Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis August 27, 2006

John 8:2-11

“Charity Begins at Home”

This has always been one of my favorite Bible stories. The self-appointed righteousness police rush up to Jesus dragging a half clad woman who they have caught in the act of adultery. You can just hear them shouting, “This is what’s wrong with society today! People like this are corrupting our community’s morals! They’re undermining our family values! They’re a horrible example to our youth! The law says people like this should be stoned. So what do you say, teacher? Can we stone her now?”

We may have some sympathy for their cause. But they’re not really out to get this woman; who they really want to get is Jesus. And they think they’ve found the perfect trap. If he says that they can stone her to uphold the law and create an example, then they can ignore all his mealymouthed talk about loving your enemies and forgiving people who wrong you, and about God’s kingdom being open to the sinners and the tax collectors. He would have discredited his own message.

But if he says she should be forgiven and set free, then maybe they finally can convince people that he’s a dangerous, godless impostor who is undermining the very foundations of a moral society. They are clamoring for an answer, while the hapless woman’s sin and shame are exposed to everyone, and her devastated life hangs in the balance–while the man who got her into this is nowhere in sight.

While they are clamoring for an answer, Jesus bends down and calmly begins writing with his finger in the sand. He’s not springing their trap! The air is about to explode with tension. They keep pressing for an answer. Jesus calmly stands up, looks around at them, and says, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And he bends down and calmly writes on the ground again.

One by one the stones drop, and they walk away, beginning with the elders.

This is what I’ve always loved about this story. With that one little sentence, Jesus totally disarms them against the woman and against himself. And he gets them to take responsibility for their own sin instead of projecting it onto this woman. That’s the only way that they can grow in their own spiritual life.

But let’s keep going. The story isn’t over. Jesus is standing there now, alone with the woman. She’s clutching around her whatever piece of clothing she could grab. Her cheeks are stained with tears, and her eyes don’t dare look up at this holy man of God.

She’s startled to hear the holy man gently talking to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” He has transferred her focus from the turmoil inside her to the amazing sight of an empty courtyard, with no one pure enough themselves to pass judgment on her.

And she answers him, “No one, sir.”

“Neither do I condemn you,” he gently says to her.

What is behind those words? I see a heart that is devoid of judgment, blame and condemnation, in spite of her obvious guilt. Jesus is looking beneath her appearance and looking beneath the choices she has made and into her heart and soul. I imagine that he sees her the way a gardener would see a scraggly rosebush--with buds that are small and timid and leaves that are battered down. The withered bush has suffered from neglect and abuse. But Jesus can imagine her in full bloom, free from her fears and self doubts; able to receive life’s gifts fully and give her gifts freely; fully in touch with God’s eternal love for her; and giving from this reservoir of love without having to give herself away.

Would shaming her, scolding her or condemning her help her find this hidden beauty that Jesus sees? Of course not. “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” This is an invitation to her to live from the deepest, truest part of herself. One pastor said that Jesus gave her a crown that day, and she spent the rest of her life trying to grow tall enough to fit it.

This is the influence that the energy of love has. It cannot condemn what it embraces. It lifts, supports growth, empowers, and encourages the blossoming of souls, like the energy of the sun calls forth the beauty of the rose. This is the power Jesus applied to Zacchaeus, the man that everyone looked down on because of his short stature and because he did Rome’s dirty work of extracting tax money from his fellow Jews. When he was touched with the power of this love, he promised to return double the amount that he had extorted to those he had wronged. And this is the power that Jesus applied to the very men who crucified him: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” Jesus saw through their horrible actions to the truth of who they really were–even as they were brutally executing him.

Jesus embodied the very essence and nature of God. He made the powerful love of God visible in the very real world around him. It didn’t go away when he left the world in the flesh. He lived and died and rose to show us that it has no limits, no conditions, no boundaries.

I would guess that all of us want more love in our lives. We want to feel the love that embraces us unconditionally, and we want to give that quality of love to others. We may have times when we feel especially close to people, and this love flows freely. But those times came and they go, leaving us hungry again. This story can open up the door for us to a love that is boundless, limitless, and that flows through us all the time. I can’t take you into the experience of that love just by describing it. But I can invite you to open the door inside you to receive it.

If you would like to experience that boundless love more fully, imagine that you are standing with Jesus as that woman did, or as Zacchaeus did when Jesus told him he wanted to have supper with him. The most important thing for Jesus right now is to just be with you as you stand in his presence. You are aware that it isn’t just a physical presence that you feel, but a spiritual presence – a warmth and energy that stirs you and fills you and awakens you from the inside out. As Jesus’ divine love energy fills you, you become aware of how unworthy you feel. You are nothing special. You don’t feel good enough, smart enough faithful enough, attractive enough, or innocent enough. But Jesus doesn’t condemn you. He sees through all of that, to the wounds you’ve endured. He sees the ways you’ve been beaten down and made to feel ashamed. He sees the fear of rejection and abandonment that you carry inside. He sees the ways you’ve hidden behind your masks. He sees the mistakes that you’ve made out of ignorance, blindness, fear, and immaturity. But he also sees in you the potential to grow an inner beauty, strength, and freedom from your fears and self doubts. He sees you as able to step forward in your life and receive all of God’s gifts fully, and to offer your gifts freely. To do this, you just have to open the door fully to receive this total love. You have to give up the idea that you are not worthy. And you have to give up the idea that you have to earn this love by trying hard enough, being good enough, or being anything different than you already are. And you have to give up the pride in being better or more deserving than some people. And you have to give up the false humility of hiding your gifts and not developing your potential, because you are less gifted than other people. In fact, to open the door to this energy of divine love, you have to give up the whole act of judging yourself and other people as good or bad, deserving or undeserving. It’s that way of thinking that keeps you playing God, and keeps God from really being God to you.

To fully open the door to this love, you might pray a prayer like this, “God, I offer you all of myself – all my parts that feel unworthy, and all the parts that try so hard to be worthy. With gratitude and humility, I accept your unconditional love of me down to my core, and I invite this love to be at the center of my life. Through this love, God, be in me, and let me be in you.”

This is the only way I know of to have an unending supply of love flowing into your life. And it’s the only way to be a channel of truly life-giving, blossom-opening love yourself. Charity begins at home. It starts by our receiving it without conditions or limits or judgments about our deserving it or not deserving it. And it flows through us by our giving it without conditions or limits or judgments about other people’s deserving it or not deserving it.

Paul Ferrini wrote a book called Reflections of the Christ Mind (Doubleday, 2000). In it he shares the thoughts that he says he experienced Christ putting into his mind. Of all the things I have read, the messages in this book most capture what I would imagine Jesus saying to us today. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Whenever you take another person into your heart, you open the door to me as well. There is no person who is not dear to me. For I see into the soul of both the criminal and the victim. I see both calling for love and acceptance, and I will not refuse them. Do not be shocked that I ask the same of you, who are my hands, my feet and my voice in the world.... Even those who oppose you deserve your love and your blessings. They are your absolute equals to. You cannot love me and take them. If you hate them, then you offer me the same hatred.

Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourself. We cannot fully love another until we have allowed ourselves to be filled with God’s love and learn to love ourselves without condemnation. Charity begins at home. But if we deny that same charity to others – any others – we put our own limits, conditions, and judgments on this divine love, and we block its flow.

It’s ironic. Our egos want to play God by being the ones to measure and judge who is deserving and worthy of love. Thank God that God does not play God that way! God plays God by loving us all more deeply than we can deserve, by recognizing in us the soul of infinite worth that he created, and offering it the affirmation, forgiveness, acceptance, and compassion it needs to fully blossom and grow. And then God invites us all to play God like that – to offer the power of that love to each other.

When we do that, we find ourselves in the midst of the stream of boundless love that has no end.