Jesus the Transformer
I am a child of the 80s, and I loved Transformers. . .the toys that Hasbro turned into a cartoon just to sell more of the toys to young boys obsessed with cars and trucks like me. Transformers were alien robots that took on the disguise of various vehicles and weapons in our world and fought a cosmic battle between good (the Autobots) and evil (the Decepticons). Epic stuff! You may remember the theme song: “Transformers more than meets the eye. . .Transformers, robots in disguise!” I went back and watched one of the episodes as an adult and was stunned at how bad it was, but it was my love language when I was a 7 year old kid. Optimus Prime was my hero! Director Michael Bay turned my beloved toys into a blockbuster movie franchise in the aughts, which continues to this day (a new one is due out this year). And like the 80s cartoon they are not very good, but I love them too.
Well, the Transformers are very Christian when it comes down to it. In fact, Jesus is a transformer, but in the truest sense. Rather than disguising himself as something he is not, he goes about transforming US. . .setting us free from all of our disguises meant to hide who we really are in our pain and brokenness. The disguises we use to deny the fact that we are really not ok. When it comes to you and me walking around on this earth, going through our day-to-day there is always SO much more going on than meets the eye.
Lent is about us facing this truth. It is focused on our shortcomings, our imperfections, our sin. In the season of Lent we are reminded of our need for transformation. The historic Lenten passages show people coming to grips with this reality when they meet Jesus and finding that transformation in Him.
John 8:1-11 is a perfect example. In it we see a couple of different kinds of people come face to face with Jesus, and we get to see how He approaches them. The two kinds of people we are going to look at are first the accusers and then second the accused. And we’re going to see that at any given time we can find ourselves in one or the other of these two categories and maybe a little of both at the same time. The way Jesus handles the accusers and the accused in this passage is the way we will find Him dealing with us today too.
We begin with the accusers. It’s early morning and Jesus is teaching in the Temple when the scribes and the Pharisees interrupt and walk in with a woman that had been caught in the act of adultery, and they put her in front of Jesus and everyone else. Then, they say that they caught her in the act and that Moses commanded them in the Law to stone such women. And they ask Jesus what he thinks. As the passage tells us they were putting Jesus between a rock and a hard place because if he disagreed with Moses and the law, then they’d be able to argue that he was not from God and charge him with breaking the law, but if he confirmed their judgment against her he would lose his reputation for compassion and he could have been reported to the Roman government for exercising the death penalty outside of Caesar’s authority.
One could even suspect, that the scribes and Pharisees had planned this whole deal out ahead of time. They intended for the act of adultery to take place so that they could catch the woman in the act and trap Jesus. She is simply a pawn in their distorted game against Jesus. Further evidence of their plotting is found in the fact that they only bring the woman before Jesus. The law against adultery that they are referring to is found in Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22-24. Leviticus reads, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.” Deuteronomy 22 gets even more specific about this as well as the manner in which they are to be executed. “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones…” So, where was the guy? They said they caught her in the act, so he must have been there too, right? It takes two to tango.
The chances of this not being an intentional trap are slim. It’s very far-fetched to think one of them was just walking down the street minding his own business when he decided to go into someone’s house for some reason, maybe he thought they had really nice flower boxes and just wanted to pay them a compliment and, Uh Oh! He just happened to find this woman in the act of adultery with someone. What are the chances?
All of this suggests only a few options for the Pharisees and the scribes. They either previously knew the man who was having this adulterous affair and looked the other way because he was a buddy of theirs or worse was actually one of them and they made a deal to not expose him in their attempt to trap Jesus, or they asked one of their buddies to get this woman to sleep with him just to create this opportunity. In our passage the scribes and Pharisees say the law commands them to stone such women and they conveniently leave out the part about the man. They have already revealed their little plot to catch Jesus to be very flawed.
Still, they are right about what the law says even if only in part by focusing on the woman. She has been caught and they condemn her as guilty. SO, in the spirit of 1997 we get to ask, “What would Jesus do?” I used to wear one of those bracelets by the way. Well, we get our answer. What would Jesus do when confronted with this very sticky situation? Jesus’ initial response to them is to ignore them and to quietly bend down and start writing in the dirt. That seems like a strange response. I don’t think I ever thought of that response when I looked at my WWJD? bracelet. But, that’s what he does. No one knows what he was writing, and it doesn’t really matter. It’s what he says that matters. After they keep pestering him, he stands up and says, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” I bet you they were thinking to themselves, “I didn’t see that one coming.”
This is how Jesus approaches accusers. It is completely consistent with his teaching in Matthew 7:1 and 2 where he says, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged…” It’s almost like that elementary school comeback I’m rubber you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s close. SO, Jesus lets the Law do its work here. As St. Paul writes in Romans 3:20, “through the law comes knowledge of sin.” This is why the law was given, to show humanity its sin. It’s to penetrate our disguises and stop the game of denial to expose our need for transformation. The law was given to show us our sin, or as St. Paul says later in Romans 5:20, “The law came in to increase the trespass.” Jesus holds up the same standard of perfection demanded by the law against the accusers. He taught in His Sermon on the Mount that we must be perfect like our heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5). He holds up the law to the accusers as a mirror to show them their own fault.
I don’t know about you, but I know that I have certainly been quick to lay out judgment against others long before I ever thought about how the law, or whatever standard I might be using at the time, might apply to me. I’m guilty of doing it with people that I don’t even know. I’ll flip past the Real Housewives of Wherever, and I’ll dismiss the people on that show as petty and materialistic, and I’ll pat myself on the back for not watching it (at least regularly). Or, I’ll be in the check out line and see something about some celebrity imploding and almost without thinking, I’ll think something like, “That guy is an idiot.” When we are in that place, we are just like the scribes and Pharisees in this passage. We are busy pointing the finger at someone else purposefully ignoring ourselves and our own issues. . .or we’re just blaming someone else for them. In my insecurity I will find anyone or anything I can to point to or to blame to keep the attention off of me.
The fact is that Jesus shows that the law is about me. It’s not about other people and their problems. It is about me and my shortcomings. It is about me and my brokenness. It is about my sin. We stand alone before the law. When we want to make it about someone else like the scribes and the Pharisees, when we are the accusers, we find Jesus holding it up as a mirror staring us in the face revealing our hypocrisy. No one can stand in the face of perfection. That’s what we see in our passage too. After Jesus tells the scribes and Pharisees that the one who is without sin can throw the first stone he goes back to writing in the dirt, and they begin to leave one by one beginning with the oldest. When they stand looking into the mirror of the law their consciences convict them of their own guilt. Not one of them can throw that first stone.
Just as an aside, I think it’s an interesting thing that the older ones left first. It makes sense when you think about it. Time has a way of giving us enough opportunities to realize that we are not perfect. Now solidly in my mid-40s I am much more aware of my brokenness than I was 10 years ago. . .even 5 years ago! I had a professor at seminary (Trinity School for Ministry) that used to teach about God using the law to show us our sin, and whenever a student doubted him and thought that they were succeeding in their effort to keep the law, he would always tell them, “Just give it time.” Something would happen in life that would convince them otherwise. It makes me think of my wife’s late grandmother, who lived to 93. Whenever we went to visit her we would sit and talk about life and faith and so on. And in the most disarming and wonderful way she’d say that she had reached her age because God needed that much time to teach her what it really meant to live quietly and rely on Him. She had the true wisdom of knowing herself and her own shortcomings and depending on God’s grace for her. I think that’s what time does, it slowly erodes away the denial about our true state. St. Paul, the great missionary of the Bible and author of more books in the New Testament than anyone else, wrote to Timothy toward the end of his life, considering himself “the worst of sinners” (1 Tim. 1). Time seems to make us softer to the judgment of the law. We’re not as resistant to the idea that we need to be transformed.
Back to Jesus. . .after a few moments he and the woman are left alone. She is standing there before Jesus accused and exposed in her sin and shame. Her denial ended the moment she was pulled out of the bed and dragged out into the light by the scribes and Pharisees. What do you think was going through her mind this whole time? She couldn’t hide anywhere. She couldn’t make any excuse. She couldn’t try to bargain her way out of this. She was completely alone in front of a crowd of people waiting for her execution to begin. She had quite literally reached her end.
Maybe she had heard about Jesus before this. She might have heard that he was a friend to the sick, poor, and needy. She might have heard that he had healed people and performed some miracles. Maybe she had even heard that he hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes. Maybe this Jesus would have mercy on her…? But I wonder if that small glimmer of hope left when she heard his answer to the religious leaders. He just gave them the go ahead. Here it comes. This is the end. You can imagine her with her head down, eyes closed, wincing and waiting for the first excruciating blow. But one after the other she hears the stones fall out of the hands of her accusers and thud against the ground as they leave. THUD. . .THUD. . .THUD. . .THUD. And she opens her eyes and lifts her head and she’s standing there before Jesus not knowing what he’s going to do.
It’s important to note that Jesus does not disagree with the scribes and the Pharisees about her guilt. He knows very well that under the Law she deserves to be stoned. But he also knows that only a righteous person has the right to execute such judgment. “Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Jesus is the One who is without sin. He is the true Judge. As Jesus says earlier in chapter 5 verse 22 of John’s gospel, “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” He alone has the authority to condemn sinners. He alone can judge this woman. But here we see how Jesus approaches the accused. We’ve already seen how he approaches the accusers – he holds up the mirror of the law to them showing them that they are in the same boat as the person they are accusing and therefore have no right to condemn them. Here’s the switch. After they’ve all left, he stands up and asks her, “Woman, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” As Bishop Andrew Williams says, “Jesus asks these kinds of questions to which he already knows the answer, to create space in our hearts for what he’s about to do.” He wants to highlight his grace to us and for us. She answers, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” The only One with the authority to judge her pardons her. He does not condemn her. He changes her story from being the accused – shame, guilt, judgment – to being the forgiven – accepted, loved. This is her moment of transformation.
This brings to mind other passages in John’s gospel. Jesus says in 3:17, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Or in 5:45, “ Do no think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope.” Later in chapter 8 verse 16 he says, “You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one.” He reveals the greatest truth about God that he always desires mercy.
But how does this work? Doesn’t this mean that Jesus is contradicting the Law? Isn’t he just proving the scribes and Pharisees right by saying Moses was wrong? Not at all. He is free to pardon her because he is the one without sin who will become sin on the cross for her and for all sinners. He would take the punishment that she deserved; he would take the stoning. This is the grace of God. Jesus fulfills the law on our behalf and pays the penalty for our sin, so that we might go free. This is the good news that transforms.
As we have seen, God uses the law to show us how things really are. It stops the game of denial that we like to play. It reveals us as sinners before a perfect and holy God unfit and unworthy to cast judgment on anyone else. SO, the law doesn’t really change anything, it simply opens our eyes to what already is…our need. We see Jesus letting the Law do that work in this passage in both cases of the accusers and the accused.
The transformation happens when we have been brought to our end, when we can no longer hide or blame or deny the reality of our sin. The change happens when we are met in this exposed state by Jesus and he says, “Neither do I condemn you.” Grace is the thing that transforms us. It gives us new hearts that find their identity not in what we do or don’t do, but in what Jesus has done on the cross once and for all.
Now most of us have not had our shame dragged out into public for all to see. Maybe some of us have in certain ways. Maybe we have been found out in a public manner. If so, then it doesn’t take much to apply this passage to that situation. At the same time, I think we can relate to the woman in a more private way. We understand her shame and guilt because we have felt the accusation of the Law in our consciences and in our hearts. I guess that make us a lot like the scribes and Pharisees too because we know that we have no right to bring judgment against anyone else. We are not innocent. We are in need of transformation. We need to meet Jesus face to face in our place of brokenness, in our shame, in our pain. Like the woman, we need him to intervene on our behalf.
The great news of the gospel is he has intervened, and he continues to meet us in those places right now. For those of us feeling the accusation right now, for those of us who have looked into the mirror of the perfect Law and have recognized that we are not ok, we can hear his words over us, “Neither do I condemn you.” As we’ve seen He alone is our Judge, he alone the right to condemn us, and He has chosen to be condemned for us. The famous theologian Karl Barth wrote in his Church Dogmatics that Jesus is the Judge judged in our place. He has taken our shame and our guilt. He has gone to the cross for us so that we might go free. We are transformed from the accuser and the accused into the forgiven.
The final thing I want to say is Jesus Christ meets you in your darkest, most broken place with grace and forgiveness (Neither do I condemn you) so that you might be free; that is the go and sin no more part of this passage. As I said before, grace is the enabling transformative word. By it we are changed from people who were once accused in our sin to people who are loved and are set free to love. This is the way God works. He brings life out of death. He calls into being that which is from that which is not (Genesis 1 and 2, Romans 4:17). So, when Jesus tells the woman to go and sin no more, he is speaking to the new heart in her. Because of His forgiveness, she is a new creation that has a new desire to love and serve the Lord. Just think about it. When you’ve been forgiven by someone that had the right to cut you off doesn’t it inspire love in you for that person? You don’t want to turn right back to doing the thing that hurt them in the first place. You want to love them. This is the power of grace in our lives. Love begets love.
Now, do you think the woman left and never sinned again? Of course not. That’s why the cross was necessary. Jesus knew he had to go to the cross to finish it once and for all. She would stumble again, just like all of us do, at the same time we are given new hearts that recognize that we find our life and hope outside of ourselves. Our new life is completely dependent upon Jesus and his work for us. He is our life! I think that’s why Jesus said it the way he did. He didn’t tell her to not commit adultery again, but he told her to never sin again full stop. I think he said it that way so that she would realize she could not do that on her own. . .she would need someone to do it for her. This continually points her back to him and his cross for it is the only place where we find our sin taken from us as far as the east is to the west. It is there that we are declared sinless because of Jesus. We never leave his cross, but we return to it daily to hear again the love we’ve been given, and it inspires us to love again. Amen.
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