Steve Lindsley
Selected Verses: John 8: 2-11
I’ve shared before some of the stories in A.J. Jacob’s best-selling book The Year of Living Biblically. You might recall this book recounts A.J.’s year-long journey to follow the Bible as literally as possible – everything from not cutting his hair or shaving, to avoiding certain foods, to the more dangerous business of stoning those who work on the sabbath or engage in adultery. A little-known stipulation among the 613 Hebrew laws that has largely gone unobserved over the years, for obvious reasons – but in his quest, A.J. decides to give it a shot.
Noting that the law does not specify the size of the stone, A.J. collects a handful of small pebbles and heads to Central Park looking for prospective stonees. The first one: a man at a nearby Avis, clearly working on a Saturday, the Jewish sabbath. A.J. casually drops a pebble on the man’s shoe as he walks by, hoping it goes unnoticed. It does not, and so is followed by a clumsy apology and an awkward near-headbutt while bending down to get the pebble. Technically it is a stoning – although arguably the politest stoning in history.
A different scene plays out later in a small Upper West Side Park and a conversation A.J. has with a gruff-looking man who makes fun of his biblical attire. A.J. explains that he is trying to follow the Bible literally and, at this moment, is looking for an adulterer to stone. To which the man proudly declares, “Well, I’m an adulterer. You gonna stone me?”
A.J. replies, “Well, if I could, that’d be great! But just with these small little pebbles, you see.” He opens his palm to reveal them. That’s when the man lunges at A.J., snatching one from his hand and flings it past his face. Stunned, A.J. grabs one of the remaining pebbles and tosses it toward the man’s chest. It bounces off harmlessly. After a brief stare down, the gruff-looking man storms off in a huff.
A.J. would later write: “I think I’m done with this stoning thing. Forget the stonee. It is just as dangerous for the one throwing the rocks.”
It’s a funny little story, but as with much of his book, there’s more going on than just funny stories. On one hand A.J. is trying to live biblically and carry out a notion of justice – consequences for wrong actions. But on the other hand, it takes every bit of willpower he can muster, even when it’s nothing more than “accidentally” dropping a pebble on a shoe. His inclination towards mercy seems to clash with the commandment for justice. And I don’t think it’s just A.J. who experiences this discomfort.
I mean, we all want wrongs made right, we all want the brokenness of the world to be made whole; but do we really understand that it takes both justice and mercy together to make that happen? It is hard for us to wrap our heads around that – perhaps because, at some level, we are painfully aware of our own brokenness, our own need for healing. We struggle to embrace justice and mercy for ourselves – which means we are just as likely to struggle sharing it with others.
And I think that’s kind of what Jesus is trying to get across to those people in our scripture today. These men who bring a woman to Jesus, accusing her of the same brokenness the man in A.J.’s story had openly acknowledged. It’s different here, of course, because she’s a woman, and women had little voice or power in Jesus’ day. She is as vulnerable as vulnerable can get.
The men bring her to Jesus and take great joy in pointing out that the punishment for her behavior, by law, was a good stoning. That’s what the law allows. That’s what she deserves. But there’s more going on here than just a desire to follow the law, don’t you think? A subtext. There’s anger here. There’s fear here. There’s a deep loathing for both the woman and this man from Nazareth, a man who was everything they were not: the embodiment of that intersection of justice and mercy.
These men bring the woman to Jesus. And what does he do? He bends down and starts drawing with his finger in the sand.
Now please tell me, in all the times you’ve heard this story, that at some point you’ve wondered what Jesus was doing. What could’ve possibly been important enough in that moment, with a woman’s life hanging in the balance, that Jesus would bend down and start doodling in the dirt?
Some years ago, I actually crowdsourced Facebook for answers on this. 65 people chimed in. Some guessed that Jesus was writing the names of the people standing there with stones in their hands. Others thought Jesus was just doodling there, perhaps to break the tension or bide some time. Someone surmised that Jesus was removing himself from the circle – literally stooping down – so the accusers had no one to look at but the woman they were accusing.
We have no way, of course, of knowing what Jesus was actually drawing there. All we can do is imagine – which is what the gospel writer seems to want us to do. And so, for me, when I imagine what Jesus was doing here, I find myself wondering this:
I wonder if Jesus was simply running his fingers through the sand, feeling the coarse roughness of those thousands and thousands of tiny grains of matter slipping through his fingers and falling to the ground. Feeling that and thinking to himself that, at some point in the very very distant past, those tiny grains of sand were part of something bigger. Part of a stone. A stone similar to the ones being held by those men; a stone thrown around for millennia before disintegrating into sand; perhaps shattered over accused and broken bodies, victims of a perverted sense of justice far, far removed from any intersection with mercy.
I find myself thinking about Jesus down there, running his fingers through the sand with a single question coursing through his mind: How many more stones? How many more will be shattered into sand? How many more will be cast and used to punish, to condemn, to accuse, to send a heavy-handed message, all for selfish motives and all carried out in the name of God? How many more stones?
And I imagine Jesus answering his own unspoken question as he took one final stroke of his finger in the dirt, and looked at the accusers, and spoke nine words found at the very heart of the intersection of justice and mercy: Let the one without sin cast the first stone.
Beloved, Jesus revealed to those men their own brokenness. But even more than that, Jesus showed them that the real target of the stones they were clutching was not the woman at their feet. It was themselves. He helped them see – painfully and beautifully so – that God’s grace and love is greater than judgment and condemnation. Always. He made it clear that, in the body of Christ, there is no room for any action that fails to reflect the love of Jesus, especially when it comes to how we treat one another; no room for power plays, no room for demanding or bullying behavior. None at all. Because God’s grace and love is always greater than judgment and condemnation.
I wonder, friends, if you’re aware that that grace has a sound – did you know this? It’s a lovely sound! Grace is the sound of bony fingers popping as they release their vice-like grip on the stones they’d been holding onto for far too long. Grace is the sound those stones make as, one by one, they hit the ground; a soft thud; never to become sand, at least not this day. And grace is the sound of Jesus’ voice telling the woman that her accusers had left because they finally understood the truth of it all – that peddling in the stone-throwing business is just as harmful, if not more so, for the one doing the throwing.
Siblings, we stand at the intersection of justice and mercy. That is who we are as a community of faith. And there is no room in this community for stone-throwing. Which is why Jesus calls us to let go of our stones and grab hold of grace. So, when he says, “Go and sin no more,” it’s not a directive – it’s an invitation. Inviting us into a world where God’s grace and love is always greater than judgment and condemnation. And you can bet all the sand in the world on that.
In the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, thanks be to God – and may all of God’s people say, AMEN!
* Because sermons are meant to be preached and are therefore prepared with the emphasis on verbal presentation, the written accounts occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.