Something made me look at it again this week, and I saw it in an entirely different light.
And it made me stop and think!
Have you noticed how important titles are, be it in books, on TV, or in the theatre?
Have you noticed how often TV series go under the name of the person the show is about.
Poirot – Miss Marple – Morse – Lewis – and now, Wallender.
As soon as you hear the title you know what the programme is about and who is the key person in the story.
It’s no modern thing either!
Think how many of Dickens’ novels and Shakespeare’s plays have a single name in the title! And straightaway you know who the central figure in the play is.
Tom Stoppard had fun part at the expense of Shakespeare when he took one of the greatest of the tragedies, Hamlet and made a thought provoking comedy that looked at the events of that play from quite a different angle. He took two of the bit parts in Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and built up a play around those two characters called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. A bit of a giveaway in the title as to what happens to them … but you can’t have everything!
I remember seeing it in the days of Repertory theatre in Leicester’s
Going to both productions you found yourself reflecting on the same set of events from two quite different points of view.
And that’s what I found myself doing with a well-known Bible story this week.
The story comes in the opening 11 verses of John’s Gospel and it’s not actually in some of the oldest manuscripts of John and so it has square brackets around it in modern translations.
Those modern translations, in their wisdom, have given each Bible story a heading. That’s a great help if you want to find your way around the Bible.
The Good News Bible translation is published by the Bible Society, who also publish one the authoritative Greek Text for use by translators around the world. The Good News Bible uses the headings from that Greek text –and so those headings will be found in different language translations all over the world.
The NIV and the NRSV don’t follow those headings so closely, but often they are much the same, and in this instance virtually identical.
So, turn to John 8 verse 1 and the heading is quite a dramatic one
The Woman Caught in Adultery
Read the heading and we know straight away who the story is about.
John 8:1-11
1 Then everyone went home, but Jesus went to the
6 They said this to trap Jesus, so that they could accuse him. But he bent over and wrote on the ground with his finger.
7 As they stood there asking him questions, he straightened himself up and said to them, “Whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw the first stone at her.” 8 Then he bent over again and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard this, they all left, one by one, the older ones first. Jesus was left alone, with the woman still standing there. 10 He straightened himself up and said to her, “Where are they? Is there no one left to condemn you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she answered.
“Well, then,” Jesus said, “I do not condemn you either. Go, but do not sin again.”
But wait a moment. Chapter divisions were introduced in the 1200’s verses in the 1500’s and headings in this way really only took off in the 1900’s, and these particular headings in the 1960’s.
The original Gospel text simply didn’t have headings at all.
Read the story with that heading in mind and it’s a story about a woman caught in adultery.
And that’s how I have always read it.
I find it one of the most moving of stories.
As all the men tail away, I love the way it says, Jesus is writing in the sand. Then he straightens himself up and said to here, “Where are they? Is there no one left to condemn you?”
I see Jesus doodling in front of him, then he straightens himself up and that means he looks the woman in the eye. And that always strikes me as special.
I imagine from the woman’s point of view what that look would mean. I see it as a look of compassion.
“No one, sir,” she answered.
“Well then,” Jesus said, “ I not condemn you either. God, but do not sin again.”
There is this flouting of the letter of the letter of the law that is quite clear – she shall be stoned to death.
And in place of that letter – Jesus captures the spirit of a God who is Father, whom later John is to define by saying God is love.
And he does not condemn her.
Remember John 3.16 and 17
That, I guess is how I have always read this story. And my reading is shaped firmly by heading given to the passage.
But
Something made me look at it again this week, and I saw it in an entirely different light.
And it made me stop and think!
I don’t think I had seen it that way before.
What if you give the story a different heading.
The men who threw stones
Let’s read the story not with the woman as the central character. Let’s read the story with our eyes on the men.
The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought in a woman who had been caught committing adultery, and they made her stand before them all.
“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. In our Law Moses commanded that such a woman must be stoned to death. Now what do you say?”
John tells us that they said this to trap Jesus, so that they could accuse him.
Let’s pause there.
It is very easy to read the Gospel story as a story of goodies and baddies. And we know that the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law are the baddies. So instantly we distance ourselves from them.
But wait a moment, what if we regard them as upright, God-fearing, people who do seek to keep to the Law, the letter of the Law. It says it in the Bible. That’s what we follow.
Notice that what Jesus does in response is precisely what we find him doing later with the woman.
He bent over and wrote on the ground with his finger.
I love that. Jesus bends over, doodling, as if in thought.
What are they feeling now?
The silence.
What effect does that have on those men.
Put yourself into their skins. Not as if they were baddies. But God-fearing, upright people who take the Bible seriously and what to carry it out to the letter.
Come on, Jesus, what response are you going to make? They want an answer. They begin to feel a little uneasy, perhaps.
As they stood there asking him questions Jesus does exactly as in a moment or two he is going to do with the woman.
He straightened himself up.
That’s the moment he looks at them. I can feel him looking round the circle. I want to avoid his eye. But he looks me in the eye.
What look is it? I have always felt it to have been a stern look.
But what if it is a look of compassion, a look of pity.
And he said to them, “Whicever one of you has committed no sin may throw the first stone at her.”
Then he bent over again, and wrote on the ground.
How are those men feeling by now. What’s going on inside.
They all left, one by one, the older ones first, Jesus was left alone.
I have always felt they left one by one ashamed.
Something prompted me to see this differently.
Maybe something positive is happening here for each one of them individually. Isn’t it interesting the first to see it are the older ones. Maybe it’s their greater life experience. The younger ones are so adamant.
But one by one they see it.
They recognise not one of them is perfect. Not one of them is without sin.
That look Jesus has given them, makes them realise they are each of them human.
And they are set free – had Jesus been one who took the Bible literally, every word, that’s what religion is about. Then they would all have participated in a brutal killing. That was the way.
But Jesus was wiser. So much wiser. He knew that was not the way.
And they saw it too.
Judge not that you be not judged. That was the crux of the matter.
God so loved the world. I did not come to judge the world but to save it, Jesus had said.
God is love.
What made me things differently.
In that thought-provoking book that I thought to reflect on in my preaching off and on at the start of this year, Going to Church – a user’s guide suggests that when it comes to Church and belonging to church there are ten things to go to the stake for.
Like the Bishop of Reading, I take my stand with a church that first of all takes God seriously.
Second, he suggests, what is needed is a church that takes our humanity seriously.
I wonder whether those men were helped to recognise their own frailty, their own weakness, their own sinfulness, their own humanity by Jesus that day.
Jesus takes seriously our humanity. It is not only that woman that Jesus helps as through his compassion he offers her a new start.
He helps those men too.
He helps them, each one, one by one, confront their own righteousness, their own self-righteousness, and he gives them the opportunity for a new start, in a very different kind of faith.
“Human beings are made of dust,” writes John Pritchard, “but we’re ‘dust that dreams’. Add a bit of water to the dust and we become mud, and most of us come to church muddier than we let on.
“A church needs to assure us of the infinite value of those who the psalmist says are made ‘little lower than angels’, while at the same time recognizing the mud and mess that accumulates around our best attempts to live well.
“Such a church is welcoming, expansive, encouraging, and extraordinary in its normality.
“Sunday by Sunday, the walking wounded come in, bearing the scars of the week, and they find there no entry requirements, no exams in righteousness or self-righteousness.
“Instead people grow there.
“They love it.
“It’s home.”
I’ld go to the stake for that kind of church!
The kind of church I’ld go to the stake for is a church that takes God seriously and a church that takes our humanity seriously.
That’s certainly my vision for the church … and I guess it’s why I find myself in this church!
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