A Lesson In Judgment & Condemnation From Jesus

The Lord be with you and with your spirit.

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John.

Glory to you,

O Lord.

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

At daybreak he appeared in the temple again,

And as all the people came to him,

He sat down and began to teach them.

The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman along who had been caught committing adultery,

And making her stand there in full view of everybody,

They said to Jesus,

Master,

This woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery,

And Moses has ordered us in the law to condemn women like this to death by stoning.

What have you to say?

They asked him this as a test,

Looking for something to use against him.

But Jesus bent down and started writing on the ground with his finger.

As they persisted with their question,

He looked up and said,

If there is one of you who has not sinned,

Let him be the first to throw a stone at her.

Then he bent down and wrote on the ground again.

When they heard this,

They went away one by one,

Beginning with the eldest,

Until Jesus was left alone with the woman who remained standing there.

He looked up and said,

Woman,

Where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

No one,

Sir,

She replied.

Neither do I condemn you,

Said Jesus.

Go away and don't sin anymore.

I wish that we had cameras in the time of Jesus so that we could have just maybe taken a photo of what he had written in the sand.

What would God do to all?

But those words maybe give birth to new universes and new galaxies.

As he was listening to people who pretended to follow the rule of Moses,

Who actually did follow the rule of Moses,

The scribes and the Pharisees,

Yet they twisted it to their own advantage,

Trying to catch Jesus saying something that is against their interpretation of the law.

Can you imagine how irritated and how worked up they got?

Because Jesus wouldn't necessarily even give them the time of day and just draw and write in the sand,

Doodle.

And then when he does answer them,

He throws the ball back into their court and he says to them,

Sure,

Do what you say if you can condemn her,

Yet you can't condemn if you are sinner yourself.

And thus,

One of the most beautiful stories in the Bible comes alive.

A woman who did wrong,

A person,

A being who did wrong,

Who sinned against the law of Moses.

So let's not tiptoe around it.

What she did was against their law.

What she did was break a promise.

What she did was sin.

Now nobody tells us if this wasn't maybe a tale of Romeo and Juliet,

Or a version thereof,

Let's not rewrite the story completely.

Where she wasn't maybe in love with somebody but forced to get married to somebody else.

And I'm not condoning what she did.

We don't know the history and we don't know the background.

Yet here we have a woman standing in front of the Christ,

Of Jesus.

And after he finishes writing and doodling,

I love that image.

Jesus almost bored with these people who try and control others and control life.

And he looks up and he sees this woman and he asks her,

Where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

No one.

So.

And then Jesus turns around and he tells her,

Neither do I.

Go away and sin no more.

Don't sin anymore.

He doesn't tell her what a bad person she is.

I think she knows that or knew that already.

Maybe she already expected death.

And we don't know if the adultery was born from love or lust.

And quite frankly,

I don't know if it really matters.

Maybe it does.

But we see here something amazing happened.

Christ,

God,

Faced with a sin punishable by death,

Adultery,

Does not judge this woman,

Does not condemn this person.

No,

No.

Jesus says,

Go away and don't sin anymore.

Does this not sound like a lesson in karma?

A lesson that we have to learn because of something we did in life,

Something that we created,

A void of energy that we did by choosing the lesser good over the greater good.

And then being faced with what we did,

We see God tell us,

It's okay,

You've learned your lesson.

Don't do it again.

Because what's going to happen if we do it again?

We have to learn that lesson again.

We relearn our lessons and we get condemned until such time that we fully integrate what God wants to show us,

What God wants to teach us.

And only then do we carry on.

And it's not a linear thing.

It's not that I'm going to run into a wall in my life until this and this has been learned.

No,

Life is much more than linear.

This is what I'm learning over and over again.

Because one area of life stops doesn't mean whole of life stops.

But we can't carry on in that area of life until we have let go of that sin and that condemnation.

And it's not fire and brimstone.

But until we learn our lessons,

We will be stuck in those areas of our life.

And that is what Christ in this Gospel reading teaches.

That is the way I understand this teaching of Christ.

That we are caught up in something that we do wrong,

Something that we most probably know we shouldn't be doing.

Other times we don't know.

But something that we are doing that is not according to the will of God and not according to our life purpose.

And it is not in harmony with the vibration of our being.

And we do these things.

Just like the woman who knew that adultery was wrong and yet she still committed adultery.

Now,

We still have scribes and Pharisees in society today.

Very much so.

People telling us that what you are doing is wrong,

The way that you are living is wrong.

God hates you.

God will judge you.

And they judge and they try and bring us in front of their image of God.

And they want to stone us.

And if we are honest about it,

We do the same.

We do the same to other people.

We do the same to ourselves.

I think we are the biggest Pharisees towards ourselves than to anybody else.

Because we judge ourselves harshly.

We look in the mirror and all we see is failure.

All we see is regret and sadness.

So let's take that lesson from Jesus.

It's not up to us to judge.

We don't have that right because we are in here.

We are part of the challenge.

We are part of the lesson.

Just as it's not up to us to judge each other.

Because we are here to follow and to learn ourselves.

We're not here to play judge.

So that is the first lesson.

Let's not be Pharisees and scribes.

Let's look towards Jesus and we ask Jesus,

Master,

What would you do?

And we let go of this thing of trying to catch Jesus out.

We let go of this thing of trying to force God to be in the image that we think God is supposed to be.

God is much greater than any of us can ever,

Ever understand while we are living.

We will understand later.

In our respective times,

We breathe our last breath.

But for now,

Let's start acknowledging that our image of God is just our image of God and that it is so incomplete.

That God is so much bigger than religion.

God is so much bigger than this planet,

Than this reality.

God is.

And then from there,

Let's learn the lesson of the woman.

Let us become aware that everybody has left.

That we are alone.

We are standing alone with God,

With Christ.

And we allow that judgment then to happen.

And again,

I think we still fear because God is going to judge us because we did wrong.

And then let us embrace these words of Christ.

Neither do I condemn you.

So beautiful.

Hosanna for that.

Praise be that God does not condemn us for being human because he created us human for a reason,

To learn.

Embrace this.

Embrace the Christ saying I do not condemn you.

And then we move forward in our lives and sin no more.

And grow in our connection with God and with each other because God is in each other.

And in us,

We grow in that beautiful sphere growing towards peace that we are praying for daily.

And we don't go back and choose the lesser goods over the greater goods that we have already done.

We don't go back and redo the sins that we have already learned our lessons in because then we will come back and we will be judged again and we will have to relearn those lessons.

But thank God.

Thank God for these words.

Neither do I condemn you.

Amen.