Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis October 9, 2005

John 7:53-8:11

“Cracks in the Wall”–A Pharisee Who Threw No Stones

I hated that “prophet” of yours–Jesus! He was undermining everything we Pharisees had worked so hard to build! We were trying to wake people up to the single fact that if you violate God’s laws and commandments, there will be consequences! Didn’t they see the Roman soldiers patrolling our streets? The hammer of God’s righteous wrath was already raised and ready to bring God’s justice down on our heads! The people should have been on their knees begging for mercy, asking God every day, “What can I do to obey you and please you?” Instead, most of them kept on doing what they thought they could get away with. I guess they thought that because they were God’s chosen people, God would just keep forgiving them.

I had started daring to believe that some of the people were finally listening to us and watching our careful example. They were willing to endure some inconvenience to keep the Sabbath and make their sacrifices and wash their hands and utensils the way the Law prescribed. At least they were until this Jesus came along and started getting them all confused. He openly healed people on the Sabbath, and then he told the people he healed to carry their pallet. He kept having dinner with known sinners, and laughed and talked with them like they were his friends. He said that washing and all our dietary laws aren’t so important, because it’s what’s on the inside of a person more than what’s on the outside that defiles them. Alright. I can see his point. Some of God’s commandments seem kind of picky. But either you believe the Law was given to us by God to build a wall of holiness around us that separates us from the heathen nations, or you tear the Law down and live like the heathen and face the consequences with the God who made us and called us His own people. Every time Jesus challenged a law, or put a question about God’s law in people’s mind, he put a crack in that wall. A crack here. A crack there. A crack there. Where would it all end? It would end with the wall in ruins, the people spiritually lost, and God’s wrath kindled against us, that’s where.

Can you see why I was upset with this Jesus? Can you see why my friends and I were looking for a way to discredit him–before God’s patience with His people ran out? It wasn’t so much that we were trying to destroy Jesus. We were trying to save the people. All we had to do was make it obvious to everyone that he was a false prophet. It shouldn’t be too hard to trap him by his own words.

And you know what? The perfect opportunity just presented itself to us! This man named Amos was chasing after Jacob’s wife Miriam. Everyone could see it. One day I heard strange noises coming from Amos’ carpenter shop, and it wasn’t any hammer and saw. I sprang into action and beat a path to Abaz’ door, and I told him to get Simeon and meet me at Amos’ shop–fast. Luckily I got back to the shop in time. The noises were still getting louder. As soon as Abaz and Simeon got there, we just burst right in.

“Amos! Is this the way you treat your neighbor Jacob–taking his wife as though she’s your own? Miriam! You’re a disgrace to your husband and to your people. You’re coming with us!” Miriam’s eyes were wide with terror, like a cornered deer.

“What are you doing? Get out of here, all of you! This is my shop, and what I do here is my business, not yours!”

“That’s the whole problem, don’t you see?” I shot back. “One person flaunts God’s laws, and that’s their business. Another person flaunts another law, and that’s their business. And pretty soon we’re a stinking abomination to the Lord, and God’s punishment comes down on all of us. And that’s our business!”

“Where are you taking her?” he demanded.

“That’s not your business, because she doesn’t belong to you, does she? She has sinned against Jacob and against God, and she’s going to have to answer for it.”

Maybe you wonder why we took her away, and not Amos too. He was the one that was chasing after her, not her after him. Well, with Amos, we would have had a real fight on our hands; but Miriam was used to doing what men told her to do. Anyway, we figured it would have been easier for Jesus to come down hard on Amos. But Miriam? Jesus seemed to respect and care about women like they were equal to men. Jesus would probably want to protect her, especially if he sensed she hadn’t wanted to go along with what Amos was doing to her. He’d probably want to let her off easy, and then we could show everyone that he was actually condoning adultery. That was a lot more serious than carrying your pallet on the Sabbath.

But we knew Jesus was no dummy. Maybe he’d smell the trap and have Miriam take the full consequences of her sin. But then he’d be going against everything he’d been saying about God being a friend to sinners. He’d be seen as a hypocrite. Either way he’d be exposed as being a false prophet, not God’s chosen one.

Well, we shoved Miriam right there in front of Jesus and all the men who had been listening to him in the temple courtyard. Miriam’s hair was all disheveled and her clothes were askew. She buried her face in her hands, as though that could keep us from seeing her.

“Teacher,” I said, “this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. Now what do you say?”

The men who had been listening to Jesus were all looking at Miriam now. Adultery! She had brought disgrace onto her own husband. Instead of having a faithful, obedient wife, he now had a worthless whore. He’d be embarrassed to go out in public. This was every husband’s worst fear.

“Our law does say she should be stoned,” Elias, one of the elders, said. “She doesn’t deserve to live!” someone else said. “She’s made herself a nothing!” “She’s an abomination!” “She should be stoned!” “Stone her!” The men were starting to pick up rocks. By now Miriam was sobbing like there was no tomorrow–and for her it looked like there wasn’t.

But I couldn’t let the crowd just take care of it themselves. Jesus needed to make a decision. “Teacher, what should we do with such a woman?” I demanded. Everyone’s eyes turned on him. But he had stooped down, and he was calmly writing on the ground with his finger! He was acting like he didn’t even hear me! I wanted to pick up a stone and hurl it at him! I motioned to Ahaz. “Yes, what should we do, rabbi?”

Finally Jesus slowly stood up and looked around at us, one by one, eye to eye. “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And then he bent down and began writing on the ground again.

I looked at old Elias. He was frowning. Then he dropped his head. And then he dropped his stone. Everybody was deep in thought. One by one, stones began dropping on the ground. And Jesus was still calmly writing–what? Was he writing down our sins? What if he knew them? Whether or not he knew them, I knew that God knew them.

I began to see pictures of myself in my mind. Like me walking slowly past Nathan and Rebecca’s house at night, gazing in the window, thinking about Rebecca, wishing I could be with her. I never touched her. But there was a commandment against coveting your neighbor’s wife. I saw myself selling my donkey to Ezra for a good price and not telling him the animal had been sick a lot and couldn’t do much. Ezra didn’t actually ask if he was healthy. So he couldn’t say I had lied. But maybe I had cheated him. I thought about how I tithed on what people thought that I made, but I held back from God what I made from taking money to influence people in the Sanhedrin. I thought about the pain in my wife’s eyes when I humiliated her for not doing things the way I thought they should be done, and the fear in my children’s eyes when I got out the rod to discipline them for some infraction or other. And I saw the shame in the eyes of lepers I had shouted “Unclean! Unclean!” So many things I felt ashamed of came into my mind, uninvited. These were the cracks in my wall of holiness that separated me from “them”–sinners, ordinary people who didn’t take God’s commandments as seriously as me. More and more cracks came into my mind.

When I looked up, I realized that all the other men had quietly walked away. What could I do now but leave myself? I went into the shadows and paused. What was Jesus going to do with Miriam? He stood up and started to talk to her–Jesus, talking to a woman alone, right in the temple courtyard! I strained my ears to hear.

“Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir.” She could hardly believe it.

Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Now go your way. And from now on, you don’t have to sin any more.”

Miriam wiped the tears off her cheeks, straightened up her dress, bowed low to the teacher, heaved a sigh, and began walking toward home, as though she were stepping into a new life.

I headed toward home too, thinking about what I had seen. Miriam’s wall of righteousness and self respect had been completely destroyed in front of all of us. Jesus hadn’t excused her for what she had done, but neither had he condemned her for it or threatened any punishment from God. Instead of loathing her, Jesus had shown love to her. He acted like he really believed in her. And she looked like she was really going to try to live a different life.

I thought about my own wall of righteousness that separated me from sinners. And I thought about the cracks in my wall. Was it possible that what was on the other side of that wall wasn’t God’s wrath, but God’s forgiving love, and God believing that I could do better? What if those cracks could let in God’s light?

I stopped right where I was and turned around. I didn’t need to go home just yet. I needed to go back to the temple and have a talk with this God that Miriam had found. As I got close to the temple, I came to a crowd. I might have know it. Jesus was still there teaching.

Jesus spotted me walking past and nodded. He raised his voice and said, “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying like this, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:10-14).

I nodded to Jesus and hurried on toward the temple building itself. It was time to tear down the wall inside me and let the light shine through. As I went, I kept saying over and over to myself, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner. God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”