What Would Jesus Post? (with audio)

Offered in worship at Grace Presbyterian church on February 15th, 2020 

http://www.gracejenkintown.org/sermons/2020/2/19/february-16-2020-what-would-jesus-post

Text: John 8:1-12

Part of a Series "Unpolar:  Living as a Christian in an Election Year"

Jeff Chu, well known author and reporter found joy playing tag with a baby pygmy Goat named August.  Jeff would hide behind a tree or a fence at the nearby farm and August would bound  toward him in a dog like manner.  If Jeff would sit or lie down in the field, August was quick to jump on him and lick his face.  Jeff knew exactly where to scratch August’s ear to get his leg to dance.  

And in those fleeting moments of playing with a baby goat, Jeff was able to forget about the stress of the world.  He was able to forget about his writing deadlines, his parent’s disapproval of his relationship,  his ongoing internal dialogue questioning faith and he was able to still his thoughts and just experience joy.  

The Hebrew tradition gives us the concept of a scapegoat. 

On Yom Kippur, two goats were chosen. One goat was slaughtered as a blood sacrifice  The rabbi would lay hands on a second goat, transferring the sins of the people to that goat and then the second goat was sent out into the wilderness, never to return, as a symbol that the sins had been removed from people.

Though August was never sent off into the wilderness in a sacrificial way, Jeff felt that the time he spent with him allowed the weights he had been carrying to be lifted.  He found that his spirits soared after these moments, and he was able to reframe and refocus his path forward.   August would literally carry his troubles away.  

The concept of a scapegoat is not new to us.  It is a common literary archetype and it is often, unfortunately, a common societal norm to place blame for wrongdoing on one, often innocent, group or person.  

I find it gut wrenching to think about the woman at the temple in the John text today.  We are told that she is brought by scribes and Pharisees into the temple where Jesus was teaching.  A woman, caught in the act of adultery, brought right into the holy place, to be shamed, to be put on display.  If she was truly caught in the act, she must have been quite disheveled, frazzled, bewildered.  I try to imagine if that was our sanctuary and our behavior.   

Did they have photos, did they have a written statement? Did they walk into a house and find this woman with a married man?

The text in John makes it clear that this display, this public shaming,  has nothing to do with the morality of the woman.  The point of shaming her is not for her punishment or her redemption.  She is the scapegoat of the temple officials who are trying to trap Jesus.  Verse 6 tells us in plain speak, “they were trying to trap him, in order to have a basis for accusing him.”

They said to Jesus, “The law of Moses commands us to stone such a woman, What do you say that we should do?”

The law of Moses they cite here shows up in Leviticus 20:10 — If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, they shall both be put to death.

I don’t know about you, but there seems to be something missing in this picture.  Leviticus says they both shall be put to death, but the story only brings us a woman caught in adultery.  

A scapegoat.  A focal point to shame and ridicule and blame in order to serve an ulterior motive.  

In a world of click bait, incendiary one liners designed to lure us into reading online articles that are carefully planned to increase hype, I tried to imagine what the live feed would look like from the temple this day.

Jesus loves adultery; ignores religious law, click here for full story

Men who served the temple for 35 years ignored by so called Messiah

The man named Jesus plays in the sand while a woman’s life hangs in the balance. 

Woman who breaks law of Moses walks away with no punishment, all women will now jump into adultery! Sign here to Stop Jesus NOW!

It’s easy to get drawn in by these one liners, these tabloid headlines.  It’s easy to want to join a rally, take a side, state your opinion.  

Two very faithful female friends of mine got into a social media spat just the other day over an article that headlines “Trump says he has done more for Christians than Jesus.” which as it turned out was a satirical piece written for the humor website The Babylon Bee.

The Pew research center reports that 62% of Americans now get their primary news on social media and 75% of Americans use social media for updates to news stories.  

Though we may want to condemn social media in all of it’s negative influences on our lives, it is a primary voice in America today.

It is, in many ways, the town square for the world.  And in every corner there is  a jester on a stand pitching a viewpoint, calling for a mob, shouting for a ban or an impeachment or progress or shouting cries of  lament for the days of old.  

And so in every season, but especially in an election season, we must ask ourselves what role Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Snap Chat and Tik Tok and You Tube play in influencing our perspective on our nation and how these platforms impact our interaction with our sisters and brothers, our neighbors and our friends, the ones we call beloved and the ones we demonize.  

Surprisingly or perhaps not surprisingly, there is a twitter account in Jesus name.  It’s mostly funny tweets like:  

Dad just told me it’s not really my birthday, but I’m hoping for presents anyway.  

Don’t eat my chocolate bunny, I’ll be back in three days.

Where can I get my Birkenstocks repaired?

or What would I do?

And so in a humorous way, maybe we do know what Jesus would post, but I believe that the story in John 8 gives us a model for how we can approach our online and offline behavior in this season.  

First and foremost, now and for eternity, the message of Jesus is always a message of grace.  A message of receiving a gift that we do not deserve and we do not earn.  The law said the woman and her adulterous partner should be put to death and instead of punishment for sin, Jesus offers grace.  

The scribes stood ready, they had come with their legal arguments, their knowledge, their position.  And their intent was to trap.  

But Jesus does not walk into the trap.  Quietly he writes in the sand and allows the anger and the fury and the self righteousness of the accusers to take it’s own course.  

We can learn from this behavior of Jesus and allow those spewing hate to spew without stepping into the trap. 

Jesus offers simply:   If Any of you who are without sin,  throw the first stone.  

And without speaking each person there confessed their sin because no stones were thrown.

I wish I could say the same about our current treatment of one another.  

Every day I witness people I love walking in to these traps, engaging in these fights —   online, on the news, in family conversations, we are walking into the fight armed with our bag of stones, ready with words of defense, words of position that quickly turn into words of condemnation.  

Every day I hear it and I see it and I read it. 

Can you believe Trump said this after the prayer breakfast?  Can you believe she tore up the papers?  Can you believe he tweeted this? Can you believe the Democrats want that?  We are caught in a stone throwing match of epic proportion and we are so quick to place all of the blame for the entire state of the world on one person, one party, one idea.  

Just yesterday a pastor friend of mine posted a story  about Trump and the gospel and within milliseconds the comments section went back and forth spewing lines of hate, one side proclaiming that progressives are going to force every conservative pastor to perform gay marriages and the other side proclaiming that Trump cannot be a Christian because of x, y, and z.  

And the fury and the rage grew.  

We cannot place all of the blame for the world on Democrats or the republicans or Trump or Obama.  

When we engage in these stone throwing matches, you know what happens?

People get hurt.  People are bruised.  They are cast out.  Demonized.  Sent away with a label and a scarlet letter. 

Jesus looks at the adulterous woman and says Dear Woman, have they condemned you?

She must have been trembling.  She must have been terrified.  

She answers him, “No, they have not.”

And Jesus, rising above all of the shame and hate and pain in this moment, says “neither do I condemn you.  Now go and leave your life of sin.”

He refuses to condemn her.  He refuses to stone her.  He offers grace.  

Where would we be, you and I, without this grace?

Where would we be, church, without Jesus looking at us and seeing all of our sins and saying I forgive you.  I love you.  My grace covers everything you have ever done.  I will take your sins.  Place them on me so that you can go forth and live a new life.  

The stoning, the condemning, the shaming, this is not your calling  This is not your work.  There should be no part of you, Jesus followers, that is judging the opinion, the belief, the value, the humanity of another person.  Read other perspectives, try to see things from another way, notice the traps being set for you, refuse to step into them and refuse to condemn.  

The work of Jesus is to offer grace.  To be a shelter in the storm of stone throwing.  To be a refuge to the victims of political disagreements. To be a reconciling agent of peace.   

I thought long and hard this week about my own social media usage and the things I witness in this political climate.

I imagined a red letter social media platform or even a new York times or Wall Street Journal red letter media platform.  What I mean by that is that I tried to imagine when or if  I have seen the words of Jesus proclaimed in these arguments.  And it honestly feels like the words of the gospel are absent in our political debates, unless they are used to set traps for others.  

We know what Jesus would post.  

He would post, “Come to me, you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”

He would post “ I pray that you all may be one.”

He would post, in the face of our scapegoating and condemning, “A new command I give you, a command to love one another.”

He would post ”Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

He would post “Now turn from your sin.”

And so, my friends, let us change the narrative.  Let us, in this moment, refuse to turn back to our sin.  Refuse to hurl the stones that condemn.  Refuse to blame the immigrant or the refugee or those on welfare or the republicans or the democrats.  Let us refuse to put our sin on any group or any individual and let us see the one billion people on facebook not as our battlefield, the ones to whom we have to prove our point, but let us see them as our mission field.  As the ones to whom we are privileged to show love, to offer grace, to walk alongside, because this is who Jesus calls us to be.  And the world is watching, wondering if Jesus followers really can love their enemies.  Or if they too are throwing stones and hurling condemnation.  

Let every word we type, every article we share, every comment we add be pleasing to Jesus because for all of the people who are on your friend list or your twitter feed,  or in your office or in your home, you, you, may be the only representation of Jesus they ever have contact with. 

In our faith, we believe in the priesthood of all believers.  That means you have access to the scriptures.  You have the ability to pray and to learn and to grow and to experience the promise of salvation and you are ministers and pastors and shepherds and caretakers of the world. 

Our words, our tweets, our posts, our “likes”  can not be full of slander or degradation because if they are, they will be a hindrance to life abundant for someone who lives without hope, somebody who desperately needs you to be the vessel of grace in their moment of hardship.  

Resist the temptation to engage in the political fight.

Refuse to place all of the blame on any individual or group.

Do not be about the business of condemnation.

In every conversation offer grace upon grace upon grace and know that Jesus and Jesus follower are not in the business of condemnation.  Ever.  

As Jeff reflected about his playful days with August the Goat he came to realize that what he felt in the animal’s presence was a sense that he could just be himself,  without fear of condemnation, that August was happy to see him no matter what he did or didn’t do.  He confessed that deep down when he is truly honest, he isn’t always sure that God does really love him for who he is. He hopes that God’s love for him and for us can penetrate deep enough to permeate even our darkest thoughts.  But what he is sure of is that if we believed that God loved us, all of us, us as a collective whole, that it would change how we treat others at home, at work, and on social media because we would never want to hurl stones and injure one of God’s beloved to prove a point. 

Amen.  

Excerpts from a podcast between Jeff Chut and Jen Hatmaker:  

http://jenhatmaker.com/faith-groundbreakers-episode-04-jeff-chu.htm