Everyone Needs Forgiveness | 9/14/25
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When you imagine Jesus looking at you with compassion instead of condemnation, how does that change your self-understanding
How can we as a community respond differently when the world demands retaliation and revenge?
Jesus’ words, “Go, and sin no more,” are an invitation to freedom, not condemnation. What habits or choices might Jesus be inviting you to let go of so you can live more fully?
Which role in the story resonates with you most right now: the woman, the accusers, the silent crowd, or the one extending forgiveness?
What does being a courageous witness for Christ look like in your daily life when forgiveness feels impossible?
Transcript:
How do you talk about forgiveness? On the Sunday after a political activist has been murdered. On the Sunday after a teenager has gone into yet another high school and opened fire, critically injured two fellow teenagers in Colorado. And a teenager killed, and five young men injured standing in an apartment corridor in Tampa.
How do you talk about forgiveness on a Sunday after 40 more people have died in bombings in Gaza, bringing the casualty total, according to multiple reports, to 200,000 people?
Or on a Sunday after yet another airstrike has killed 24 Ukrainians and injured 19 more while they were standing in a line waiting to collect their pension?
Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.
I don’t know about you, but after a week like this, there is a part of me that just wants to gather my people and find some small corner of the world where we can all huddle together and just shut everything else out. But I know that Christ calls me to more than that.
And I can’t get the opening line from Trinity’s vision out of my head: To be a courageous witness for Christ. That’s not just me. That’s all of us. And we desperately need the courageous witness of Christ that we find in Scripture. And so I turn to Scripture, looking for a word from the Lord.
And thank goodness, there in the verses that were picked out weeks ago for this morning, for this service, I find something that can speak to us even now, even in this moment.
I invite you to listen in with me this morning to a story about an encounter that Jesus has, that John tells us about in the eighth chapter of his gospel.
Early in the morning, he returned to the temple. All the people gathered around him, and he sat down and taught them. The legal experts and Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, placing her in the center of the group. They said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery. In the law, Moses commanded us to stone women like this. What do you say?”
They said this to test him because they wanted a reason to bring an accusation against him. Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger. They continued to question him, so he stood up and replied, “Whoever hasn’t sinned should throw the first stone.”
Bending down again, he wrote on the ground. Those who heard him went away one by one, beginning with the elders. Finally, only Jesus and the woman were left in the middle of the crowd.
Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Is there no one to condemn you?” She said, “No one, sir.” Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on, don’t sin anymore.”
This is the Word of God for the people of God.
And God’s people say, Thanks be to God.
Would you pray with me?
Come, Holy Spirit, and breathe life into the words that I speak, that they might carry a word from you into our hearts and lives this morning. Amen.
They were conditioned to believe that she deserved to die.
The scene is the temple. Jesus comes in early in the morning and sits down, as would have been the practice of a rabbi in those days. It was from a posture of sitting that he would have taught whoever showed up to listen. And John tells us that a crowd is there, listening to Jesus teach.
And in the middle of this time of instruction and illumination, suddenly, there is commotion on the edge of the crowd. There are noises, there are voices, and there are men who are beginning to sidestep and push their way through the crowd in order to get into the middle where Jesus is. And they are dragging a woman with them.
Think about this for just a moment with me. Think about what it must have felt like to be dragged into this place, so exposed, so humiliated, in front of this crowd. Even if the men who brought her there believed that she had done something terribly wrong, they could have chosen to handle the situation differently.
But no, they were going to make a spectacle of this. And so they bring her right in, because any shred of compassion that maybe they once had—these leaders and their community—it was gone now.
Never mind the fact that the man who must have been a part of whatever they found, because they said that she was caught in adultery, the man is nowhere to be found. They’ve just dragged the woman in. Never mind the fact that in those times, there’s a pretty good chance that she may not have had many options or alternatives in the moment. And on top of that, the reason they bring her into the circle is really just to exploit her, with their ultimate goal in mind.
She is just a dispensable pawn in a much bigger plan they have. The real target for them is Jesus. He’s the one that they really want to catch. And if they can just get him to say something contradictory to the law that he is sitting there teaching the people in the temple, then they might find something worthy of putting him to death.
That’s what they really want. “Hey, Jesus, the law says that this woman deserves to die. What do you say?”
You know, it’s at this point in the story that I find myself this week asking a couple of questions. What happens in a society where people are conditioned to believe that certain other people deserve to die?
We need look no further than the events of just this past week in our nation and in our world to see the horror of such a situation. And as we look back and as we look ahead, there is a truth that we know and an anxiety that we feel. We might even be terrified this morning by the idea that, as these things have happened, so there are people who now think that, in response, someone else deserves to die.
Violence in response to violence is never a satisfactory answer for violence.
The second question I find myself asking is this: What happens in a society when the goal of engagement with someone who thinks differently from you is to catch them in a trap?
That’s what’s at the core of this story today. They wanted to catch Jesus in a trap. And we see this same mentality playing out time and time again in our current American landscape.
And when that is the goal of engagement, we are no longer seeing the person. We have become blinded by our appetite for discrediting them. And it is not a long journey from there to us justifying ourselves in dehumanizing the other.
When we pick the story up again, Jesus is still seated. And just in that simple fact, friends, there may be a lesson for us this morning.
When the men come waving and shouting and wanting to rile up the crowd and get a quick, reactionary response out of Jesus to their question, Jesus is still sitting on the ground. And he bends over and starts to write something.
Ever wonder what Jesus was writing? I’ve got some thoughts, but I’ll leave it to your imagination for you to think about what maybe Jesus was writing in that moment. He just writes. But the noise doesn’t stop. The demand for an answer keeps coming. And so finally, he does stand up. And in that moment, I imagine Jesus, full of the grace and the love that is who he is, looking around and saying:
“Whoever hasn’t sinned, you throw the first stone.”
Suddenly, the spotlight has shifted. And now it’s no longer just on the woman. It is on everybody.
And as Jesus sits back down and starts to write again, the sound of shuffling feet exiting the middle of the circle is the sound of confession. Not a confession that they wanted to make, mind you, but the question that Jesus poses leaves no one qualified in the middle of the circle to throw that first stone.
And so they walk away. Because, as it turns out, everyone who was in the circle with Jesus that day needed forgiveness.
Once the accusers have left, it’s just Jesus and the woman.
And the crowd. Did you notice that? Have you ever thought about this moment as being just Jesus and the woman, and everybody else has gone? But the verse says it was just Jesus and the woman left in the middle of the crowd. And Jesus is about to keep teaching them through the way in which he engages this woman.
“Now, where are they? Is there no one left to condemn you?”
And the woman raises her eyes for the first time since she’s been dragged in. “No one, sir.”
Jesus has flipped this moment on its head. An attempt at humiliation has been turned into an opportunity for grace. And in that moment, we get to be the witnesses of the truth and the evidence of a conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus back earlier in John’s gospel: For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.
After receiving her response, Jesus continues with the final words of our Scripture this morning: “Then go, and from now on, don’t sin anymore.”
Now, I want to take just a moment for us to notice here that this is not a finger-wagging Jesus at the woman. That would be inconsistent with everything we have come to hear from Jesus up to this point in the story. He does not suddenly shift into finger-wagging mode. He is doing what Jesus does.
He is inviting the woman into a future that is the best possible future for her, which is what he does for us. When the woman—and when we—are invited to sin no more, it is because Jesus knows that sin is what keeps us wrapped up, and sin is what brings harm to ourselves and to the people around us. Sin is the choices that we make that are no good for us or for anybody else.
Jesus just wants her to have the best life possible from now on. So go and sin no more because everyone needs forgiveness.
I wonder where you find yourself in the story this morning. Maybe it’s the one who is being dragged into the circle, and you are feeling exposed, ashamed, humiliated because of something that you have said or done, or something that somebody else is holding against you, and they want you to pay for it.
Maybe you identify this morning with one of those indignant ones who think somebody else needs to pay for something, and you want to drag them in and get Jesus’ attention about it all. And in doing so, you have lost sight of this person’s humanity because of your disdain for what they say or think or believe.
Or maybe you are a member of the crowd that was gathered that day, who sits and watches and says nothing in the face of cruelty.
Everyone in this story–everyone in our story–needs forgiveness.
So my friends, hear the good news. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. That proves God’s love for us.
In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.
Amen.