Laying Down Stones Series
Part 1 -- Throwing Stones
John 8:1-11
It was a common scene in their day, a mob of religious people pummeling some hapless “sinner” with rocks. How does one actually pick up a rock with the intent to cause someone’s agonizing death? All of us have probably thrown a rock in anger, but in murder? When I was a kid I once hurled a stone at my sister in anger. The rock missed her but shattered the back window of our family car. I was so distraught at the destruction I caused that my parent’s didn’t even have to punish me for the mess. Somehow they sensed that it was one of those childish impulses that would never be repeated. When you see the destruction such a little weapon can create, it changes you.
How does one kill with a rock? It has to be justified somehow in the mind. There has to be some switch that turns off so that the muscles and aim and velocity all reach a point of deadly accuracy. There’s the mob mentality, no doubt. It’s easier to hurtle stones when everyone else is doing it. There also had to be some sense of spiritual superiority. This person’s “sin” caused them to “deserve” this execution.
The angry mob that brought the woman to Jesus that day was, no doubt, indignant in their righteous anger. They looked at her and only saw her sin. They knew that she had done wrong. They looked at her through the lens of her failure. That failure was now the lens that would filter everything about her and so she was no longer a woman who belonged to a family or who enjoyed singing or who was excellent in math or who cared for her aging grandmother or who helped her younger siblings with their chores. No, she was an adulterer. That’s all. Her “sin” – her brokenness – was all they could see when they looked at her.
“How should we punish her?” was the question on everyone’s mind. They already knew the answer. They just needed someone in charge – someone holy – to agree with them and put the equivalent of the church’s stamp of approval on it to make it OK to justify the means and the end.
Jesus didn’t respond to the question, even the bait of using Moses as justification for capital punishment. He simply stooped down and doodled in the dirt for a while.
“Didn’t you hear us? We’re talking to you. You’re the one with the answers, Jesus. Tell us how to make these sinners pay for their crimes.” After all, that is the business of religion, isn’t it – to be the moral judge, jury, and executioner of the sinful?
Jesus stands up, “OK, the one of you who has never made a mistake, never failed, never sinned, throw the first stone.” Then he went back to his dirt doodles.
Jesus gave them a way out. He didn’t use the same lens on them that they were using with the woman. He refused to see them through the lens of their brokenness – their violence in the name of God. He offered them an escape through grace. Miraculously, they took it.
Soon he looked up to discover he and the woman were the only ones there. Where are the stone-throwers? Where are the condemners? Is no one here to sentence you? No one, sir. Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from this point on, don’t allow your brokenness to guide you.
Later in John’s gospel the disciples would be reminded of this story when Jesus gives them the gift of Holy Spirit. John tells us that Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive Holy Spirit. If you hold people’s sins, then they are held. If you let them go, then they are released.” (John 20.23)
Think about that for a second. If you hold another’s sin, it is held. If you let it go, then they are released. Was the gift of Holy Spirit given to make us aware of how what we hold onto can be as dangerous for us as others? Was Holy Spirit given so that we could finally grasp that we have the power to lay down our stones?
Forgiveness is usually thought about in terms of what we do for someone else who has wronged us. But here we clearly see that forgiveness is just as much about setting ourselves free from the things we hold.
Look at the stone in your hand. Feel the hardness of its surface – the cool solid mass of its weight. It can be a weapon or it can be a means of grace.
Sources:
http://www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/b-or15-keeping.php Robinson, Barry J. “The Man Who Wrote Twice”