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“…Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone” John 8:7b
“It seems now like a humorous incident,” Jimmy Carter tells in his new book Our Endangered Values, “but I almost lost the presidential election by attempting to explain . . . . biblical texts.” He then goes on to give the specifics. The text was from the Gospel of Matthew. The year was 1975 and Carter was Southern Baptist, so the King James Version was appropriate: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” And the context in which Jimmy Carter was attempting his biblical exegesis was an interview with a columnist from Playboy Magazine. Looking back, it does seem amazingly naïve that this Baptist boy did not think that an interview in Playboy would be trouble no matter how the interview went. Nevertheless, as the questions turned to the ways his faith had shaped his life, and might shape his actions as president, this text from Matthew was Jimmy Carter’s beginning point. And Carter went on to try to explain the Sermon on the Mount, how Jesus says there that even letting yourself fall into a rage at another person is a kind of murder, and uncontrolled lust is a kind of adultery. The interviewer of course saw his chance for a big story. “So,” he asked Carter, “under that definition, have you ever committed adultery? And bless his heart, this future president told the truth. “I have lusted in my heart,” he said.
The reaction was immediate, of
course. Savvy politicians jumped at his
admission of humanity, Baptist preachers decried his lust, and many people,
especially out in
All of this is to point out how hard it is for us Christians to talk about sex. As soon as we open our mouths we find ourselves stumbling, and recircling on our own words with qualifiers and lengthy explanations about what we “really meant.” And that is why the seventh commandment, more than any we have studied or will study, makes us think that the commandments are all about “Thou Shalt Not . . .” Anticipation of this very commandment may be what was behind much of the groaning of last September when we decided to spend a year on the Ten Commandments. Jimmy Carter learned the hard way that sometimes it feels like all we have to say to one another about this topic of faith and sexuality is “Don’t” and if you do, don’t talk about it.
And so we, your pastors, ever willing to run where angels and politicians fear to tread, have proclaimed February “Love month.” As we all prepare for the month that holds not only our celebrations of presidents and our remembering of black history, but also Valentines Day, let’s talk about love.
By the way, you may have noticed that we are not alone in venturing into this arena. Last week the new pope, Benedict XVI issued his first encyclical- that is, his first letter to his bishops. And for this first letter, one that many were looking to for a setting of the tone for his ministry, Pope Benedict chose the topic of “love.” “ Deus Caritas Est,“ the pope tells us, “God is Love,” and then spends about thirty pages explaining what he meant by that. If you take some time with that letter you will find that Benedict’s starting point was the same as ours and the same as Jesus’.
“In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, . . . I wish my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.”
Or as Eric Elnes says in his Phoenix Affirmations, “(We base) our lives on the faith that we, and all people, are loved beyond our wildest imagination- for eternity.”
Of course, from the thirty pages on love the press pretty much only told us about the seventh commandment stuff from the perspective of the Catholic Church. The topic before us for the month is not an easy one to tackle. And from any reading of the Bible, we discover right away that this struggle with what it means to love another person is not new to our generation, even though each generation thinks it invented the topic. In the earliest stories, adultery is primarily about property rights, and the command is directed to the woman: do not forget that you are owned and your value is based on being the property of only one man. But also in the earliest stories we hear about love and about commitment and about faithfulness.
These stories come to us from Jesus’ time too - and so we find this little story from today’s reading tucked into the gospel of John. Although not originally part of this Gospel, the story has survived I think because it tells us something genuine about the nature of Jesus’ ministry. The story invites us into itself in so many ways. First there is the recognition of the one sidedness of the action of the crowd: although two were obviously participating in the act, it is the woman who is brought to Jesus. And Jesus, confronted with the demand for a decision, bends down and writes something in the sand before he reacts. There have been volumes of speculation about what he wrote. Perhaps he was only doodling, giving the crowd time to calm down? Or was he writing a list of sins? Even better, a list of sins with names attached?
And we ourselves could be anyone in this story. We could be holding the stones, or our own names could be on that list. We could be in the background, the one betrayed, or the one who got away, or we could be the one brought for judgment. What is Jesus inviting us to do with this commandment?
Many years ago my colleague in
Here is what Jesus is inviting us to. All of these commandments, these principles for behavior, are not about me telling you what to do, and then making sure you do it. Scripture, we must always remember, begins by addressing the way I will order my life, not about the way you will order yours. So this commandment too is about how I will center my life. This commandment is calling me to my humanity, reminding me of my connections, helping me come to myself. As each of us switches to the first person singular, and the community switches to the first person plural, we can all ask: “What shall be the ethic of my relationships with others?” Chris Hedges in his little book on the Ten Commandments (Losing Moses on the Freeway) reminds us in a griping story of a child’s lost father, that when you commit adultery you break a promise. So building on that, let me offer the seventh commandment to you in a positive way. “Be faithful.” Keep your promises. Be faithful, knowing that God is faithful as well. And in the struggle with all that faithfulness means, Jesus reminds us, let us remember our humanness as well. Let us remember that we are each called by name, and loved beyond our wildest imaginations.
And this morning we are also each invited to this communion table, not because we have lived some kind of perfect life, but because Jesus invites us, wherever we find ourselves in this morning’s story. As the story ends, Jesus turns to the woman before him. Now it is just the two of them. And Jesus invites her back to life; to choices she may not have imagined she had. Which is what Jesus does for each of us. Wherever we are in this story, at the end we can find our way to healing, and to newness, and to hope. We can find our way to the table. Amen.