a very short sermon(I wanna get 'ome for me dinner)for ash wednesday

Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.

When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

(John 8: 1 - 11)

There is something interesting about our Gospel reading, tonight, that many of you may not know. It is a 100% guaranteed fact that the person who wrote John’s Gospel did not write this bit of it. We know this because the story does not appear in any early copies of John’s Gospel. It wasn’t included in the Western Bible until Jerome put it in. It wasn’t read in Church until the 5th. Century. It wasn’t included in Eastern Bibles until even later than that and the Church even took its time deciding which gospel to put it in. For a while it was a part of Luke’s Gospel. However, the story itself was part of the Christian tradition very early on. We have references to it dating back to the Second Century A.D. So, it is just as likely that this story is as true as any story that was in Scripture from the very beginning. What is important is the reason why it was not in the original Gospels and the answer to that is, most probably, that it did not fit in with the strict view of sin, punishment and repentance that was adhered to in the early Church. Basically, they thought that Jesus was letting the woman off far too lightly.

But they had got it all wrong. They were mistaken in their own view of God - that he was a judgmental, legalistic, punishing God. They were mistaken in their view of humankind - that it was a completely degenerate race who were only capable of sinful acts. And they were mistaken in their view of Jesus as portrayed in this story - that he was not interested in the woman’s misbehavior.

Like The Father, Jesus despised sinful acts. But this was because he despised the hurt that sin caused to the children of God, not because he was a legalist who believed something was a sin just because it was written down in Scripture somewhere. Because he had this attitude he was free to forgive and he had no need to go on and on about a person’s past actions because they were already done and nobody, not even Jesus, could change that. What Jesus was interested in was stopping all the hurt that could happen in the future. So, in our story Jesus stops a completely useless, punishment (the death penalty is always a useless punishment because if a criminal is dead he can’t be punished, and if a criminal is dead there is no chance of redemption or restitution and punishment for any other reason is not Godly and is, therefore, evil), and Jesus then tells the woman to go and sin no more. Notice, how Jesus doesn’t say, “go and commit adultery, no more.” I think that’s because Jesus doesn’t look at sin as a load of different crimes but as the one crime of hurting other people. Or to put in Christ’s words, sin is not loving God and not loving your neighbour as yourself.

So, we must ask, what is the importance of this story for ourselves?

Jesus tells us that when we look on him we look on God the Father. Therefore, Christ’s attitude to sin is the same as that of the Father. In other words, God is concerned when we sin individually or collectively. He hates it because when we sin we are causing hurt to the people whom he loves. How would you feel if someone came up and hurt someone you loved. God is very human you know - we are made in his image. His ways are not mysterious, such talk is bunkum. God loves for the same reason you love. He just does love on a Godly scale and he’s better at it than we are.

Furthermore, we see through Jesus that God is concerned for the future and that when the past is over and done with it is gone. The Father is the God of infinite new beginnings. In a way he’s like a scratched record playing over and over again, “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.”

Of course, we know this. But the problem is we don’t really believe it. We can’t believe that we could be so lucky. So every Sunday we come into church and we kneel down (or we should do) and we apologise to God, we confess our sins, so that we can then enjoy the love of God throughout the rest of the service.

Do you think God needs our apologies? Of course, he doesn’t. Like everything else in our liturgy it is there solely for our benefit. Like Jesus, God is no longer interested in our past, he is interested in what we are going to do with our future. And that is what tonight’s service is about. It is not about dwelling on the past, about getting down on our knees in sorrow for past mistakes - that’s just there as psychological tool to help us get over it, whatever IT was. No, tonight’s service is about looking forward, as every single service in the Christian liturgy is. Looking forward. Looking forward to new life. Looking forward to new opportunities, new friendships, new chances for doing good and making people happy. New chances for love.

“Neither do I condemn you,” says God. “Now get out there and help me bring about my kingdom.