Midweek Lent, 2025 + Love Does No Wrong to a Neighbor +
Week 5: Love does no wrong to a neighbor

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: Romans 12:1-3, 13:8-10; John 8:2-11

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

This is a disturbing scene.

A group of religious men, authority figures, have dragged a woman into the grounds of the Temple and thrown her at Jesus’ feet. They lurk in a semi-circle around Jesus and this woman for all the public to see. The salacious details are they’ve caught her in the act of adultery. But where’s the person she was committing adultery with? If they truly cared about sin, there’d be two people brought to Jesus.

But they’ve got a bigger fish to fry. They want to expose Jesus as someone who doesn’t care about God’s law. They want him to prove publicly and beyond doubt that he is against the Torah. And they’ll threaten this woman’s life to do it. It’s a revolting sight.

So Jesus changes the visuals.

He kneels down and starts writing in the dirt. Far too much speculation focuses on what Jesus wrote in the dust at their feet. But that literally misses the bigger picture.

A group of men hovers over a woman cringing in submission and fear, knowing her life is on the line. And Jesus, who is standing, kneels. Now he’s lower than the woman, lower than her accusers. He will not stand over her. And he shames them in their standing.

Jesus utterly turns the tables. Suddenly the accusers are the uncomfortable and embarrassed ones. Suddenly they’re on trial instead of Jesus, or the woman.

If we’ve learned anything these Lenten Wednesdays, it’s that nothing can get between us and loving our neighbor.

Poverty, different faiths, our own discomfort with connecting with people, sickness, hunger, our privilege and wealth, none can keep us from this love we are called to give.

This isn’t news to these scribes and Pharisees. It’s core to their Scriptures, the heart of God’s Torah: love God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

So the picture of people who claim those Scriptures trying to keep those Scriptures by destroying their sister is awful. Keep that scene in your mind. No sense of right and wrong, no understanding of sin, can ever lead you to stand over another person in anger clamoring for their punishment.

Paul says today that love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love fulfills Torah. This is the only acceptable stance for a follower of Christ. If what you do, think, pray for, act on, decide, leads to harming your neighbor, you have to stop. No faithfulness to God you can claim overrides the command “do no wrong to your neighbor.”

There’s no question this woman sinned, if in fact she was caught in adultery.

Jesus seems to prove the leaders right about his view of Torah. He doesn’t appear to care that she broke God’s law. He cares a lot that they want to kill her so they can catch him in a trap.

So Jesus says, “If you’ve never sinned, you can throw a stone.” He instantly reminds her accusers, and everyone in the crowd, and us, that selective judging of sin is a lie. Everyone has done things contrary to love of God and love of neighbor, everyone has sinned.

Jesus doesn’t say what the woman did was right. He says if sin is the excuse you use to do wrong to a neighbor, then you should be honest about your own sin.

And doesn’t that hit home? How easy it is for us to pick and choose which sins we want to call out, which wrongdoing we’re indignant about? We judge some people harshly. These times we’re in have proved that. We let others get a free pass. And if we look at ourselves with Jesus’ words, can any of us hold our stone? Aren’t we all humbled, needing to drop the stone and shuffle away as quietly as we can?

Nothing can get in the way of your love of God and love of neighbor. Not even your neighbor’s sin. Or yours.

And to love this way, we need to be changed.

The only way we can love as Jesus calls us to love is if we become like him. We can’t understand or live in Christ’s way if our minds think as they normally think. So, “be transformed by the renewing of your minds,” Paul says, “that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Be transformed, Paul says, changed by the Holy Spirit into the Christ you are called to be.

Then you become someone who finally, simply, consistently loves God and neighbor with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Who doesn’t argue with God about this, or test God about this, or petulantly try to preserve a tiny piece of your own self-righteousness. You become a new creation.

At the end, the woman walks away, standing straight, no one attacking her.

Jesus recognizes her sin, but doesn’t condemn her. He just says, “now go and stop sinning.”

And that’s our gift. Jesus’ words today call all our own sins to our mind, and we slump in shame. But the Son of God’s answer to that shame and sin is the same as in this story: I don’t condemn you. Go, and don’t sin anymore. Let me transform you. Let me make you new, so you are like me.

So, whatever you might imagine that woman felt as she walked out of the Temple grounds that day, that’s Christ’s gift to you.

And in the Holy Spirit you are transformed. To become God’s true love in this world. For your neighbor. For all.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen