We live in a world full of hurt, anger, vengeance, loss, and retribution. One doesn't have to look far to see the results of our pride: parents, reeling from the pain of divorce, who refuse to behave civilly for the sake of their children; harsh remarks uttered just so we can feel justified for wrongs we believe we've suffered, unaware of how deeply our words cut; a waitress humiliated in front of customers because the soup wasn't hot enough; refusing to offer assistance to someone against whom we hold a grudge; business partners who split then attempt to ruin the other financially because of a misunderstanding. Very rarely does the news air stories of grace. When was the last time we witnessed someone turning the other cheek? We even look down our noses at the destitute and think, "Well, if you hadn't made this or that choice, you wouldn't be in this predicament." We stand before someone whose reeling from an error in judgment and hold it over his head and remark, our words seething with vitriol, "You brought this on yourself." In our self-righteousness, we hold his transgression over him as a reminder anytime he wrongs us again, bringing up the same hurt anytime an argument arises. We need others to know they've hurt us and then somehow cause them to suffer for the pain they caused. I know because I've participated in relishing when others receive their "just desserts." I've stood in self-righteous judgment of others while entangled in the trap of my own sin.
Enter Jesus. Jesus who shocked the world by coming as a humble babe in a manger, born to a poor unknown; Jesus who takes the expected rules of behavior and turns them on their head. Jesus who challenges us to live a different way, who encourages us to forget self to alter radically our reactions to the ones who've wronged us. And it's uncomfortable, much like the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. We want to say, "But Lord, she deserves this." As I've pored over this passage, I've seen a woman, clearly caught in sin, a sin that could easily tear apart two families, a sin that is just as hideous now as it was then. I see a crowd eager to see her justly condemned for her decision. Notice her partner in crime is absent. Here she stands, like Hester Prynne, alone before the judgmental eyes of those who eagerly wish to watch her die. They bring her before the son of God and ask what must be done, hoping to trap him and destroy two lives in one moment. Jesus looks at the crowd and says simply, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Stunning. With one sentence he forces everyone in the crowd into a moment of self-examination, and each discovers that he is just as ugly and worthy of condemnation as the woman before him. We hold sin over the sinner, wielding it as a weapon then fail to see the sinfulness in our own hearts. "'The one without sin among you should be the first to throw a stone at her.' When they heard this, they left one by one."
What this story doesn't say speaks to me as loudly as what it does say. We don't know anything about this woman other than she was an adulterer. We don't know if she was forced into the relationship or if she complied willingly. We don't know if she was an upstanding citizen or the kind of woman that when people heard about her transgression, no one was surprised. What we do know is that she was caught in the act, dragged into the temple complex, and humiliated before the entire town. I wonder how each of her accusers would have fared if his sins had been forced into the bright sunlight of day. Each of her prosecutors leaves without so much as a pebble kicked up from the dust of their retreat tumbling her way. The woman now stands alone before Jesus, where he begins to lecture her.....no.....where he tells her what a worthless piece of trash she is...no......where he accusingly wags a finger in her direction......no....where He simply asks, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" To which she responds, "No one, Lord." Then in a moment of radical grace, Jesus offers this woman, dejected, humiliated, despised, possibly deserving of chastisement, punishment, and judgment, and undeserving of grace, he offers her these sweet words. "Neither do I condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin." He doesn't say leave your life of sin then I'll not condemn you (Tchividjian), he says, neither do I condemn you. For someone who messes up about fifty times a day, then beats herself up for being so foolish, for a girl who often imagines her heavenly Father looking down with condemnation in his eyes, admonishing her folly, this is a sweet, soothing salve.
This encounter between Jesus and the woman bothers some of us because she didn't get what was coming to her, but I see it differently. Jesus doesn't excuse her sin. In fact, he tells her to leave her life of sin. He doesn't then shield her from the further repercussions of her behavior. When she left Jesus, she still had to contend possibly, with an angry husband, an angrier, jilted other woman, children who were left reeling in the aftermath of requited passion. We don't know, but we can imagine the sort of consequences that ensue such an act. We already see the devastation of being a woman in her position. Her lover wasn't dragged into the marketplace to be publicly stoned. Jesus doesn't remove the earthly consequence, but he does offer her forgiveness and grace and saves her life in more ways than one. In his book One Way Love, Tullian Tchividjian defines grace as "unconditional acceptance given to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver." He further explains that "grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable. Grace is love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. Grace doesn't make demands. It just gives....and from our vantage point, it always gives to the wrong person." I believe that because of the grace offered by her Savior the woman left that place a new woman, a woman who still had to face the reality of her sin and the pain it caused others but a woman, now sustained by the grace of Jesus who suddenly had the strength to face her transgression and to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.
If Jesus had lectured her and pointed out how worthless she was, she would have left dejected with no hope of reform, but because He showed her mercy and grace, she left transformed, much more than if she had been berated. Yes, she still faced the consequences of her behavior, but now she faced it with the knowledge that the son of God loves her, and little did she know, shortly after that encounter, that He would take on her sin and your sin, and my sin and die for it. He would pay in full the penalty for her adultery and for any transgression big or small that we commit. She had encountered the Savior of the world, and I believe she left motivated to turn her life around, knowing that she was beloved because how can we glimpse His radical grace and love and not be transformed?
The story of the woman caught in adultery reminds me that I am a sinner who deserves the full penalty for my sin, yet Jesus steps in and cancels the debt. I don't deserve it; I don't earn it. It's a gift, a radical, life-altering gift. And it's this knowledge that should encourage me to offer grace to others.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't face earthly consequences for poor choices, that justice shouldn't be sought for victims of crime, but when faced with the choice to swallow our pride and forego an injury to our ego or even an injury that sometimes cuts us to our core, I believe we are called to show grace. Jesus tells us to be reconciled to our brother, he tells us to turn the other cheek, that if someone wants to sue for our shirt to give him our coat, to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, to forgive people for their wrongdoing, to consider others more important than ourselves, to look not only to our own interests but to the interests of others, to make our attitude that of Christ Jesus, who emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, who humbled himself to the point of death on a cross. We are told to clothe ourselves in humility, compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience, accepting one another and forgiving one another, and above all, to put on love. I've never seen the fine print nor read any exceptions. Jesus calls us to live radically different from what our flesh feels we deserve. And just like the earlier definition of grace says, we don't control the response of the one to whom we extend grace, nor are we necessarily called to be best friends, but we are called to forgive and to love. We aren't responsible for the behavior or reaction of the recipient, but just as Jesus's grace has changed the lives of so many, what if our grace did the same? In this season of love and of giving and of celebration of Christ's birth, may we challenge ourselves to extend grace to those around us, especially to those, who like us (mind you), don't deserve it. That's what Jesus in his birth, life, death, and resurrection continues to do for us.
Enter Jesus. Jesus who shocked the world by coming as a humble babe in a manger, born to a poor unknown; Jesus who takes the expected rules of behavior and turns them on their head. Jesus who challenges us to live a different way, who encourages us to forget self to alter radically our reactions to the ones who've wronged us. And it's uncomfortable, much like the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. We want to say, "But Lord, she deserves this." As I've pored over this passage, I've seen a woman, clearly caught in sin, a sin that could easily tear apart two families, a sin that is just as hideous now as it was then. I see a crowd eager to see her justly condemned for her decision. Notice her partner in crime is absent. Here she stands, like Hester Prynne, alone before the judgmental eyes of those who eagerly wish to watch her die. They bring her before the son of God and ask what must be done, hoping to trap him and destroy two lives in one moment. Jesus looks at the crowd and says simply, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Stunning. With one sentence he forces everyone in the crowd into a moment of self-examination, and each discovers that he is just as ugly and worthy of condemnation as the woman before him. We hold sin over the sinner, wielding it as a weapon then fail to see the sinfulness in our own hearts. "'The one without sin among you should be the first to throw a stone at her.' When they heard this, they left one by one."
What this story doesn't say speaks to me as loudly as what it does say. We don't know anything about this woman other than she was an adulterer. We don't know if she was forced into the relationship or if she complied willingly. We don't know if she was an upstanding citizen or the kind of woman that when people heard about her transgression, no one was surprised. What we do know is that she was caught in the act, dragged into the temple complex, and humiliated before the entire town. I wonder how each of her accusers would have fared if his sins had been forced into the bright sunlight of day. Each of her prosecutors leaves without so much as a pebble kicked up from the dust of their retreat tumbling her way. The woman now stands alone before Jesus, where he begins to lecture her.....no.....where he tells her what a worthless piece of trash she is...no......where he accusingly wags a finger in her direction......no....where He simply asks, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" To which she responds, "No one, Lord." Then in a moment of radical grace, Jesus offers this woman, dejected, humiliated, despised, possibly deserving of chastisement, punishment, and judgment, and undeserving of grace, he offers her these sweet words. "Neither do I condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin." He doesn't say leave your life of sin then I'll not condemn you (Tchividjian), he says, neither do I condemn you. For someone who messes up about fifty times a day, then beats herself up for being so foolish, for a girl who often imagines her heavenly Father looking down with condemnation in his eyes, admonishing her folly, this is a sweet, soothing salve.
This encounter between Jesus and the woman bothers some of us because she didn't get what was coming to her, but I see it differently. Jesus doesn't excuse her sin. In fact, he tells her to leave her life of sin. He doesn't then shield her from the further repercussions of her behavior. When she left Jesus, she still had to contend possibly, with an angry husband, an angrier, jilted other woman, children who were left reeling in the aftermath of requited passion. We don't know, but we can imagine the sort of consequences that ensue such an act. We already see the devastation of being a woman in her position. Her lover wasn't dragged into the marketplace to be publicly stoned. Jesus doesn't remove the earthly consequence, but he does offer her forgiveness and grace and saves her life in more ways than one. In his book One Way Love, Tullian Tchividjian defines grace as "unconditional acceptance given to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver." He further explains that "grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable. Grace is love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. Grace doesn't make demands. It just gives....and from our vantage point, it always gives to the wrong person." I believe that because of the grace offered by her Savior the woman left that place a new woman, a woman who still had to face the reality of her sin and the pain it caused others but a woman, now sustained by the grace of Jesus who suddenly had the strength to face her transgression and to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.
If Jesus had lectured her and pointed out how worthless she was, she would have left dejected with no hope of reform, but because He showed her mercy and grace, she left transformed, much more than if she had been berated. Yes, she still faced the consequences of her behavior, but now she faced it with the knowledge that the son of God loves her, and little did she know, shortly after that encounter, that He would take on her sin and your sin, and my sin and die for it. He would pay in full the penalty for her adultery and for any transgression big or small that we commit. She had encountered the Savior of the world, and I believe she left motivated to turn her life around, knowing that she was beloved because how can we glimpse His radical grace and love and not be transformed?
The story of the woman caught in adultery reminds me that I am a sinner who deserves the full penalty for my sin, yet Jesus steps in and cancels the debt. I don't deserve it; I don't earn it. It's a gift, a radical, life-altering gift. And it's this knowledge that should encourage me to offer grace to others.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't face earthly consequences for poor choices, that justice shouldn't be sought for victims of crime, but when faced with the choice to swallow our pride and forego an injury to our ego or even an injury that sometimes cuts us to our core, I believe we are called to show grace. Jesus tells us to be reconciled to our brother, he tells us to turn the other cheek, that if someone wants to sue for our shirt to give him our coat, to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, to forgive people for their wrongdoing, to consider others more important than ourselves, to look not only to our own interests but to the interests of others, to make our attitude that of Christ Jesus, who emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, who humbled himself to the point of death on a cross. We are told to clothe ourselves in humility, compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience, accepting one another and forgiving one another, and above all, to put on love. I've never seen the fine print nor read any exceptions. Jesus calls us to live radically different from what our flesh feels we deserve. And just like the earlier definition of grace says, we don't control the response of the one to whom we extend grace, nor are we necessarily called to be best friends, but we are called to forgive and to love. We aren't responsible for the behavior or reaction of the recipient, but just as Jesus's grace has changed the lives of so many, what if our grace did the same? In this season of love and of giving and of celebration of Christ's birth, may we challenge ourselves to extend grace to those around us, especially to those, who like us (mind you), don't deserve it. That's what Jesus in his birth, life, death, and resurrection continues to do for us.
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