What's the Score?
What’s the Score?
John 8:1-11
Here’s a question: who was the first person to break the Ten Commandments? Think carefully for a minute. Have you got it? The first person to break the Ten Commandments was…Moses! He came down from the mountain top, saw the people worshiping a golden calf and what did he do? He literally smashed those tablets to smithereens. (Don’t worry, though, he went back and got another copy…seriously! It’s in the book.) It’s not news that people have been breaking the Ten Commandments ever since.
Do you remember what the commandments are? Here goes: 1. You shall have no other gods before me; 2. No worshiping idols; 3. No taking God’s name in vain; 4. Keep the sabbath; 5. Honor your mother and father; 6. No killing; 7. No adultery; 8. No stealing; 9. No false witness; 10. No coveting your neighbor’s stuff. 3000 years later, we break those rules all the time. We treat all sorts of people as if they are gods (musicians, actors, athletes, politicians). We have our idols we worship (try…money?) The Sabbath was supposed to be Friday sundown to Saturday sundown which was really inconvenient for us so we moved it to Sunday, but we still don’t keep it. We think we honor our mothers and fathers and by extension our elders but honestly do we really listen to what they have to share? (It seems like honoring them might start there.) Certainly, we don’t steal things (but we have been known to share our Netflix passwords with friends.)
Think about how pervasively people are “bearing false witness” these days—swearing an election was stolen without any evidence to support that claim. Then, consider that some of the biggest proponents of placing the Ten Commandments on public display are the folks who are “bearing false witness” Also though, consider the folks who refused to lie in those convicted times, even though it would have been in their interest to lie. They didn’t because that would be…wrong. They may have saved our democracy.
The Ten Commandments weren’t given to us so that we could keep score. The Ten Commandments were given to us so that we could live in community. Why shouldn’t we treat things that are less than God as if they are? The answer is not, “Because if you do, then God is going to get you.” The answer is because treating a person as God gives way too much power to that person. They will do terrible things. Why shouldn’t we make money the center our lives? The answer is that when you make money the most important thing in life, everything else that matters suffers. Why should we keep the Sabbath? Because it reminds us that there is more to life than work. Why should we honor our mothers and fathers? Because life in community is better when we benefit from their hard- won wisdom and honor the ways they loved us than it is when we treat our elders as if they are irrelevant. Why don’t we kill each other or steal from each other or the like? The answer is because we can’t be a community if we don’t trust one another.
There is a social fabric that holds us together. Every time we do things that are destructive to the community, that “fabric” tears a bit. The question in that moment is not how should I punish you or you punish me. The question is not how can I build a life where I never have to deal with you again or how can you build a life where you don’t ever have to deal with me. The question is, “How will we repair that torn fabric?” When trust is broken, how do we rebuild trust? The Ten Commandments are fabulous at telling us what to do and what not to do. What do we do, though, when we mess up?
This brings us to our text. Commandment number seven is this: thou shall not commit adultery. Nothing tears at the fabric of a community quite like breaking a marriage apart. It’s hard to violate trust in a more core way. That violation has ripple effects, through the circle of friends and through all the other married people—the ones who felt like things are okay but now question everything and the ones who are struggling mightily and know it and now start to ask, “Why bother at all?” Understand here…the commandment doesn’t say, “Don’t get divorced.” That happens. Instead, the message is more along the lines of, “Don’t give into your impulses” or “Don’t use pleasure as a way to manipulate people,” “Don’t defile something that can be such a love part of life and make it such a destructive force.”
At which point, we meet the adulterous woman. Actually, John gives us a context first. Jesus is at the temple and he is surrounded by a swarm of people who are hanging on his every word. Jesus is patiently teaching them. At the same time, he is driving the Pharisees crazy because they covet his followers and the passionate attention they are paying to Jesus (a rules violation of commandment 10—no coveting- if you are keeping score.)
The Pharisees interrupt Jesus’ teaching to set a trap. They drag a woman in front of him. John tells us that she had been “caught in the act of adultery,” that she stood there “in plain sight of everyone,” and that “she had been caught red handed.” A lot of commentators believe that John is signaling us that she might in fact have been so “caught in the act” that she might even be “buck naked.” (If this was true, this would have been a really jarring moment in a culture in which women’s modesty was codified into the law.) The trap is this: according to the law of Moses, this woman is supposed to be stoned to death. However, Jesus is known already as a "forgiveness and compassion,” soft on crime, kind of a guy. “Which will it be, Jesus, are you going to be faithful to the law and prove you’re a hypocrite or are you going to ignore the law altogether?”
Let me ask you a question: what’s missing here? We’ve already acknowledged that one thing that’s missing may be the woman’s clothes. (This is actually more meaningful than you think. We’ll circle back.). What else is missing though? Got it? One of the biggest missing things is…the man who was committing adultery. She was caught in the act. Presumably, so was the man. Where is he? The law—if that’s the most important thing—says that both the man and the woman should be stoned to death. The problem with so many people who want to worship the law is that they don’t want to apply the law equally. Was the man too prominent of a citizen? Was the man a Pharisee? If the law doesn’t apply equally then the law, itself, tears at the fabric of society. It just becomes a tool for keeping powerful people in power.
Second, where is the Pharisee’s compassion? The Pharisees were supposed to be experts on the law but they have apparently forgotten the purpose of the law. The law isn’t being enforced here for the sake of the community. The law is being enforced so that they can trap Jesus. They feel threatened by him. They are jealous of him. They want to get rid of him. Meanwhile, a woman is being shamed and humiliated in front of the masses. When the law is used to make an example of someone what’s usually demonstrated is what it looks like when power is abused. Most frequently, those who are made scapegoats are women or minorities or others who seem dispensable. (Look at Iran and the “morality police.”) Most frequently, the scapegoats, like this woman, don’t even get a trial.
Back to Jesus… The Pharisees look Jesus in the eye and say, “Your call, buddy!” What does Jesus do? In this really fascinating moment, Jesus lowers his eyes to the ground, kneels down and starts writing on the ground. Let’s unpack this for a moment…
Jesus looks down. He has to if he’s going to bend over and write something. However, I think there’s more going on. With the eyes of the crowd and the Pharisees all locked on the woman, Jesus looks away. Is this an act that is meant to preserve some shred of her dignity while she is exposed to everyone? Maybe…sometimes when someone is “exposed” or their flaws are exposed and obvious, we look the other way to preserve their dignity.
I want to push that even a step further, though. What if this woman is, in fact, a new Eve. Eve in the original garden story had been the one who tempted Adam, who, not unlike our adulterous but missing man, was presumably a full participant, himself. Adam and Eve felt shame when they were naked after they had broken the rules. God knows this poor woman was feeling shamed. In the garden, Eve was blamed and the authorities had blamed women ever since, pretty much always leaving the men off the hook. For Jesus, the problem may not be this “temptress” woman or even the original “temptress,” Eve. The problem may be a flaw in us all.
So, he bends over and starts writing in the dirt. What does he write? John doesn’t tell us… which leads to the question, “What, then, does it mean that he is writing on the ground at all?” It means nothing to us until we are reminded of something that our ancestors in faith would have recognized right away. The prophet, Jeremiah, (17:13) wrote that all who forsake God will be put to shame and their names will be written on the ground. Jesus’ actions are invoking the memory of the great prophet. The Pharisees have turned away from God and faith. Jesus is writing it down…
At first, they are so blinded by their own sense of self-righteousness that even though they are religious experts they don’t understand what’s happening. Instead, they keep badgering Jesus: “What are you going to do, Jesus? Tell us! Come on!” Jesus looks up and suggests to them that whoever is without sin should feel free to pick up a rock and go first. Then, he wrote a little more and somehow, they finally noticed what he was writing. There, on the ground, (I believe) were each of their names with just a brief description of their broken ways: “Oh my God…he knows.” They saw it. They got it. One by one, they walked away.
Understand…it’s not that the woman hadn’t done anything wrong. It’s not that adultery was okay, after all. Still, Jesus looks the woman in the eye and asks, “Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?” The woman answers, “No one.” Jesus, replies, “Neither do I. Go your way. From now on, don’t sin.”
The truth is that a person can be dead-to-rights, 100 percent wrong and still, the right thing may not be to condemn them. Why? Because grace matters. Because mercy matters. Because vengeance has never healed anything but every now and then love does. “Go and sin no more” may sound like a tall order. However, when you’ve done the thing you thought you would never do and you’ve been forgiven, when you’ve tasted grace and forgiveness, “I will never do that again” may actually be a possibility. At the least, it might be the thought that leads us into new life.
In my imagination, Jesus turned and left and the woman looked down. What she saw written on the ground was the name of everyone of those Pharisees and the nature of their sins. At the bottom of the list was her own name, as well. Then, she saw the two sentences at the very bottom of the list. The first was this: “You all are forgiven.” The second was even simpler, “I love you, too.” Then, the wind came and it blew the writing away, dust returned to dust. God was no longer keeping score. For the love of God, we might want to stop scorekeeping ourselves.