The Fifth Sunday in Lent

March 25, 2007

The first sermon preached by Deacon Bergman within the context of the Mass

John 8:1-11

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

            Our first impulse when we hear today’s Gospel is to pity the woman who has been brought before Jesus.  We know, for instance, that she has been brought by a group of men, probably against her will, who announce to all within earshot that she has been caught in a compromising position.  We know that the men who have brought her before Jesus are a dastardly lot.  Even as they appear to be enforcing the law, they are using the woman in their plot against Jesus.  That is, they are more interested in trapping Jesus into saying something incriminating than they are in her sin.  The reality that they are not truly interested in enforcing the law in this case is demonstrated by the fact that it takes two to commit her sin, and they present to Jesus only the woman.  And there is, of course, the woman’s sin.  She has committed adultery, and the penalty for such an offense under the Mosaic Law is death.

We pity the woman because of how vulnerable she is.  When we meet her for the first time she is alone, surrounded by men who want to kill Jesus, the same men who would eventually orchestrate Jesus’ execution at the hands of their Roman overlords.  The magnitude of the sin of these men, their sheer despicable character, makes the woman seem like the best of the lot.  When set against the murderous mob the woman appears to us as someone we ought to defend.  We want to rescue her from the grip of the really bad guys.

But the reality is, she’s guilty.  She does not contest what the scribes and Pharisees say about her.  Moreover, Jesus does not correct them.  If the scribes and Pharisees were lying, Jesus would have called them on it, but he does not.  Thus, while this woman is one of the most famous women in the whole New Testament, sentimentality must not permit us to make her into some sort of hero or victim.  Indeed, the scribes and the Pharisees can be blamed for wanting to kill Jesus, but they cannot be blamed for pointing out that this woman has done something gravely wrong.  Though we meet her at the moment of her greatest vulnerability, it is helpful to consider what she was doing just moments before we met her.  She was not being heroic, and if she’s a victim, she’s a victim only of her own sin.  If we had met her for the first time moments earlier we would have seen her not as a victim, but a home-wrecker, and that’s about the most charitable description I can use from the pulpit. 

In other words, in order for us to understand this story we must understand first the woman’s depravity.  She was made in God’s image, but she degraded herself in a way that people don’t describe in polite conversation.  God gave her the gift to bring forth new life, but she neglected her vocation for the sake of pleasure.  God gave the woman neighbors to complement her gifts, but she set herself against them, using at least one man for her own devices.  We must understand that she is not a victim, but the victimizer.  We must understand that she deserved the penalty that God had decreed in the Mosaic Law.  Her sin was so great that she deserved the death penalty. 

After we have cast away our desire to defend her, to rescue her from the hands of those who are so much worse, we can begin to appreciate what Jesus did for her.  He did not merely prevent her from being stoned to death that particular morning.  He gave her the second chance that she needed, lest she experience eternal death. 

And here we might think that Jesus managed this feat with a clever rejoinder to the men who were trying to trap him in his speech.  We remember the words well, because we have heard them misused so often, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).  Jesus was not saying here that she had done nothing wrong.  Jesus was not saying here that she did not deserve the penalty Moses had instructed them to impose.  He was saying simply that the scribes and Pharisees did not have the right to impose the penalty.  Jesus had the right, and it should not go unnoticed that he reserved that right for himself, for, after all, he was the only one present without sin.  And here is the key: Jesus chose not to impose the penalty but to take it upon himself.  She deserved death, and Jesus was killed.  If at the end of today’s Gospel it seems like there have been no consequences suffered for the sin she committed, we have missed Jesus taking her place on the day of her execution. 

Therefore, to minimize the woman’s sin is to minimize the love Jesus has for the woman.  If we explain her sin away, if we take away her culpability in her sin, if we lessen the gravity of her sin by comparing it to the greater wickedness of the scribes and Pharisees, if we say that she did not deserve to die, we must ask, “Why, then, did Jesus die?”  Jesus died so that this woman did not have to.  The sinless one paid the penalty so that the guilty one would not go to hell.  Jesus suffered so that this woman would not suffer forever.

The other reason we don’t want to minimize this woman’s sin is that it may lead us to minimize our own.  We, after all, are supposed to identify with the woman first, before we identify with Jesus.  That is, the woman is anonymous, nameless.  Her name, in case you wondered, is Eric Bergman.  Every one of us must be able to say this about her, that I am the one who sinned, I am the guilty one, I am the one who deserves to die.  Only when we are able to identify with her in this way can be appreciate the mercy bestowed by Jesus upon us.  Though we deserve death, Jesus has taken our place, so we go and sin no more in thanksgiving for so great a gift.

But we must do more than sin no more.  We are also to identify with Jesus.  To be his disciples we must take up our cross and follow him, we must suffer on behalf of those we love.  As we marvel at the mercy Jesus showed this most vile of sinners we must commit ourselves to demonstrating the same mercy to the sinners in our midst.  If we take the good news of this lesson and merely give thanks for Jesus taking our place on the cross, we have only gone half way.  To go all the way we must mount the gibbet of the cross ourselves and offer up our lives in order that yet more adulterers, and murderers, and thieves and every manner of evil men and women will know the generosity of him who died for our salvation.

Are we willing to suffer to benefit those who have sinned?  And how much are we willing to suffer?  Our answer to these questions is the measure of our devotion to following in the footsteps of our Lord.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.