Our memory verse this morning comes from the letter of 1 John, chapter 2, verse 6. John writes to the church:

“Whoever says he abides in him [that is, Jesus] ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”

This is the verse I want us to sear into our souls this week. I want this word to drop anchor in our hearts and put down roots in our lives. If we call ourselves Christians, if we claim to follow and abide in Christ, we are called to walk in same way in which Jesus walked.

Now before we go any further, let’s take a step back and view this verse through a wider lens. Let’s hear a bit of the context in which John offers this instruction. So let’s read from John’s letter again, this time starting in verse 3:

“3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”

In context, this verse is clear. Our lives, namely in our lifestyle, words, actions, and relationships, ought to resemble the life of Jesus. Our lives ought to show evidence of our commitment to his will and our obedience to his commandments.

I love the imagery here. If we claim to know Jesus, if we claim that our lives have been caught up in his life, then there ought to be a resemblance in the way we carry ourselves. Our gait, the way we walk, has to match his gait, the way he walked.

This evokes for me a visual that comes from my regular late night basketball game that I play with my buddies. We play after work on an outdoor court in the park near my house. There are usually four or five of us. One of our friends, Brian, lives on the far side of the park and is usually the last to arrive. To get to the basketball court, he has to jog across a long, rolling field and we can usually see him running when he is still far off. In the waning sunlight, we sometimes play a little game where we try to spot and identify him when he is still just a silhouette on the horizon.

A figure pops into view and you start to ask yourself questions. Yes, that person is about the right size (Brian is of average height) and they look about the right shape (Brian is thickly built, all solid, rippling muscle). Then you start to analyze the person’s running motion and how they carry themselves. Brian is nimble like a dancer, but he is also strong like freight train. He is pretty unique. You’d think he’d be pretty easy to spot at a distance. And he usually is, but sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes when the person gets closer it’s not Brian at all. It’s just another runner that we mistook for Brian. Our eyes get tricked in the low light.

I think this is what the apostle John is hoping for. When people see our lives at a distance or when they see how we conduct ourselves out of the corner of their eye, may they be mistaken even for just a moment in thinking that they have caught a glimpse of Jesus alive and walking on this earth, in their neighborhood. May our way of carrying ourselves be so similar that it trips people up and they have to squint and say, “Oh no, my eyes deceived me. That’s just Nancy. That’s not Jesus. For a second, it looked like Jesus.”

I had one such double take when I watched the bond hearing for Dylann Roof on the news a few weeks ago. Roof is the young man who, filled with racial hate, shot and killed nine people at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. At his bond hearing, a woman named Nadine Collier who lost her 70-year-old mother Ethel in the shooting, spoke directly to her mother’s murderer, “You took something very precious away from me,” she said her voice rising in anguish. “I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.” Another woman, Felicia Sanders, lost her 26-year-old son Tywanza. In a quavering voice, his mother said, “We welcomed you... in our Bible study with open arms. You have killed some of the most beautifulest people that I know. Every fiber in my body hurts, and I will never be the same… But as we say in Bible study, we enjoyed you. But may God have mercy on you.” They might as well have said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” they sounded so much like Jesus to me.

Pope Francis, our lovely brother in Christ and the current head of the Roman Catholic Church, has said that “the beauty of the Church” is “the presence of Jesus Christ among us.” Isn’t that the truth? “This is the beauty of the Church: the presence of Jesus Christ among us.” If there is any beauty in the people of God, it is when we catch glimpses of the face of Christ in the faces of his imperfect, but beloved people. To echo the apostle Paul, “Christ in us” is our “hope of glory.” We are reflecting God’s glory, the glory of his Son, into the world. This is both a reality we must celebrate and a calling we must walk in.

The Spirit of Jesus Christ lives in us. So in real way, Jesus is embodied and walking around in our neighborhoods. People can experience Jesus through you. But we also have to say “yes” to that. We have to say “yes” to being God’s instrument, “yes” to carrying his presence into dark places. We have to say “yes” to his lordship, “yes” to his instruction, “yes” to his way of life. If we say we abide in him, we have to say “yes” to walking in the same way in which he walked.

Now we have a problem when we say “yes” to living this out, to walking as Jesus walked. Our problem is simply that Jesus is familiar to us. I hear “walk as Jesus walked” and I know instantly what that means for me. It means tithing with joy, waving and smiling at my neighbor Roman when I pull out of my driveway, and volunteering to run the soundboard on Sunday mornings. I have crammed Jesus into the category of the familiar and as a result, I have stopped listening to him. We stopped watching him with open eyes and seeing the power, the challenge, and the scandal with which he conducted himself in this world. We have made Jesus safe and thus we have reduced the call to “walk as Jesus walked” into something that, while costly, won’t really put us out that much.

Now there is a simple corrective to our problem. And I’ll admit the solution is counterintuitive. To combat our over-familiarity with Jesus, we need to read the Gospels. We need to read the Gospels again and again. I would argue that as the people of Jesus we should be reading the Gospels everyday, every time we open our Bibles to spend some time with our Lord. The cure for our overly safe and familiar version of Jesus is to see him as he truly is, to hear what he actually said with listening ears and teachable hearts. With humility, we need to again and again sit at the feet of our friend, our teacher, our savior and Lord and just marvel. Let’s not put words in his mouth. Let’s not sugarcoat his actions. Let’s allow him to offend our sensibilities and firmly held convictions. Let’s not explain away the tension that he creates for us or the scandal that he causes. Let’s let Jesus be Lord and we be his followers. Let’s walk in the way that he walked, not in the way that we wish he had walked.

So for the rest of the time we have this morning, we are going to do just that. We are going to drop ourselves into a Jesus story from the Gospels and start looking around. We are going to find Jesus and sit at his feet. Let’s reenroll in Jesus’ discipleship academy and learn from him how we are supposed to carry ourselves in this world.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So where should we drop into Jesus’ story this morning? I can think of no better place than John 7:53-8:11. I say that because it seems like this story, the story of the woman caught in adultery, was itself seemingly dropped into John’s Gospel. You’ll notice in your Bibles that this passage is contained within double brackets. Those brackets indicate that the earliest manuscripts we have found of John’s Gospel don’t include this story here. In fact, if you read the fine print, you’ll discover that some early versions of the Gospels don’t include this story at all while others place the story earlier in John’s Gospel or others tack it on at the end like an appendix. In still other gospel manuscripts, the story shows up not in John but stuck in the Gospel of Luke instead.

What are we to make of this? Well, there is a lot more that can be said (textual criticism is a fascinating field within biblical studies), but here’s the long and the short of it. We have received this passage as an authentic Jesus story cherished by early church. It is my opinion that the story was likely NOT written by the same author who wrote the Gospel of John, but that story was included here because it fit thematically within the flow of John’s story. It is my guess, and again this is my own speculation, that the woman at the heart of this story eventually became a prominent member in the early church and that her testimony of her encounter with Jesus grew to be widely known and cherished by those who heard it. Eventually, either she or someone else (the language is quite similar to Luke’s) wrote it down for the benefit of future generations and the story was included in the early collections of Jesus’ biographies, a.k.a. the four gospels. This is a long way of saying this: Don’t let those double brackets scare you; you’ll find Christ himself inside of them.

So let’s dive into what was originally a standalone Jesus story.

John 7:53 - 8:11 (ESV)

53 They went each to his own house, 1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. 5 Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” 6 This they said to test him that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

Okay, so let’s step into this story. Let’s envision the scene, the sights of the temple courts, the sounds of worshippers bustling about, and the smells of the midday sacrifices. Let’s put ourselves there as observers or even participants.

What we are about to witness is a type of public contest. This is an honor-shame culture and so what that means is that every public encounter carries with it some import. Every public interaction you have will impact your reputation. When someone engages someone in the temple courts, both parties are stepping into an arena and stakes are on the line. Someone will emerge from the contest with rising stock in the eyes of their community and someone will leave with a tarnished reputation.

So from the left corner emerges Jesus surrounded by his boys, his posse of disciples and other followers. From the right corner, come the religious leaders, the scribes and Pharisees, complete with their entourages. In tow, they are bringing a woman with them. She is wild-eyed and afraid. Her clothes and her hair are disheveled and it looks if as she has not had an opportunity to wash for the last few days.

A challenge rings out across the temple courts: “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”

Now Jesus does something odd here. He bends down and starts writing in the dust. His opponents have thrown down a gauntlet and he ignores them to doodle in the dirt.

Now we love to speculate about what Jesus could be writing, but the storyteller doesn’t seem to care about that detail. I think that is because this is the ancient equivalent of pulling out your cell phone and having a fake conversation (a common tactic on college campuses…). Jesus here is refusing to engage. He won’t enter into debate with them on these terms. Why?

There could be several reasons. Maybe Jesus sees the injustice inherent in the setup. The Law of Moses specifies both the man and the woman be punished. Where’s the man? The

Law as well stipulates that charges be brought by two to three eyewitnesses. These are nowhere to be seen. Also, how long have they been holding this poor woman and to what end? Are we supposed to believe that she was just caught in the act here in the temple courts?

Another factor in Jesus’ refusal to engage could also have to do with unwillingness on his part to get into a confrontation with Romans at this time. Rome had removed capital jurisdiction from Jewish courts, except for temple violations. The Jews had no legal right to execute this woman. Calling for her stoning would spark a conflict with the Roman authorities. That conflict between Jesus and Rome was coming. He’d have his date with Pontius Pilate, but maybe the time was not right.

The religious leaders wanted to trap Jesus into one of their familiar categories. If Jesus got caught in one of their boxes, they knew just how to destroy him. Revealed as a zealot for the Law and enemy of the Romans? Rat him out to Pilate. Unwilling to stone the woman? Look, he rejects God’s law and capitulates to our Roman oppressors.

Jesus’ opponents keep jabbing at him. Come on! Step into the arena! Be a man and engage!

St. Augustine of Hippo, the early church father, offers us in his commentary on the Gospel of John an interesting window on what he presumes to be Jesus’ internal monologue at this moment. He writes:

“He who had come as a redeemer, not as a hanging judge—he who had come to redeem what was lost—turned away from them as though unwilling to look at them. This turning away from them is not empty of meaning. Something is to be understood by this turning away. It is as though he were saying, ‘You bring me this sinner, you who are sinners yourselves. If you think I ought to condemn sins, I shall begin with you.’”

It is as if Jesus is saying, “Do you really want me to start meting out the punishments your sins deserved? You don’t want that. Trust me. You don’t want to start down this road because if things got real we wouldn’t start with your favorite sins to demonize. No, we wouldn’t start with the sexual sins of other people. We’d start, say, with your oppression of the workers, your neglect of immigrants and the poor, and your corrupt business and financial practices. Or maybe we’d start with your sense of pride, moral superiority, and self-righteousness. Surely hypocrisy would be up on the firing line first.”

So Jesus’ response rings out. He throws his haymaker. “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

The blow lands. It lands first on the best of Jesus’ opponents, the elders, those with the highest standing in the community. These men are the most respected, the most experienced, and the most ethical and righteous figures in their community, but to their credit they are also the wisest. They know instantly that if it’s time for a just reckoning of sins, they would not emerge from the arena unscathed. Witnesses were supposed to be the first to throw a stone, but now the only thing they can bear witness to is their own

sinfulness. They withdraw from the arena, defeated and shamed. Seeing the great ones fall, Jesus’ lesser opponents, the younger men, bow out as well.

Again let’s hear Augustine: “This is the voice of justice. Let the sinner be punished, but not by sinners. Let the law be carried out, but not by transgressors of the law.”

The woman is left alone in the arena with Jesus, the only one worthy of throwing a stone. She’s not out of the woods yet, but he is again refusing to engage, entirely focused on scribbling in the dust.

I can just hear the woman’s quiet sobs and her shuffling feet. Jesus finally stands up. “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

Again I will defer my commentary to Augustine: “The two were left alone, the pitiful and [the one who was] Pity [himself]. . . . They left the woman with her great sin in the keeping of him who was without sin. And because she had heard, ‘He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone at her,’ she most likely expected to be punished by one in whom no sin could be found. But he, who had repelled her adversaries with the voice of justice, lifted on her the eyes of mercy.”

Jesus refuses to condemn her. The one who has the right to pass judgment refuses to rule on the matter. She has been forgiven, rescued from immediate death and instead of condemning her, Jesus chooses instead to call her to a lifestyle of repentance, telling her to go and sin no more. And then the curtain closes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now this is powerful story and it is also an equal opportunity offender. What do we do with this Jesus? Is he going soft on sin? Is he rejecting the just punishment for sin God set down in the Law? Has this “friend of sinners” truly gone off the deep end and started endorsing their sinful lifestyles?

Walk in the same way as Jesus walked. How do we do that here?

First, we must note that the major note of this passage is mercy. It is the central movement of this story. “Blessed are the merciful,” Jesus said, “for they shall receive mercy.” Jesus in his divine patience responds to our human weakness with mercy. If we are going to walk as Jesus walked, extending mercy should be the primary item on our agenda.

Second, Jesus the only one qualified and righteous enough to judge chooses here to not judge. Elsewhere he has said, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” Jesus here lives that out, refusing to condemn this woman, refusing to bring down a sentence of justice. If Jesus refused to do so, how can we?

But finally, where does that leave us? Are we okay with sin now? No, sin is still sin. If anything, Jesus goes harder on calling sin “sin” than we do. We make excuses and exceptions and point to extenuating circumstances. Jesus says, “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.”

Jesus isn’t soft on sin. We are still called to die to sin and live to Christ, to channel Paul. We are still continually and repeatedly called to a lifestyle of repentance. Instead of choosing to condemn, Jesus instead invites the woman to a lifestyle of repentance, of turning from her past and walking ahead in his ways. We should do the same.

The first movement of this story is mercy. The second movement is a call to repentance, to go and from now on sin no more. You want to walk as Jesus walked? Walk in this way.

But what do we do with all the loose ends? Is there now no longer a just punishment for sins? To that latter question, the answer is obviously “no” because we believe Jesus took upon himself the punishment our sins deserve when he died on the cross. But what impact will this mercy have on our community? What does this leniency communicate to future would-be adulterers? Are there no consequences to sin? Again, I don’t have all this figured out. I do know sin always carries its own natural consequences. We never sin and emerge unscathed. I don’t have all the answers nor can I tie up all the loose ends. I just as scandalized and mesmerized by Jesus as you are. But this I know. I know, in the words of John, we are called to walk as Jesus walked. I know, in the words of Paul, we are called to “be imitators of God, as beloved children” and “to walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” Let’s work on that and leave the rest in the hands of Jesus. That’s a big enough task for me this week. Don’t you think?

“Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”

Would you pray with me?