Full of Grace and Truth(Aug282011)
Surprised by Grace Series: 11 08 28
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Full of Grace and Truth
Text: John 1:1-5, 16-18; John 7:53-8:11
BIG IDEA: In Jesus Christ we experience the fullness of grace and truth.
Philosophers talk about binary opposition (SLIDE 1) which refers to a pair of related terms that are, or at least appear, opposite in meaning such as hot-cold, good-bad, darkness-light. We may not use the actual technical philosophical term, but we might refer to things that we assume are binary opposites by using the expression: “Those two are like oil and water.” (Prop: flask of oil and one of water)
Or we may think of sumo wrestlers and skinny people as binary opposites (Powerpoint image). (SLIDE 2)
But there is such a thing as a thin sumo wrestler. I have seen them in Japan. (Show photo.) (SLIDE 3)
There are times when we can think two things are binary opposites, but they are not. Many people in our culture assume that rational and emotional, for example, are binary opposites. That is, if you are a rational person you won’t be emotional, and if you are emotional you won’t be rational. As we know, people are not that simple. There are those who are deeply rational, but who also feel deeply, people who possess strong emotions and yet are also rational. (There are also some who are neither thinking nor feeling!)
So it is in our perception of God.
There are those who view God as being a stern celestial cop… someone who is into the law… ready to ticket someone who did not come to a full stop at a stop sign. There are others who view God as a kind of indulgent grandfather in the sky… plump… with a white beard…silver-rimmed glasses…sitting in a rocking chair and around December 25 says, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” a lot.
Well, according to the Scriptures, truth and grace, law and love are not binary opposites, but they converge in God and are seen in the example of his Son, Jesus Christ.
This summer we have been in a series called Surprised by Grace, surprised by the grace of God in the Old Testament. Many people who have read just the Old Testament perceive God as being this stern cop, this javert figure who is into the law…into the truth. But as we have seen in the stories of such people as Adam and Eve, Abraham, Hagar, Moses, David, Josiah, Jacob and Isaiah, the living God is not only a God of truth, but also the God of grace.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to John 1.
As we are concluding our series this morning Surprised by Grace we’re going to cross into the New Testament, I will seek to show how God in the person of Jesus Christ is full of grace and truth as illustrated in Jesus’ encounter with a woman caught in adultery.(2x)
In John 1:1 we read:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (SLIDE 4)
Last week I was in a long conversation with someone in New York City about faith. I invited him to tune in to our podcast. So, if you are listening, Dennis, “Hi!” He described his faith journey and said, “I have respect for the Scriptures, but I can’t believe that Jesus Christ was the divine Son of God. I don’t believe that he was God.” Some of you have expressed to me you have difficulty believing that Jesus Christ is God. But this passage makes it clear that the beginning was the Word, which refers to God. The Word was God, and the Word was with God and he was with God in the beginning.
Then we read in verse 14, the Word, which is God becomes flesh and blood and moves into the neighborhood.
In verses 16-18 we read:
16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (SLIDE 5)
In verse 16 we read, “Out of his fullness we have received all grace in place of grace already given.” A good translation. In the Greek this phrase literally reads that in Jesus Christ we have received “grace instead of grace.” (SLIDE 6)
What John likely means is better grace. What he likely means by this is that we have received this fresh grace, this undeserved favour from God (to quote Sharon Smith who preached earlier in the series) which replaces the old grace—with a newer and greater grace.
I have some family who live on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, and I have been to the North Shore. I love watching the waves build and crash. Sometimes a relatively small wave will build and crash on to the beach. Then a bigger wave will follow it and crash and submerge over the waters of the smaller wave. And John likely means that yes, there was grace in what we call the Old Testament through the law, but this greater wave of grace has come to us in Jesus Christ.
In verse 17, we read, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Notice it doesn’t say the law was given through Moses, “but” grace and truth came though Jesus Christ. There is simply a semi-colon, because the two are related. The law that God gave us through Moses and the grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ are not binary opposites. They are related.
Last fall we did a series on the Ten Commandments. If you were not here, you can go to our website and download those messages as mp3s. Last year as we began our series on the Ten Commandments I talked about how the Ten Commandments are more than just ten words engraved on a stone tablet. They are the verbal expression of the holiness and the love of God. They reflect the very character of the living God.
The truth in the Ten Commandments and the grace that we find in Jesus Christ are not binary opposites.
In the mid 1990s while many of the institutions in Eastern Europe were stepping out from under the shadow of communism and finding a new way, I was invited to Kazakhstan to give a series of lectures to public school teachers and administrators on how to teach ethics in a post-communist society. As a pastor, I chose as my text for those lectures the Ten Commandments. I wasn’t supposed to do this, but at the end of my lectures I said, “The Ten Commandments are so lofty, beautiful and succinct. 3300 years later we can’t really improve on the Ten Commandments. Many of us want to live by them, but we can’t live by them by just trying really hard to live them out. In order to fully live out these Commandments we need to meet the one person whose life perfectly embodied them: Jesus Christ.” I went on to briefly explain why Christ came as the one full of grace and truth, and invited those who wanted to do so to invite Christ to become part of their lives.
Grace and truth came through the Ten Commandments, but grace and truth came with greater fullness in Jesus Christ. He was the greater wave that submerged the lesser wave of the Ten Commandments.
One of my favourite pictures of Jesus embodying grace and truth comes from John 8:1-John 8:11. As you may see in your copy of the Scriptures, you may have this footnote in your Bibles: “The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-John 8:11.”
Some of the best biblical scholars do not believe that this story was part of the original Gospel of John. But there is also wide consensus that while this story of the woman caught in adultery was not part of the original Gospel of John, it was something that happened in Jesus’ life. I believe that it actually happened in the life of Jesus, something that we can learn from.
Let me read this story from John 8:
1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. (SLIDE 7 to verse 13)
2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman,[a] where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
(John 8:1-11)
Let me describe the setting of this story.
People from all over Israel and Jewish people from different parts of the known world would gather in the capital city Jerusalem to celebrate the most joyous of all the Jewish feasts, The Feast of Tabernacles, often called the Feast of Booths, or what we might call the Feast of Tents. Jewish law required all men who lived within 30 kilometers of Jerusalem to the city for this feast. Because it was such a time of great celebration, joy and fun, people literally poured into Jerusalem from all over the country and beyond. The Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Tents, celebrated God’s grace, his kindness toward his people.
As you may know, if you have read the Book of Exodus, there was a time when the people who were part of the nation of Israel, the descendants of Jacob (later named Israel), lived in the desert as they were making their way from Egypt, the land where they had been slaves to the promised land of Canaan. While they lived in the desert, they lived in tents. How did they eat? God miraculously provided food for them in the form of quail, a bird, and manna, a kind of a honey-flavoured wafer. Then after 40 years of living in the desert God brought his children to a land flowing with “milk and honey,” a place of abundant harvests.
So at harvest time each year the Jewish people came together in Jerusalem to give thanks to God for their blessings. They were reminded that their ancestors had endured real hardship in the desert, and the people built little tents made from palm and willow branches. So Jerusalem resembled a happy version of a tent city here in Vancouver.
Tents made of palm branches sprang up everywhere—on the streets, in public squares, on the top of flat roofs…everywhere. And there was a lot of joy and celebration in the streets, much like we felt when we hosted the Olympics, and after we won the gold medal in the final of the men’s hockey. Many of the Jewish people of Jesus’ day weren’t particularly religious. As is true of many people in North America today, even though Christmas is a religious holiday many people don't worship God but instead focus on exchanging presents and partying. In the same way during the Feast of Tents, while some people worshipped, for many it was just a time to eat and drink, party and dance.
So, much like Mardi Gras which precedes the Christian season of Lent, in places like New Orleans, it had become a time of eating, getting drunk, partying and dancing. Our story takes place near the end of Mardi Gras week in Jerusalem.
There is young woman who is apparently a betrothed virgin. She is engaged to be married to someone. (We can deduce this from the Mishnah, an authoritative part Jewish law.)
We don’t know anything about her fiancé. Perhaps he was out of the country on business. Transportation in the first century was very slow. Long trips would not take days or weeks. They would take months. He may have been away for several months on end, with some weeks yet to go. Here his fiancé was alone at Mardi Gras, the Feasts of the Tabernacles, one of the happiest times of the year.
Maybe, this is speculation, she went with friends one night to a party, and they sang and danced into the late hours of the evening. And maybe, and again this is speculation, at this point she meets a young man tanned from longs hours of harvesting in the fields beyond the city walls. (CREDIT Nancy Hardin in the sermon outline as I am drawing on her imagination here). He was alone and had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast. Their eyes connect and there’s instant magnetism. As the music was playing and the sun was setting, maybe this city girl began to show this tanned farm boy how to dance. She feels attractive, energetic and happy. They began to make their way through the crowded streets going from one party to another. Maybe they happened to end up in front of his tent—it’s really late and it’s more convenient for her to spend the night there. We can only imagine what happened, but we do know that in the early morning hours they experienced physical intimacy with each other.
But as the sun rose onto the hills of Jerusalem, passing through the streets on their way to the temple, a group of Pharisees, highly-respected religious men and scribes, spied the young couple through the loosely tied branches of their tent.
One of them recognized the young woman as being engaged to another man, and perhaps might normally have looked the other way, but thought that we can use this act to corner Jesus.
As Nancy Hardin whose imagination I have drawn upon in this retelling says, “Why don’t we catch Jesus between his love for the rabble and his regard for the law? If he chooses the woman, the crowds will begin to question his teaching. If he chooses the law, he will lose his following.” The Pharisees decided to use the lovers as a bait to trap Jesus.
He comes into the tent grabs the young woman. Startled and afraid, she grabs her garments to cover herself, and perhaps at this moment the young man gets up and runs and sprints down an alley. She begs the men for mercy, but they drag her from the tent of palm branches to the street.
Fear grips her. What would become of her? She feels humiliated…ashamed. Would they stone her to death? If she lived, could she ever face her fiancé again? The men dragged her into the temple courts. They saw a small group gathered around Jesus. He was sitting among them, explaining the Scriptures. They exposed this woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus:
“Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him (John 8:4-6).
But we know from verse 6 that the real intent of the Pharisees and the scribes was not to better understand some obscure part of the law, but they wanted to use this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing Jesus. We know the Jewish leaders were already plotting to have Jesus arrested and punished for his teaching. The Pharisees knew that it would not be easy to pin a crime on Jesus. The best way they figured would be to trap him in his teaching…
The text tells us that he stooped down to write in the dust. We don’t know what he wrote. Some of the ancient manuscripts add a line that does not appear in our Bibles: “With his finger he wrote on the ground the sins of each one of them—hypocrite, liar, gossip, dishonoring parents.” He would have known their sins. It is possible that he wrote them on the ground.
Perhaps he was writing the Tenth Commandment which said, “You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife.” This text would declare them all guilty of adultery. Or perhaps he was writing out part of his own Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said thou shalt not commit adultery, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
In verse 7 it says when they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said, “Let any of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Then we read that those who heard him began to go away, the older ones at first, and the only one that was left with Jesus was the woman standing there. He said, “Woman, where are they? Has no-one condemned you?” “No-one, sir” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” As she looked at Jesus, she knew she was a free woman fully forgiven. No condemnation in his eyes or voice. She was clean and restored.
In this story we see Jesus’ grace and truth. In this story we see this beautiful convergence of grace and truth in God as a human being in Jesus Christ. Grace and truth are not binary opposites, but they come together in Jesus Christ.
He welcomes the woman caught in adultery. He does not condemn her. He forgives her: grace. But then he tells her to go and sin no more. Sin will break you and your relationships: truth.
Perhaps you are here and you carry the burden of the guilt of sin inside you. Maybe you have committed adultery or some sexual sin or some other kind of sin, and you wonder if God could forgive you. Perhaps you feel your sins are too dark… too many…too often.
Jesus spoke to the woman in the temple long ago. He speaks to you. He says to you, “Neither do I condemn you.” Grace. “Go and leave your life of sin.” Truth. He can say: “I forgive you because 2000 years ago I hung on a cross, I in effect, was stoned to death on your behalf. I bore the punishment for sin that you deserved so that you could be forgiven and set free.”
If you have never turned to Christ, you can right now. And he will say, “Neither do I condemn you. I forgive you. Go and leave your life of sin.”
If you are here and you are a long time follower of Christ, let me ask you this: How are you growing? How are you becoming like Jesus, a person of grace and truth?
Earlier this month my siblings from here in Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Montreal came here with their families for our annual family reunion. During the family reunion we celebrated our parents’ Golden Wedding anniversary—50th anniversary. (SHOW photo of family) (SLIDE 8)
We chartered a boat and took a cruise out to Eagle Bay in West Vancouver. When we came back on the dock of a marina here in False Creek, we had a little service where we offered tributes to our parents for their 50th wedding anniversary.
My older sister Rie (SHOW photo) (SLIDE 9) described our parents, without using the actual words, as being people of grace and truth:
When I was 15 years old. We had just come back from a trip and I wanted to go out to our local teen disco and my dad said "no." I was so mad at being denied that I decided to run away from home. I didn't get very far though. I just walked to the end of our street and then didn't know where to go, so I came back and sat in our back yard, very upset, crying my eyes out. Eventually my mother came out to find me and said "Rié, even if you don't agree with what your father said, it's very important to respect his position. If you can't get along with your dad, you will never get along with your future husband." That was something that really hit me and I decided that I really wanted to have a successful marriage, some day and so I went back inside…
Grace expressed by my mother walking to my sister; truth… telling her about the importance of respect.
(She’s a happily married today.)
One of my younger sisters, Setsu, spoke: Show photo of Setsu.(SLIDE 10)
Thank you for raising us in a home with unconditional love and transcendent morals.
(Or put another way): with grace and truth.
Dad, I will always remember that you told me that you would buy me as many books as I wanted to read. In doing so, one of the many lessons you taught me, dad, was to not only value knowledge but to value even more knowledge with humility. For clearly, for you, the point of knowledge was to acquire a kind of wealth, not measured in terms of riches and status, but a different kind of wealth of intellect that translates into graciousness, and generosity.
Then speaking about mom and noting she had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with honors and then Columbia, she said, “One thing that you have impressed upon me is how we would talk about all the different kinds of people you have known, which would include so many people of exceptional intelligence, and accomplishment, but you have taught me that even as intelligence is important, what is more important is kindness.”
(Or in other words truth and grace).
(Setsu is now a professor at the University of California and a social activist—advocating on behalf of women, minorities and prisoners—seeking to walk in the way truth and grace).
Mom, in a word, I’ve always described you to everyone, as a saint. By this I mean that you are the epitome of a self-sacrificing mother, and someone whose life has been devoted to caring for us and for dad. And this gift to all of…
As I have said before, the only tragedy in life is to not become a saint, a person who is whole and full of light, because this is something that is possible for all of us as we walk with Jesus Christ. It is not a tragedy to never have lots and lots of money, or to have never lived in a big beautiful home, to never have travelled to exotic places. The only tragedy in life is to not become a saint because we all have this opportunity with Jesus Christ. This could be a different sermon altogether, but as I look at my own parents, in my estimation, and in the view of my four siblings, they have saint-like character. How did they become this way? I believe two factors.
When we were living in England, our life seemed financially comfortable. Dad was working as a broadcaster for the BBC and Mom was tutoring diplomats and studying at Cambridge. I remember growing up in England we had people help with cooking and cleaning, basically servants. I remember how my Mom and Dad threw these cocktail parties in our home, and as a 4 or 5-year-old boy after these parties were over, I would sneak down into the party room with my siblings and start knocking back the left-over glasses of sherry and alcohol.
Then when Dad’s contract with the BBC expired, we ended up moving to Canada, first to Vancouver and then to Coquitlam, and later to Surrey. We seemed to be well-to-do in England, but we seemed poor in Canada.
During our first years here in Canada, in the years before he started working as a journalist for the CBC, dad was working as a writer of a Canadian economic newsletter for Japanese companies. It didn’t have many subscribers. I remember one day my mother was stressed out in the kitchen. She said that she was not sure we could afford to buy groceries. We might have to start eating dog food. My wife Sakiko and I have only one child, but I can imagine the stress of being a parent of five children and not knowing if you would be able to feed them.
This week my mom told me that when you lose what is most important to you, then God can become the most important thing for you; when you lose what you depend on most, you can learn to depend on God. You become open to grace.
If you lose something really important to you, something that you depend on, you will suffer, but in your suffering God can become more precious to you, someone you depend on more... Your suffering can open you to grace.
When I was a teenager creating all kinds of stress for my parents through my shoplifting, drug use, and joy-riding, my mother re-committed her life to Christ and my dad gave his life to Christ for the first time. My dad would have called himself as a Christian “in name,” but he did not really know Christ personally, but when I was a teen he really turned his life over to Christ. Christ moved from the edges of his life to the center. My mother re-met Christ and dad met truth in Christ: not truth in the form of abstract idea, but truth embodied in a person, truth embodied in Jesus.
Is there a part of your life where you are being invited to experience God’s grace?
Is there a part of your where you are being invited to experience the truth of Jesus? (Pause)
Grace and truth have helped my parents grow more like Jesus; and grace and truth can have same effect in your life as well.
Jesus Christ is the one who came full of grace and truth. If you don’t know him, turn to him and receive the cleansing and the new life he offers. And if you do, embrace the suffering that God may bring into your life and turn to him again and again.
Walk with him and become like Jesus, the one who is full of grace and truth.
Walk with him and become a saint.
Next Sunday we begin a new 4-week series for September called Thank God It’s Monday: How we find God in our work. It will be a great series to invite a friend to.
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Full of Grace and Truth
Text: John 1:1-5, 16-18; John 7:53-8:11
BIG IDEA: In Jesus Christ we experience the fullness of grace and truth.
Philosophers talk about binary opposition (SLIDE 1) which refers to a pair of related terms that are, or at least appear, opposite in meaning such as hot-cold, good-bad, darkness-light. We may not use the actual technical philosophical term, but we might refer to things that we assume are binary opposites by using the expression: “Those two are like oil and water.” (Prop: flask of oil and one of water)
Or we may think of sumo wrestlers and skinny people as binary opposites (Powerpoint image). (SLIDE 2)
But there is such a thing as a thin sumo wrestler. I have seen them in Japan. (Show photo.) (SLIDE 3)
There are times when we can think two things are binary opposites, but they are not. Many people in our culture assume that rational and emotional, for example, are binary opposites. That is, if you are a rational person you won’t be emotional, and if you are emotional you won’t be rational. As we know, people are not that simple. There are those who are deeply rational, but who also feel deeply, people who possess strong emotions and yet are also rational. (There are also some who are neither thinking nor feeling!)
So it is in our perception of God.
There are those who view God as being a stern celestial cop… someone who is into the law… ready to ticket someone who did not come to a full stop at a stop sign. There are others who view God as a kind of indulgent grandfather in the sky… plump… with a white beard…silver-rimmed glasses…sitting in a rocking chair and around December 25 says, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” a lot.
Well, according to the Scriptures, truth and grace, law and love are not binary opposites, but they converge in God and are seen in the example of his Son, Jesus Christ.
This summer we have been in a series called Surprised by Grace, surprised by the grace of God in the Old Testament. Many people who have read just the Old Testament perceive God as being this stern cop, this javert figure who is into the law…into the truth. But as we have seen in the stories of such people as Adam and Eve, Abraham, Hagar, Moses, David, Josiah, Jacob and Isaiah, the living God is not only a God of truth, but also the God of grace.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to John 1.
As we are concluding our series this morning Surprised by Grace we’re going to cross into the New Testament, I will seek to show how God in the person of Jesus Christ is full of grace and truth as illustrated in Jesus’ encounter with a woman caught in adultery.(2x)
In John 1:1 we read:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (SLIDE 4)
Last week I was in a long conversation with someone in New York City about faith. I invited him to tune in to our podcast. So, if you are listening, Dennis, “Hi!” He described his faith journey and said, “I have respect for the Scriptures, but I can’t believe that Jesus Christ was the divine Son of God. I don’t believe that he was God.” Some of you have expressed to me you have difficulty believing that Jesus Christ is God. But this passage makes it clear that the beginning was the Word, which refers to God. The Word was God, and the Word was with God and he was with God in the beginning.
Then we read in verse 14, the Word, which is God becomes flesh and blood and moves into the neighborhood.
In verses 16-18 we read:
16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (SLIDE 5)
In verse 16 we read, “Out of his fullness we have received all grace in place of grace already given.” A good translation. In the Greek this phrase literally reads that in Jesus Christ we have received “grace instead of grace.” (SLIDE 6)
What John likely means is better grace. What he likely means by this is that we have received this fresh grace, this undeserved favour from God (to quote Sharon Smith who preached earlier in the series) which replaces the old grace—with a newer and greater grace.
I have some family who live on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, and I have been to the North Shore. I love watching the waves build and crash. Sometimes a relatively small wave will build and crash on to the beach. Then a bigger wave will follow it and crash and submerge over the waters of the smaller wave. And John likely means that yes, there was grace in what we call the Old Testament through the law, but this greater wave of grace has come to us in Jesus Christ.
In verse 17, we read, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Notice it doesn’t say the law was given through Moses, “but” grace and truth came though Jesus Christ. There is simply a semi-colon, because the two are related. The law that God gave us through Moses and the grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ are not binary opposites. They are related.
Last fall we did a series on the Ten Commandments. If you were not here, you can go to our website and download those messages as mp3s. Last year as we began our series on the Ten Commandments I talked about how the Ten Commandments are more than just ten words engraved on a stone tablet. They are the verbal expression of the holiness and the love of God. They reflect the very character of the living God.
The truth in the Ten Commandments and the grace that we find in Jesus Christ are not binary opposites.
In the mid 1990s while many of the institutions in Eastern Europe were stepping out from under the shadow of communism and finding a new way, I was invited to Kazakhstan to give a series of lectures to public school teachers and administrators on how to teach ethics in a post-communist society. As a pastor, I chose as my text for those lectures the Ten Commandments. I wasn’t supposed to do this, but at the end of my lectures I said, “The Ten Commandments are so lofty, beautiful and succinct. 3300 years later we can’t really improve on the Ten Commandments. Many of us want to live by them, but we can’t live by them by just trying really hard to live them out. In order to fully live out these Commandments we need to meet the one person whose life perfectly embodied them: Jesus Christ.” I went on to briefly explain why Christ came as the one full of grace and truth, and invited those who wanted to do so to invite Christ to become part of their lives.
Grace and truth came through the Ten Commandments, but grace and truth came with greater fullness in Jesus Christ. He was the greater wave that submerged the lesser wave of the Ten Commandments.
One of my favourite pictures of Jesus embodying grace and truth comes from John 8:1-John 8:11. As you may see in your copy of the Scriptures, you may have this footnote in your Bibles: “The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-John 8:11.”
Some of the best biblical scholars do not believe that this story was part of the original Gospel of John. But there is also wide consensus that while this story of the woman caught in adultery was not part of the original Gospel of John, it was something that happened in Jesus’ life. I believe that it actually happened in the life of Jesus, something that we can learn from.
Let me read this story from John 8:
1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. (SLIDE 7 to verse 13)
2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman,[a] where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
(John 8:1-11)
Let me describe the setting of this story.
People from all over Israel and Jewish people from different parts of the known world would gather in the capital city Jerusalem to celebrate the most joyous of all the Jewish feasts, The Feast of Tabernacles, often called the Feast of Booths, or what we might call the Feast of Tents. Jewish law required all men who lived within 30 kilometers of Jerusalem to the city for this feast. Because it was such a time of great celebration, joy and fun, people literally poured into Jerusalem from all over the country and beyond. The Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Tents, celebrated God’s grace, his kindness toward his people.
As you may know, if you have read the Book of Exodus, there was a time when the people who were part of the nation of Israel, the descendants of Jacob (later named Israel), lived in the desert as they were making their way from Egypt, the land where they had been slaves to the promised land of Canaan. While they lived in the desert, they lived in tents. How did they eat? God miraculously provided food for them in the form of quail, a bird, and manna, a kind of a honey-flavoured wafer. Then after 40 years of living in the desert God brought his children to a land flowing with “milk and honey,” a place of abundant harvests.
So at harvest time each year the Jewish people came together in Jerusalem to give thanks to God for their blessings. They were reminded that their ancestors had endured real hardship in the desert, and the people built little tents made from palm and willow branches. So Jerusalem resembled a happy version of a tent city here in Vancouver.
Tents made of palm branches sprang up everywhere—on the streets, in public squares, on the top of flat roofs…everywhere. And there was a lot of joy and celebration in the streets, much like we felt when we hosted the Olympics, and after we won the gold medal in the final of the men’s hockey. Many of the Jewish people of Jesus’ day weren’t particularly religious. As is true of many people in North America today, even though Christmas is a religious holiday many people don't worship God but instead focus on exchanging presents and partying. In the same way during the Feast of Tents, while some people worshipped, for many it was just a time to eat and drink, party and dance.
So, much like Mardi Gras which precedes the Christian season of Lent, in places like New Orleans, it had become a time of eating, getting drunk, partying and dancing. Our story takes place near the end of Mardi Gras week in Jerusalem.
There is young woman who is apparently a betrothed virgin. She is engaged to be married to someone. (We can deduce this from the Mishnah, an authoritative part Jewish law.)
We don’t know anything about her fiancé. Perhaps he was out of the country on business. Transportation in the first century was very slow. Long trips would not take days or weeks. They would take months. He may have been away for several months on end, with some weeks yet to go. Here his fiancé was alone at Mardi Gras, the Feasts of the Tabernacles, one of the happiest times of the year.
Maybe, this is speculation, she went with friends one night to a party, and they sang and danced into the late hours of the evening. And maybe, and again this is speculation, at this point she meets a young man tanned from longs hours of harvesting in the fields beyond the city walls. (CREDIT Nancy Hardin in the sermon outline as I am drawing on her imagination here). He was alone and had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast. Their eyes connect and there’s instant magnetism. As the music was playing and the sun was setting, maybe this city girl began to show this tanned farm boy how to dance. She feels attractive, energetic and happy. They began to make their way through the crowded streets going from one party to another. Maybe they happened to end up in front of his tent—it’s really late and it’s more convenient for her to spend the night there. We can only imagine what happened, but we do know that in the early morning hours they experienced physical intimacy with each other.
But as the sun rose onto the hills of Jerusalem, passing through the streets on their way to the temple, a group of Pharisees, highly-respected religious men and scribes, spied the young couple through the loosely tied branches of their tent.
One of them recognized the young woman as being engaged to another man, and perhaps might normally have looked the other way, but thought that we can use this act to corner Jesus.
As Nancy Hardin whose imagination I have drawn upon in this retelling says, “Why don’t we catch Jesus between his love for the rabble and his regard for the law? If he chooses the woman, the crowds will begin to question his teaching. If he chooses the law, he will lose his following.” The Pharisees decided to use the lovers as a bait to trap Jesus.
He comes into the tent grabs the young woman. Startled and afraid, she grabs her garments to cover herself, and perhaps at this moment the young man gets up and runs and sprints down an alley. She begs the men for mercy, but they drag her from the tent of palm branches to the street.
Fear grips her. What would become of her? She feels humiliated…ashamed. Would they stone her to death? If she lived, could she ever face her fiancé again? The men dragged her into the temple courts. They saw a small group gathered around Jesus. He was sitting among them, explaining the Scriptures. They exposed this woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus:
“Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him (John 8:4-6).
But we know from verse 6 that the real intent of the Pharisees and the scribes was not to better understand some obscure part of the law, but they wanted to use this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing Jesus. We know the Jewish leaders were already plotting to have Jesus arrested and punished for his teaching. The Pharisees knew that it would not be easy to pin a crime on Jesus. The best way they figured would be to trap him in his teaching…
The text tells us that he stooped down to write in the dust. We don’t know what he wrote. Some of the ancient manuscripts add a line that does not appear in our Bibles: “With his finger he wrote on the ground the sins of each one of them—hypocrite, liar, gossip, dishonoring parents.” He would have known their sins. It is possible that he wrote them on the ground.
Perhaps he was writing the Tenth Commandment which said, “You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife.” This text would declare them all guilty of adultery. Or perhaps he was writing out part of his own Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said thou shalt not commit adultery, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
In verse 7 it says when they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said, “Let any of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Then we read that those who heard him began to go away, the older ones at first, and the only one that was left with Jesus was the woman standing there. He said, “Woman, where are they? Has no-one condemned you?” “No-one, sir” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” As she looked at Jesus, she knew she was a free woman fully forgiven. No condemnation in his eyes or voice. She was clean and restored.
In this story we see Jesus’ grace and truth. In this story we see this beautiful convergence of grace and truth in God as a human being in Jesus Christ. Grace and truth are not binary opposites, but they come together in Jesus Christ.
He welcomes the woman caught in adultery. He does not condemn her. He forgives her: grace. But then he tells her to go and sin no more. Sin will break you and your relationships: truth.
Perhaps you are here and you carry the burden of the guilt of sin inside you. Maybe you have committed adultery or some sexual sin or some other kind of sin, and you wonder if God could forgive you. Perhaps you feel your sins are too dark… too many…too often.
Jesus spoke to the woman in the temple long ago. He speaks to you. He says to you, “Neither do I condemn you.” Grace. “Go and leave your life of sin.” Truth. He can say: “I forgive you because 2000 years ago I hung on a cross, I in effect, was stoned to death on your behalf. I bore the punishment for sin that you deserved so that you could be forgiven and set free.”
If you have never turned to Christ, you can right now. And he will say, “Neither do I condemn you. I forgive you. Go and leave your life of sin.”
If you are here and you are a long time follower of Christ, let me ask you this: How are you growing? How are you becoming like Jesus, a person of grace and truth?
Earlier this month my siblings from here in Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Montreal came here with their families for our annual family reunion. During the family reunion we celebrated our parents’ Golden Wedding anniversary—50th anniversary. (SHOW photo of family) (SLIDE 8)
We chartered a boat and took a cruise out to Eagle Bay in West Vancouver. When we came back on the dock of a marina here in False Creek, we had a little service where we offered tributes to our parents for their 50th wedding anniversary.
My older sister Rie (SHOW photo) (SLIDE 9) described our parents, without using the actual words, as being people of grace and truth:
When I was 15 years old. We had just come back from a trip and I wanted to go out to our local teen disco and my dad said "no." I was so mad at being denied that I decided to run away from home. I didn't get very far though. I just walked to the end of our street and then didn't know where to go, so I came back and sat in our back yard, very upset, crying my eyes out. Eventually my mother came out to find me and said "Rié, even if you don't agree with what your father said, it's very important to respect his position. If you can't get along with your dad, you will never get along with your future husband." That was something that really hit me and I decided that I really wanted to have a successful marriage, some day and so I went back inside…
Grace expressed by my mother walking to my sister; truth… telling her about the importance of respect.
(She’s a happily married today.)
One of my younger sisters, Setsu, spoke: Show photo of Setsu.(SLIDE 10)
Thank you for raising us in a home with unconditional love and transcendent morals.
(Or put another way): with grace and truth.
Dad, I will always remember that you told me that you would buy me as many books as I wanted to read. In doing so, one of the many lessons you taught me, dad, was to not only value knowledge but to value even more knowledge with humility. For clearly, for you, the point of knowledge was to acquire a kind of wealth, not measured in terms of riches and status, but a different kind of wealth of intellect that translates into graciousness, and generosity.
Then speaking about mom and noting she had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with honors and then Columbia, she said, “One thing that you have impressed upon me is how we would talk about all the different kinds of people you have known, which would include so many people of exceptional intelligence, and accomplishment, but you have taught me that even as intelligence is important, what is more important is kindness.”
(Or in other words truth and grace).
(Setsu is now a professor at the University of California and a social activist—advocating on behalf of women, minorities and prisoners—seeking to walk in the way truth and grace).
Mom, in a word, I’ve always described you to everyone, as a saint. By this I mean that you are the epitome of a self-sacrificing mother, and someone whose life has been devoted to caring for us and for dad. And this gift to all of…
As I have said before, the only tragedy in life is to not become a saint, a person who is whole and full of light, because this is something that is possible for all of us as we walk with Jesus Christ. It is not a tragedy to never have lots and lots of money, or to have never lived in a big beautiful home, to never have travelled to exotic places. The only tragedy in life is to not become a saint because we all have this opportunity with Jesus Christ. This could be a different sermon altogether, but as I look at my own parents, in my estimation, and in the view of my four siblings, they have saint-like character. How did they become this way? I believe two factors.
When we were living in England, our life seemed financially comfortable. Dad was working as a broadcaster for the BBC and Mom was tutoring diplomats and studying at Cambridge. I remember growing up in England we had people help with cooking and cleaning, basically servants. I remember how my Mom and Dad threw these cocktail parties in our home, and as a 4 or 5-year-old boy after these parties were over, I would sneak down into the party room with my siblings and start knocking back the left-over glasses of sherry and alcohol.
Then when Dad’s contract with the BBC expired, we ended up moving to Canada, first to Vancouver and then to Coquitlam, and later to Surrey. We seemed to be well-to-do in England, but we seemed poor in Canada.
During our first years here in Canada, in the years before he started working as a journalist for the CBC, dad was working as a writer of a Canadian economic newsletter for Japanese companies. It didn’t have many subscribers. I remember one day my mother was stressed out in the kitchen. She said that she was not sure we could afford to buy groceries. We might have to start eating dog food. My wife Sakiko and I have only one child, but I can imagine the stress of being a parent of five children and not knowing if you would be able to feed them.
This week my mom told me that when you lose what is most important to you, then God can become the most important thing for you; when you lose what you depend on most, you can learn to depend on God. You become open to grace.
If you lose something really important to you, something that you depend on, you will suffer, but in your suffering God can become more precious to you, someone you depend on more... Your suffering can open you to grace.
When I was a teenager creating all kinds of stress for my parents through my shoplifting, drug use, and joy-riding, my mother re-committed her life to Christ and my dad gave his life to Christ for the first time. My dad would have called himself as a Christian “in name,” but he did not really know Christ personally, but when I was a teen he really turned his life over to Christ. Christ moved from the edges of his life to the center. My mother re-met Christ and dad met truth in Christ: not truth in the form of abstract idea, but truth embodied in a person, truth embodied in Jesus.
Is there a part of your life where you are being invited to experience God’s grace?
Is there a part of your where you are being invited to experience the truth of Jesus? (Pause)
Grace and truth have helped my parents grow more like Jesus; and grace and truth can have same effect in your life as well.
Jesus Christ is the one who came full of grace and truth. If you don’t know him, turn to him and receive the cleansing and the new life he offers. And if you do, embrace the suffering that God may bring into your life and turn to him again and again.
Walk with him and become like Jesus, the one who is full of grace and truth.
Walk with him and become a saint.
Next Sunday we begin a new 4-week series for September called Thank God It’s Monday: How we find God in our work. It will be a great series to invite a friend to.
posted by Shigematsu at 6:54 PM
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