Whose Values?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

July 12, 2015

Whose Values?

John 8:1-11

Then each of them went home,

while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

Early in the morning he came again to the temple.

All the people came to him

and he sat down and began to teach them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman

who had been caught in adultery;

and making her stand before all of them,

they said to him,

“Teacher, this woman was caught in

the very act of committing adultery.

Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women.

Now what do you say?”

They said this to test him,

so that they might have some charge to bring against him.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

When they kept on questioning him,

he straightened up and said to them,

“Let anyone among you who is without sin

be the first to throw a stone at her.”

And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.

When they heard it, they went away, one by one,

beginning with the elders;

and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

Jesus straightened up and said to her,

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

She said, “No one, sir.”

And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.

Go your way,

and from now on do not sin again.”

********************************************

Could the title be more provocative:

“If The Church Were Christian.”

It is the title of the book our Adult Ed. class

is studying this summer.

The subtitle is even more provocative:

“rediscovering the values of Jesus”.

The author is Philip Gulley.

Gulley is a Quaker pastor

who served in a number of churches

in his denomination for many years

and who is now a writer and speaker.

His many books include his fictional “Harmony” series

and a number of nonfiction titles.

I’ve been reading Gulley’s books for years

and I have been deeply influenced by his faithfulness,

his ability to step back and look at how we are called

to live as disciples of Jesus Christ.

                 

He doesn’t come at his subject

with a sledgehammer or a megaphone.

He doesn’t unleash a flood of statistics.

Rather, he simply asks questions:

Why do we do this,

why do we do that?

Is what we are doing something Jesus would do?

Is what we are saying, what we are doing

something Jesus would approve of,

something that reflects Jesus’ values?

The thread that runs through all of Gulley’s books

is the thread of grace:

God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ,

God’s grace given us in Jesus Christ,

grace we are given freely,

grace we are to share equally freely.

In his current book Gulley asks,

if God is love,

and grace is revealed in Jesus

why do we Christians seem to work so hard

at building a church that so often lacks love,

a church where grace is so often missing,

replaced by judgment and self righteousness,

exclusion and preference,

doctrine and certainty.

Gulley thinks it is because we’ve gotten too obsessed,

too focused on “right beliefs”

and “theological purity,”

that we are too quick to shout,

“the Bible says”.

Did Jesus test people

on their knowledge of Scripture?

Did Jesus quiz people on how faithfully, regularly,

they offered sacrifices at the Temple,

on how carefully they observed the Sabbath,

the Passover,

the Day of Atonement?

Did our Lord, as he walked the roads of Judea,

as he ministered in the towns around the Sea of Galilee,

keep a list of scriptural laws and rules from Leviticus

at the ready so he could test people

to check whether they had the “right” beliefs,

the “right” theology

before he taught them,

ate with them,

healed them?

Our lesson provides one of the best examples

of grace we’ll find in the gospels.

The facts are clear: Jesus is confronted

with a woman who had been caught

in the act of adultery;

“the very act,” as the text tells us. 

The woman didn’t deny it;

She didn’t protest her innocence;

She didn’t try to shift the blame to the man,

the man who seems to have gone missing in all this.

She stands before Jesus guilty,

guilty of adultery.

And, the law was very clear on that,

on what to do with someone caught in adultery.

In fact, the law was so adamant

that it appeared not just once in the Pentateuch,

the first five books of Scripture,

but twice, first in Leviticus,

and then again in Deuteronomy.

In the book of Leviticus we read:

“If a man commits adultery

with the wife of his neighbor,

both the adulterer and the adulteress

shall be put to death”

(Leviticus 20:10)

And in Deuteronomy we read:

“If a man is caught lying with the wife

of another man,

both of them shall die,

the man who lay with the woman

as well as the woman.”

(Deuteronomy 22:22)

The punishment was clear.

The scribes knew it,

the Pharisees knew it,

the woman knew it,

and certainly Jesus knew it.

But look at what Jesus did:

He didn’t argue the law;

he didn’t argue the facts;

he just said so simply:

“Let anyone among you who is without sin

be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Do you hear what Jesus was saying?

He was saying in effect: “the law is clear,

the woman is guilty,

so go ahead, enforce the law,

mete out the punishment.

The one among you who is without sin –

you get things started;

you throw that first stone.”

As Gulley observed in his book, “If Grace Is True”,

written with James Mulholland,

what Jesus should have said,

if he truly was a man obedient to scripture,

was, “The law is clear.

We must kill her.”

And then he should have picked up a rock

and thrown it at her,

encouraging the others to do the same,

all of them throwing rocks at the woman

until she was dead,

until they had imposed the punishment

that scripture demanded.

And then Jesus should have stood over

the woman’s lifeless, bloody body

and said, “Let the who sins be stoned.

Let the one who flouts God’s holy law

be punished as scripture demands.”

We would be horrified if that was what

Jesus had done, wouldn’t we?

But of course, that’s not what Jesus did;

Jesus acted with grace,

Jesus acted with love,

saying to the woman,

“Woman, …Has no one condemned you?”

To which the woman replied, “No one, sir.”

And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.

“Neither do I condemn you.”

Churches are filled with condemning words:

words aimed at men and women

for their decisions,

for choices they make,

for how they live their lives,

even for who they are.

And as if that isn’t bad enough,

those who don’t join in the chorus of condemnation

often then find themselves condemned in turn.

Why are we so quick to judge,

so quick to criticize,

so quick to condemn

and so slow to extend grace?

Why are we so quick to say,

this is what “right belief”

and “proper doctrine”

and “theological purity” require

and so slow to ask ourselves,

what does love require of me in this situation,

what does grace require of me in this situation?

In his book, Gulley tells of conversation he had

with a man who Gulley knew

did not attend any church

in the small town where they lived.

When Gulley asked the man about it,

not in an accusatory or judgmental way,

but as part of their conversation,

the man’s response was revealing,

“I love the theory of church.

It’s the practice of it that leaves me cold.”

If the theory of church

is the grace and love of God

revealed in Jesus Christ,

then shouldn’t that be our practice?  

Gulley calls “gracious religion”

a religion of humility,

a religion of openness and acceptance,

a religion of mercy and compassion.

Gulley reminds us that Jesus didn’t teach doctrine

as much as showing us

how we should live our lives:

joyfully, faithfully,

loving our neighbors,

and recognizing that all are our neighbors,

not just those we know and like.

“The joy of Christian faith,” Gulley writes,

“is to be found in modeling Jesus’ mercy and love.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ showed by his life

that he valued grace and love

in all parts of life,

grace and love even more than obedience

to religious doctrine.

Grace was so wonderfully on display here

this past week

as more than 80 children,

along with 40 teachers and helpers

participated in our Vacation Bible School.

There were children from our church,

children from other churches,

children from other faiths,

and they spent the week

laughing, learning, singing, playing,

making new friends,

children from different neighborhoods,

cultures,

backgrounds,

all of them with tongues coated purple,

red and orange from popsicles,

all modeling grace,

without their even thinking about it

We are not the sole possessors of truth,

nor are we the gatekeepers of heaven;

we are simply disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ,

followers of our Lord Jesus Christ,

called to model our lives on his life –

a life of service,

a life of love,

a life of grace.

AMEN