
So Lets look at Jesus. Note his body posture.
Vs 2, before all this kerfuffle starts, he is sat down to teach.
Now I’m told if you speak to clever scholars they will tell you that this small posture immediately tells us that this is an early story of Jesus
Quite quickly teachers start standing to teach. Like me today. When Jesus read the from the scroll of Isaiah in the Synagogue in Luke’s Gospel, afterwards we note that he sat down and began to teach. That’s the posture of a Rabbi.
Vs 3 we see how they made this nameless woman (and perhaps that’s a mercy) to stand in this circle of men. Can you just picture how awful and frightening this scene looks.
But what’s Jesus doing? We don’t know, but half way through verse 6, Jesus bent down and started writing. Why would he bend down, he should be sitting, he was sitting earlier.
I suggest Jesus has stood up with this woman.
It’s hard to convey the comforting power of someone doing this when you’re in terror for your life.
But whilst Jesus is standing, no one is going to start throwing anything.
I suggest that this simple act of standing calms the blood lust. But Jesus remains in a jam.
So he bends down to write in the sand.
No we don’t know what he writes but I wonder if he thinks of his mother Mary. Of how she found herself pregnant, and Joseph is not the father, and she is in between betrothal and proper wedding. This is why Joseph wanted to do the decent thing of quietly divorcing her.
Maybe Jesus thinks of His mum, and shudders with the thought of what if this had happened to her.
I wonder if Jesus’ stooping down to write in the sand, is also a polite way of giving at some in the crowd a little longer moment to hesitate.
Jesus first response has been to stand in solidarity with this woman.
His second response has been to bend down and so become a calming influence
And now you get these powerful words. Jesus stands up to speak them. He’s not mumbling, he’s challenging.
‘Let any of you who is without sin cast the first stone’.
This is so hard. To hear those words and let them sink in.
To find the courage to let the rock fall from your hand and blushingly step back from your righteous indignation and let your anger go.
It’s so hard when you want to write that angry email, or when you have written the draft email, how to step back from that!
Note that Jesus has stooped down again to write in the sand, again, its as if He’s allowing people to leave without Him staring at them, daring them, noting or judging them.
At other times we will see Jesus getting angry at crowds and turning tables, and this could have been a moment like this. He could have torn them off a strip for their appalling treatment of this woman.
But He doesn’t. This is being a calming presence par excellence.
Oh to be able to treat those who try to trap us with this calm kindness and generosity.
May this Lent teach us to be a calming presence.
And to learn be able to see this problem, this sinner, not as a sinner, but as a person, a woman.
May you remember that Jesus sees you, not as a problem, not as a sinner, but as a woman, a man, made in the image of God, called by the love of Jesus into the Family of the Church.
May we remember that when we see each other – over coffee after Church, on Choir night, or in the street, may we remember that you and me both, we are loved and cherished by Jesus.
Welcome to Lent. Amen.