They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger.  John 8:6

Lent is meant to be a time of repentance, which is a very churchy word that means change.  Our regular practice is to perhaps give up this or that, not eat meat on Fridays, fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, maybe give a bit more charitably.  None of these are objectionable. On the contrary, they are ways to express our faith in a manner that is intentional and real. 

But I wonder if we’ve thought about what Lent might be more fundamentally about.  What if we thought of Lent as an invitation rise to, or at the very least start to understand, Jesus’ level of consciousness.  Today’s Gospel illustrates both the invitation and the very real challenge. 

You almost surely know the story of the woman allegedly “caught” in sin, or at the very least, its most famous line: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7).  It is certainly one of the most disarming responses I have ever read anywhere.  But I want to dwell here today on what Jesus was doing before this extraordinary reply: writing in the ground with his finger, so much so that he has to be nagged a few times for a reply.

You might ask…really?  A woman is about to be stoned.  She is saved by Jesus’ reply.  And we are going to talk about doodling in the dirt?

Hang with me, if you would. I read this part of the story as Jesus realizing the sheer enormity of his task at hand.  Maybe it was even despair.  He looks to the ground and for a few long moments has no words at all.  Why?

Judgment, exclusion, scapegoating, creating outcasts, and ridding ourselves of those outcasts – it is engrained in us.  In the Gospel we have a bunch of guys ready to stone a woman, which they’ve justified to themselves with technical legal arguments. Before we dismiss that as ancient barbarism, I urge us all to think about the stones we cast: those we cast on the homeless, on immigrants, on people who take wrong turns in life, and the justifications we use in the casting of those stones.  The scribes and Pharisees had their laws to back them up; we, of course, have ours.  More broadly, we can’t disagree anymore without cancelling the people we disagree with, or cancelling millions of dollars of previously available funding.  It seems we live in a state of perpetual judgment and condemnation. 

What the Pharisees miss – and what to their credit they realize they miss, when they eventually back off – is that the law was not and is not an end in itself, that no law of God has as its purpose condemnation.  No reasonable conception of the Christian faith can ground itself in condemnation and exclusion.  Sadly, its historical alignment with prevailing power structures have made this far less than obvious.  

What would the world look like if we kept front and center Jesus’ famous response?  What if we remembered that exactly none of us is without error, fault, and blame?  That the success we may experience is as much due to circumstance as whatever merit we’ve told ourselves we’ve earned? That we all have huge blind spots (see Matthew 7:3-5), that we all need healing? 

Lest we think that no one is publicly advocating in this spirit today, Pope Francis’ commentary on our immigration policy reflects, in part, the fundamental proposition that we are called to lead with mercy, not judgment, with love and not with condemnation.  Yes, the laws are there and yes they need to be followed.  But – also yes – we are talking about people and families and children, people we are loudly and clearly called in our faith to love.  Our discussions and policies ought to be informed as much by compassion as by security. Hard?  For sure. Required?  I think the Gospel is pretty clear. 

And as Jesus passed from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” And he got up and followed him. Matthew 9:9

Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus tell folks to worship him. He does however repeatedly tell folks to follow him. In all of our church-going habits, all of our sacrament receiving and professions of faith, I wonder if we have given this enough reflection.

It’s dangerous territory, actually. Jesus led a radical life, one that is indeed difficult to follow. He did not achieve much as achievements are conventionally understood. He didn’t write a book or play a sport in a Division One college. He wasn’t chasing merit or climbing any kind of ladder. He never actively sought recognition.

In short, he didn’t do anything that we spend most of our time doing. He spent his time with outcasts, the poor, those on the skids. He didn’t talk about the problems of poverty. He lived with it, all of it. If conservative politics can be criticized as being unconcerned with the poor, liberal politics can be criticized as happy to talk but not so keen to act.

I wonder what a Creed based on Jesus’ invitation to follow him would sound like? Every week we in many Christian denominations say the Nicene Creed – statements that we affirm as true (I am afraid to say, quite mechanically and without much thought). But what if we affirmed a commitment to follow Jesus? What if we affirmed our commitment to step back, think outside of our big goals, and think about why Jesus, Son of God as we affirm in the Nicene Creed, came and dwelled in such a lowly place? What if we committed to join him, in our own ways, ourselves?