An often told story in the Bible is of a provocative encounter between Jesus, the religious teachers of the day, and a woman who has been caught in the act of adultery. There are a lot of layers to this staged event, and it has very little to do with  a sexual offense. The orthodox leaders are on a mission to trick Jesus into saying something that they can use against him. The woman is merely a convenient pawn in this power play. The loaded question presented is: This woman has been caught in the act of adultery, the law says to stone her, what do you say? You already know how the story ends… Jesus doesn’t play their silly game, but rather starts drawing in the ground and then challenges the one who is without sin to cast the first stone. Foiled again, the teachers drop their stones and sulk off. Jesus then looks at this woman, says that he does not condemn her, and tells her to go and sin no more…

This story has come back to me again and again over recent days. The painful truth that I’ve come to recognize is that we all play the role of the accusers and the accused. There are issues that I feel strongly about and I hear things that stir my sensibilities and I reach for the stones with clenched fists because I’m right and God is on my side – I am the accuser.  There are things in my life that I’m not proud of, willful decisions that I have made that have hurt people, at times acting with uncaring insensitivity to those in need around me. My conscience drags me into the street, strips me of dignity and pride, and exposes me for the world to see – I am the accused.

The power in this story and the reason that it resonates is because the accusers are convicted and the accused is released. This is a profound life lesson about motive, and self examination, forgiveness and reconciliation. In times like this when I recognize that I can no longer stand up to the scrutiny of being the accuser, I’m tempted to offer a parting shot to the accused to “sin no more”, as if I must get in the last word on the moral high-ground. God has never looked at sin as a behavior issue, it’s always a heart issue, and a casual reading of the Sermon on the Mount is a humbling reminder to me that God is not impressed with the physical constraints I offer up to humanity as a sign of my goodness.  I do believe that when Jesus looked into the eyes of this humiliated woman he saw into her very soul – and when he said, go and sin no more, it had nothing to do with the act of adultery. What he wanted to convey to her, and to me, is that the sin is not in the action but in the heart condition that  creates the outward manifestation. This woman lived in a culture that relegated females to second class status, to be seen and not heard, be enjoyed and then cast aside. She no doubt learned to believe that she could make a man treat her differently, make a man love her, cherish her, see something special about her, if only she gave herself completely over to him. Jesus knew the culture, had personally bucked the system by making the female outcasts part of his inner circle, and now his plea is for this woman, in this moment, to grasp her worth not on the basis of what her neighbors think of her, but what her Creator thinks of her. She was created by God to live a life of fulfillment and purpose and meaning, and she had allowed the world to blind her to those divine attributes in exchange for shame, guilt, and self loathing. Her sin and mine, is to miss our true identity – to live a life dictated by cultural expectations, locked in a spiral of regret and remorse. The command is not to ‘stop doing’ but to ‘start believing’.

I stand before you today as the accuser and the accused, and both break my heart. I desperately want to drop the stones and unclench my fists – I cling to the truth that God created me in his image, to be special, to matter, to love, and to be loved.