Several years ago, I was preparing to preach a sermon at the church I was serving at as the youth director while in seminary. I was looking for a video and if I’m honest a little inspiration on the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). I stumbled across a video on The Work of the People’s website. Now, I wish I could remember who the woman was speaking, but I guess I remember the most important thing: her words.

“When you read the Bible you are never Jesus in the story. You are either the person in need of Jesus or you are the person ready to stone someone.”

Wait!!!

I’m who in the story?!?!

“You are either the person in need of Jesus or you are the person ready to stone someone.”

At the time, I thought these words were just something I needed to hear for that moment and for that sermon.

Now, after I have allowed the words to echo throughout my head and heart for the past ten to twelve years. After I have heard them resounding in my bones as if the Holy Spirit is playing a song for me to hear. I’m writing about these words for the first time since that sermon over a decade ago.

I’m writing because I believe these words have echoed in my body and resounded in my bones not just because it’s a song I need to hear but also because they have been trying to escape into the world. They’ve been trying to find a way out into a world where too many people think that their role as Christians is to be Jesus in the story.

But let me tell you how I got here…

to this post…

to finally letting these words escape.

Shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned I received a text from a woman at my current church. She, like many of us women, was struggling with the decision. She asked me specifically about the story in the Bible with the woman who was about to be stoned and how Jesus reacted. She was searching for something to help her make sense of what had just happened and something that might help those celebrating see things differently.

Honestly, so was I.

I had decided that I believed Jesus would have supported choice because it’s consistent with both his character (he never forced anyone to do anything) and God’s gift of free will. And that’s about as far as I had made it.

Then, when I was asked point blank if the passage of the woman caught in adultery might help others at least consider that Jesus might vote “no” on overturning Roe v. Wade or any of the other anti-abortion laws making their way through state governments, I knew why it wouldn’t help.

I knew why those words from all those years ago echoed through my heart and mind and resounded in my bones.

“When you read the Bible you are never Jesus in the story.”

These words were pushing out all the ways I had been taught through my rural upbringing in a bright red state to my time dabbling in evangelicalism that I was suppose to be Jesus in the story. It was the last words of my response to this woman that showed it to me.

“Those folks who disagree will focus on the last line of ‘go and sin no more’ rather than the redemptive story or the ‘let he who has no sin cast the first stone.’ For me the beauty of the story is that Jesus was the only one who could have thrown a stone…you know being “sinless” and all…but he doesn’t. The rest of the crowd had no right to condemn as judgment belongs to God.”

There it was just in different words.

You. Are. Never. Jesus.

Focusing on the “go and sin no more” makes us Jesus in the story. He is the one who spoke the words. This is not any of our place in the story. We are not the one’s saying “Go and sin no more.”

We can be the woman — naked, scared, and humiliated. The one wondering why she is alone and being publicly humiliated and threatened. The one wondering how did that man get away and why did he leave me to deal with all of this alone. The one with death seeming imminent.

We can be the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees laying traps left and right. Thinking that we have the right to stone another. Then again, maybe they never intended to stone anyone but just rile people up and try and turn them against the way of Jesus and to their own way.

Or,

We can be the crowd. I’m adding this one to the list of possibilities. They are the silent bystanders watching it all unfold but doing and saying nothing. The crowd came to hear what Jesus had to say but have vanished before the final words.

Maybe the question of their own sin was too much them to bear. Maybe the crowd thought Jesus had finished speaking because he was playing in the sand and left. Maybe they didn’t like that Jesus played in the dirt or lowered himself before this woman (knelt down to write in the sand). Maybe Jesus wrote something in the dirt they didn’t like.

Maybe, the accusers scared them away.

Maybe they were afraid they’d be next.

Whatever the reason they are gone.

The accusers are also gone before the final words. Maybe for many of the same reasons as the crowd. Maybe to find their next “lawbreaker”.

Then, with no audience.

Jesus speaks directly to the woman.

This woman who needed someone to speak to her rather than about her.

Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion starts with a question about where her accusers have gone. He follows that up with something that is often missed in this story “neither do I condemn you.” Then the famous last words “go and sin no more”. In this moment she knew she was not condemned, she was safe, and she was free.

There is no rest of the story.

There is no way of knowing if the woman went and sinned no more. Some want to put a nice little bow on it. Some want to insist she went forth and sinned no more because it’s easier than sitting with the unknown or worse yet the question of what if she didn’t “go and sin no more”.

Today, as I write this, I’m amused that I once would have insisted this woman obeyed Jesus and absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt sinned no more. Yet today, that question has very little weight in my life. Why? Because that’s not the point of the story now is it.

The point is to give us a story to step into and to pose a more important question.

Who are you in the story?