Looking at Sin
Jesus said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
John 8:7b
I always thought it took two to commit adultery. That is what has always bugged me about this passage from John’s Gospel. Even the Mosaic law the scribes and the Pharisees’ quote (Deuteronomy 22:23-24) implies that it takes two to tango, since it requires both the woman and the man to be stoned to death at the gate of the town when caught in the act of adultery. But it is the scribes and the Pharisees who sin by condemning only the woman and using her, objectifying her, while letting the man go scot-free. She becomes their tool, collateral damage in their war against Jesus and His message of good news for all. Their act reveals them as the true sinners in this story, bringing only the woman and not both the woman and the man when seeking a verdict from Jesus.
What is sin? I suspect that most of us would simply say that sin is breaking the rules, and it is, to some extent, as the Rector preached a few weeks ago on the relevance of following the 10 Commandments, even for those of us living under the New Covenant. And it is good for Christians to conform our behavior and beliefs to Jesus’ Summary of the Law and the Beatitudes, as well as acknowledge His expectations that “to whom much has been given, much will be required…” (Luke 12:48b)
While recognizing the importance of moral behavior, theologians speak of sin as human self-centeredness and its opposite, self-abnegation, pride and rebellion against God and God’s ways. All of these lead to a broken relationship between us and God and also with our neighbor. Sin is ultimately a failure to love.[1]
I thought of the story of the woman caught in adultery when I recently read “Jesus is never upset with sinners, but only with people who pretend they are not sinners.”[2] In one way, this is good news for us, as Paul points out in Romans 5:8 by writing, “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” But that does not leave us off the hook. Instead, this obligates us to commit time regularly for honest self-reflection, for it is not the specific acts of sin that grieve the heart of God, but those who fail to acknowledge our own sinfulness.
The liturgy supplies the opportunity for such a time of self-examination, albeit brief. The pause for silence before we join together in a general confession in our worship services allows us to reflect on our words and actions before we confess they have separated us from God and our neighbor.
[1] Owen C. Thomas and Ellen K. Wondra, “Introduction to Theology,” 3rd ed. (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2002), 153-154.
[2] Richard Rohr, “Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality” (Cincinnati: Franciscan Media, 2022), 78.
