Ash Wednesday 2019 – Joel 2: 1-2, 12-17; John 8: 1-11

Revd. James Harris – Assistant Chaplain

 

Our gospel reading today is of dubious character – and I’m not talking about the central character. What I mean is that this account doesn’t appear in a great majority of the most reliable ancient biblical manuscripts and is not commented upon at all by the early church fathers.

 

This is not to say the passage was entirely unknown. It appears to have been referenced in passing as early as 100 AD; Saint Jerome does include it in his fourth century Vulgate edition; Saint Augustine writes about it but it’s not until we reach medieval, particularly western, biblical manuscripts that it becomes a commonplace inclusion.

 

Even today, in most modern translations, including the NRSV which we use in this church, this piece of text suffers that most ignominious of treatments – the square bracket or, worse, the footnote.

We are left to conclude then that although this probably is an authentic account of an episode in the life and ministry of Christ, nonetheless, for whatever reason, this dramatic, gritty, sensational encounter was not deemed worthy of inclusion in the mainstream biblical tradition.

Augustine suggests it was perhaps too scandalous and dangerous a topic to confront.

 

Which, of course, it is.

 

And which, of course, makes it a perfect illumination of what we might want to consider on this Ash Wednesday.

Dust, sin, human frailty and shortfall: it has all the vital ingredients of a Lenten experience. The smudge of ash on our foreheads leaves us in no doubt about that.

 

But what is more scandalous still, and a stumbling block to many even today, is the shape of that ashen smudge – the cross, the second chance, the new life, the abundant mercy that is shown in the face of sin; the divine longing for life in the face of the human tendency to death; the unbounded horizon of the godly perspective which reaches beyond the finite vision of our fenced-in hearts.

 

‘Rend your hearts and not your clothing.’

***

I invite you to imagine the Gospel scene and place yourself somewhere in it, in the group surrounding Jesus.

 

As the woman is thrust into the midst of the group, you can feel the crowd closing around her, pressing in, eyes blazing with self -righteous zeal, the weight of shame and recrimination weighing down on her. The words of the prophet Joel perhaps take on new meaning:

 ‘Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near – a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. Like darkness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes…’

The tension and the terror are palpable as the elders of the Pharisees pose their loaded question: ‘what do you say, teacher?’

 As the question hangs in the air, he says … nothing, but bends to the ground and begins to draw his finger through the dirt. You crane to try and see what he’s doing, what he’s writing, but it’s difficult to make out and still the accusations and questions fill the air.

 ‘Caught in the act. Text book case. No doubt about it. But what do you say, teacher?’

And then, he’s unfolding his body, lifting himself up in the same way a healed cripple would straighten herself, his gaze encompasses the crowd, looking each in the eye, including you, and he pronounces the long-awaited judgement:

 

‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’

 

The baying falls quiet. Indignation, shock, humiliation, self-realisation ripple round the encircling crowd.

 

And he stoops again; more dirt-drawing. It appears there is a choice to be made.

 

And then one by one, taking their lead from the most senior, people take their chance silently to slip away, back to the safety and security of the temple perhaps, back to less confusing environments where the rules still apply and everyone knows their place. Back to…what exactly?

 Only she chooses to remain. Again, perhaps the words of the prophet Joel ring in her ears:

 ‘Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord your God for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him?’

 So turn to him she does; meets his gaze head-on as he rises again from the earth and in his rising sets her free to live another day.

***

Sin was – and is – a grave matter. It unbalances relationships, destabilises society, damages the covenant relationship with God. It should not be dismissed lightly – and I don’t believe that’s what Jesus does in this encounter.

But if it doesn’t sound too flippant, I don’t think the sin itself is the only consideration here. Identifying sin is the easy bit, it’s second nature, arguably first nature to us. We see it everywhere. More important is what we do about it.

And where we go wrong, what we so often forget, is that we cannot remedy sin through our own effort. We cannot self-medicate, auto-atone our sin or the sins of our society, however expert or assured we may be, however well-rehearsed our intellectual arguments and pure our rituals. Only God saves and only the love of God has the power to transform a human heart.

 

The dusty crosses on our foreheads this morning remind us that Jesus – the God-Man – stooped, for each of us here as for our unnamed sister in the Gospel, to mire himself in the dust of broken, disordered, earthly life that he might lift that same broken existence to Heaven through the blood of the cross; that the price would be paid, the demands met, the remedy offered once for all; that our earthbound, dustbound lives might be redeemed and given new purpose if we would only remain, meet his loving gaze and acknowledge our need of him.

***

 I once heard a preacher say that, come the Day of Judgement, the question we will be posed is unlikely to be how many times did you sin, or how scandalously, or how mundanely did you fall short in your various ways – but rather, to whom are you going to choose to turn for the atonement of your sins?

 All but the woman in question chose to take their chances elsewhere. Only she remained to own her vulnerability before him and submit herself to trust in his loving judgement.

She is our Lenten pattern.

 Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.

 Rend your hearts and not your clothing.

 Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.

 Amen.