Fifth Sunday of Lent, April 3, 2022 – Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11

Many contemporary scripture scholars refer to this story as ‘a gospel without a home,’ an orphan story, because they’re almost certain that it didn’t begin where we now find it in the bible, in the beginning of chapter 8 of John’s gospel. And they think that the story was in written form by the mid-80s, but finally it found a home when John composed his gospel. Because it’s a very gentle beginning to an ongoing controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees and doctors of the law. This chapter ends, after several more bitter disputes, with Jesus finally saying something and the scribes and Pharisees picking up stones to throw at Him. And it says He simply disappeared from their sight and slipped away.

I was going to put a stone on each of your chairs, but it really was too hard to do, so I just brought three of them in from outside. Stoning is a terrible form of execution which we still see today in some places in the Mideast. It begins with little tiny stones like this. If I hit you with this, unless I hit you right between the eyes, it wouldn’t even hurt much. Then the executioners slowly graduate to larger stones. If I hit you with this one, it would hurt. But it would go away.

This is half of a bigger stone. I broke it to bring inside because picking up the whole one was too much for me. The person who was being executed would know from the very beginning that the stones would get larger and larger. That person could not escape and just had to wait, being injured more and more severely, until finally, a large stone crushed their skull. Depending on the accuracy of the aim of the executioners, that torture could go on for hours and hours. And that’s what they were going to do to this woman. That’s what they sometimes still do to people today.

I said at the beginning of Lent that I wanted us to walk with Jesus through these various stories during Lent. So let’s walk with Jesus in this story. Where are we going? You and me and He are walking to the visitor’s court of the temple, where people can gather and chat. He’s going to sit down in a corner with us and begin to talk about relevant things. And, as He does, the crowd gets larger. And suddenly we’re aware of this commotion and the accusation that’s just been made. An accusation that requires capital punishment, which is not allowed to Jewish people. Only the Roman governor can do that. So this would be an illegal act, but it’s done secretly very often, in the back alleys.

And so, we get excited, don’t we? Because we are righteous Jews, and we want to see evil punished. And we pick up our own stone. And then we notice that the Master hasn’t picked up a stone. He’s bent down. He’s writing on the ground. What is he doing?

The very first movie version of King of Kings was a silent movie, and the director did something brilliant when he came to this scene. As Jesus is writing on the ground, the camera is looking over Jesus’ shoulder, like you and I would be. And Jesus writes a Jewish character into the sand. And then the camera changes that into an English word. And it says, “Murderer.” “Liar.” “Adulterer.” “Thief.” And each time the camera reads and English word, the camera pans back up like this into the crowd, and one person backs away in shame and drops the stone, until finally no one is left in the crowd.

Jesus does not excuse the woman. He says, “Neither do I condemn you.” And so, you and I reluctantly drop our stones. Because, in that event, the first thing that happens is you want to see justice done. The second thing that happens is that some ugly thing inside of us thinks it will enjoy this humiliation and destruction of another person.

For at least the last fifteen years, we have all had stones in our hands. And we all have somebody we’ve picked out to hurl that stone at, haven’t we? And we all know that there are people out there want to hurl one of those stones at us.

“Neither do I condemn you.” Why don’t we all just drop our stones?