2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

 

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

 

9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

 

11 “No one, sir,” she said.

 

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. (John 8: 2-11)

…..love is kind…. (1 Corinthians 13: 4)

I have had the great honour of hearing some awful stories of church trauma recently.  I mean really awful stories of judgement and condemnation coming from faithful church people.  One of the stories involved the leadership of the church they were involved with, resisting the individual’s expectation around boundaries and appropriate use of finances, and turning it into a condemnation of their character.  The other involved a person bravely seeking treatment for depression and Complex PTSD, and their church community embracing a whole ton of stigma and victim-blaming and ousting them out of small group involvement and shunning them in worship on Sundays. 

Both of these people were profoundly broken by their church community’s response to them.  And both people are left with a whole lot of pieces to pick up, including the devasting loss of the community that they thought they could count on for love and support. 

And as I listened to these stories, I heard them say, with slight variation “I thought these people were Christians”. 

I was just left with an empty, sad feeling.  Because, yes, they are Christians.  But yes, also, they haven’t treated these people as Jesus would. 

We all mess up the way we treat people, don’t we.

We mess up because their stories hit too close to home, and we are afraid that we might also be sucked down this path of being judged or facing significant mental health challenges.  Or because our internalized rules crop up just like the pharisees and we feel like we’re entitled to be not only the judge, but the jury and the executioner in any metaphorical trial.  Or because we honestly have no idea what to say to people when we are confronted with this depth of pain, and we resort to non-biblical platitudes and victim-blaming statements like “When God closes a door He opens a window”, or “God helps those who help themselves”, or the ever famous “if you just gave this up to God in prayer, this will be taken care of”. 

Sometimes life is just plain awful.  And sometimes we must stand by and watch someone else’s life go quickly down the tubes – either because they made choices that we wouldn’t of, or because some terrible circumstances were inflicted on them.  Its hard.  Its really hard to just stand there.  Its hard to listen to stories of pain and desperation and not leap in with solutions or judgement.  And its even harder to continue embracing people when their lives seem to be careening out of control. 

In the story that I quoted above, from the Book of John, Jesus is confronted by an angry group of the church leadership asking him to invoke the Law of Moses, saying that women caught in adultery should be put to death by stoning.  I’m fond of this Jesus.  He doesn’t come out and say who is right in this story.  He just takes a big pause and writes stuff in the sand in front of him.  We don’t know what he’s writing in the sand; the tradition tells us that he was writing the law in the sand, and it symbolizes its impermanence because it can just be rubbed away.  I have always imagined that he was just kind of doodling, like I used to in the middle of all my classes.  Just kind of doodling so that he can buy some time, but also so he can make the point that he’s just there, bearing witness to this whole situation.?    

And then he just invites everyone in.  In to see that they are no different than the woman standing in their judgement.  In to see that they share in the same pain, the same difficulty, and the same trauma. 

And that no one deserves this condemnation.  Because all of us are part of it. 

So, my friends.  What can I say, but life, at times is incredibly tough.  And sometimes its because we mess up, and sometimes it has nothing to do with us willfully choosing a direction.  But it still results in a place of incredibly pain and sorrow. 

And our job as Christians?  Well – to take a page from Jesus’ book (lol see what I said there!).  We just need to stand in the presence of this pain and say, “neither do I condemn you”. 

Blessings today my dear Bethel friends and remember you are Loved,

~Rev. Lynne