Casting Stones
John 8:1-11
While Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
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.’
Part of the first-year seminarian’s coursework is an introduction to preaching class. A gift of one of my professors, Dr. Anna Carter Florence, is to make scripture come alive in profound ways. Her sermons reach listeners on a visceral level, which means they dwell within the body long after the words have faded.
One spring morning, about two thirds of the way through the semester, the day’s lesson was on embodying the scripture, and our passage was today’s gospel. The scripture was familiar to all of us, and we’d all heard enough sermons on it to make us roll our eyes—as only first-year seminarians can do.
That morning, Anna asked someone to read the scripture for the class and asked a few folks to join her up front in enacting it. She played the role of Jesus, while my classmates were the scribes, Pharisees, and adulterous woman from the passage. As my classmates stood in a circle around the woman, Anna knelt and began moving her arm as if writing on the ground. She recited Jesus’s lines from that crouched position, seemingly unconcerned about the drama the scribes and Pharisees brought. Thus, it was all the more dramatic when she stood up and said, “Let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone” and knelt once again.
In that moment, the eyes of the scribes and Pharisees were not on Jesus, not on the woman, but on each other. This angry crowd, ready to hurl stones or at least trap Jesus, suddenly lost its group mentality. They reverted to individuals—vulnerable and imperfect—who all had something to lose.
What would have happened if someone had been brash enough to throw a stone? Perhaps the others would have sneered at them, knowing none of them were without sin. Or perhaps the group mentality would have overcome their individuality once again, and rocks would hit their target.
These days, it is all too easy to throw rocks of judgment without considering our own sinfulness. That’s not to say that bad behavior is okay, but it’s easy to let a group whip up our emotions, easy to bend down and pick up a rock, easy to hurl it without considering the bruises and breaks it will cause.
Jesus doesn’t give the scribes and Pharisees the reactions they want. As I noted in my sermon on the first Sunday of Lent, Jesus chooses the Way of Wisdom. The Way that allows God to be at work in and among all who are present in the moment, as well as those of us who are present to the text millennia later.
None of us are immune to the desire to pick up a rock of judgment, or even the action of picking up the rock. But just because we have a rock clenched tightly in a fist, doesn’t mean we have to throw it.
The next time you find yourself with a rock in hand, ready to throw it at the nearest target, pause and look around the circle at who else is standing with you. Are you without sin to throw the rock, or could one be thrown at you just as easily? How might you instead walk Jesus’s Way of Wisdom, opening possibilities of healing and reconciliation instead of breaking others down? What needs healing and reconciliation in your life, so that you may bring it to the world?
May we all put down our rocks.
Amen.
prayer
Loving and merciful God, you are ever more ready to show mercy than we are to receive it or show it to others. Give us your mercy as we consider the rock in our hands:
feeling the weight, understanding the impact, knowing we too are not without sin. Show us a new path forward a path of healing and reconciliation that we may be co-creators with you of a more just and peaceful world. Amen.
Daily Lenten meditations each have a companion morning prayer video offered by the same clergy. View the YouTube playlist to find this meditation’s companion video, or to watch others.