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Morning Meditation for the Season of Christmas
Monday, December 30, 2024
Invitatory
Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
Reading: John 7:53-8:11
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.’
Meditation-Rebecca Northington
“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” This is such a powerful sentence and sentiment. Who, among us, is without sin? Truly. And yet we all fall prey to this easy trope of right versus wrong, and our desire for the full extent of consequence when someone else commits an act we deem wrong. My family and I went to the new Bob Dylan movie yesterday, A Complete Unknown, and I was struck by the ‘throwing of stones’ at the final Folk Festival in Newport. Literally, the crowd threw food, garbage, cans, and bottles, as Dylan resisted their sense of right for him. They had a set of rules and expectations of who he was supposed to be, and he was defying them, therefore he deserved their punishment.
As we celebrate the birth of our savior I was reminded by a recent NYT’s article of the varied nature of Jesus’s lineage. The author of the article, Peter Wehner, reminds us that Jesus’s lineage is an ancient type of resume, or DNA, and as Matthew tells us in his first 17 verses, Jesus comes from Jews and gentiles, “murderers, adulterers, prostitutes and people who committed incest, liars, schemers, and idolaters”. Wehner’s point in lifting up this piece of text on Christmas Eve is a reminder to us all. Jesus did not come from perfection. We do not come from perfection - none of us do. He represented everyone, and God’s radical forgiveness. Even out of all of our sin such perfection can be born. This lineage also calls out the need for acceptance and inclusion, not stiff parameters of welcome. Who among us could cast the first stone? Who is without sin? Is this how our churches operate though? Do we lean into radical inclusion, or are we more like the Pharisees trying to call out everyone's failings?
I love this piece of text from John and am always struck by the lines in the sand. What did Jesus write? Every word is chosen so carefully in the bible, it cannot be an accident that not once, but twice he bends down and writes something of which we do not get to see. Some believe the woman was pulled directly from her adulterous act and therefore is unclothed, and that Jesus writes to avert his eyes. Others believe he is writing a list of the many sins of the Pharisees and of the man who is not with the woman. The man who should be held to an equal account. Perhaps he is doodling as he avoids the trap that is being set for him.
I wonder if Jesus was writing what was to come. When the accusations against him are levied, how do the people respond? How quickly do they collect their pile of stones? Despite everything he has come to reverse, the people still hold fast to the law, and to their understanding of justice, over and against the new law of love, forgiveness, acceptance and inclusion. They crucify him. If we are honest, I believe we all fall into this trap. We agitate as we prepare our attack or our defense, rather than bending down to write in the sand-thereby diffusing any escalation. We choose our human understanding of justice and righteousness over love and forgiveness. This Christmas season let us all lean into a new kind of acceptance, a new kind of love and the radical inclusion that Christ’s birth ushers in.
Christmas Hymn 90:
Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long
Beneath the heavenly hymn have rolled two thousand years of wrong
And warring humankind hears not the tidings which they bring
O hush the noise and cease your strife and hear the angels sing!
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