Sermon - Ash Wednesday 2009, preached by Canon Mark Oakley, Priest-in-Charge.

The passage you just heard in St John's Gospel does not appear in the very earliest manuscripts and it was not finally accepted in the standard text of the New Testament until about 900 AD. The story seems however to be ancient and authentic and certainly consistent with the teachings of Jesus throughout the gospels, but perhaps the Church was disconcerted by the ease with which Jesus forgave this woman at a time when the Church was developing a very stern discipline for penitents?

Jesus comes into the Temple very early in the morning. The people come to him and then the religious professionals enter with a great surge of indignation. A woman has been caught in adultery (it is important to remember that in the religious law of the time adultery was unfaithfilness on the part of a married woman. The laws was unconcerned with affairs between husbands and unmarried women).

The woman has been taken "in the very act". She should be stoned. Moses says so in the law. What do you say? It is a trap of course to show Jesus up as someone with no respect for the law of Moses. You can feel the anger, the cunning, the fury - standards slipping everywhere and this so called teacher undermining the traditions of faith.

And what does Jesus do? He stoops and with his finger and writes on the ground. Humus, earth, root of humility.

It is easy to get on a treadmill of over consumption, overwork, gusts of anger and diminishing awareness. There are usually warning signs in our irritation within, evidence that there are unacknowleged shadows we are covering up. We relieve the pressure by projecting these shadows on to other people. We do not know what we are doing but if you have ever felt a surge of dislike for someone you have only just met, hang on to that feeling, for you have usually been given a precious indication of what you are covering up inside yourself. We all dislike in others what we are prone to ourselves, (girl breaking window and clutching her toy, "Daddy, look what Dolly's done!"- we like our scapegoats)

And Jesus detaches himself from the confrontation. He doesn't bristle and enter into argument. He stoops. He doodles with his finger in the dust. I wonder if he was thinking about Jeremiah: "those who turn away from you shall be written upon the earth for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water".

The message here is not that we should opt out of confrontations which may sometimes be necessary but that if we want to see clearly and engage profoundly there are times when we must stoop and refrain. You disengage to clarify and to connect at death.

What does this mean for us? Our awareness is diminished by over-stimulation. Our Lent fasting should not be some token abstinence from sweeties but a conscious effort to reduce stimulation, crowd mentalities, quick judgements and stoop to clarify and connect. Do not neglect the reality though that what we eat and drink does have a bearing on our awareness and that we often over indulge because we are unhappy and need to confront that unhappiness.

Jesus 's life was marked by a rhythm of walking and talking with crowds and then retreating to a desert place. In Lent we stoop down and detach in order to clarify and connect more profoundly - that is why fasting from over stimulation needs a renewed commitment to prayer and meditation, ways in which we clarify the world within and reduce the noise so that we can hear the voice of conscience.

The babble continued: "they continued asking him" - so he lifts himself up and shows the crowd their inner selves - he that is without sin among you throw first. We may be surrounded by some really difficult and wrong headed people but there will never be any spiritual progress until we can rein in our own projections and see clearly our own state. Christians have to give up self-justification for Lent.

Jesus stoops again. He does not argue or feed the frenzy of indignation that swept in with the accused woman.Those who have had a glimpse of themselves through Jesus 's words detach themslves and leave the scene. Jesus is left alone with her. No one condemned you? No sir. Nor do I, go and sin no more.
Those who think that the woman has got away with it too easily have not understood the spiritual reality of the story. The woman is condemned by others but is confronted with her own unfaithfulness. To confront the truth about oneself, the ruins of our heart, can be agony and physical and mental pain but our life depends on it (Jung: that which we ignore for the sake of ambition will come back one day knife in hand to take its revenge). How can we forgive ourselves? That is the hardest thing of all. Jesus's words cut like a scapel. There is no condemnnation, there is a release from self loathing but there is no fudging - walk on and change. First the release, then the transformation.

Give yourself time this Lent to be present in this scene, perhaps changing your position as you look and listen at what Jesus says and does. Be one of the crowd, come in with the scribes, stand by the woman. This is now a time for seeing our evasions, the addictive ways in which we hide from our truths, our fraility, our mortality, our meaness and worse. Stoop and detach in order to confront these realities. See better, live better. We are not immortal gods, but mortal humans, as the ash in a minute willremind us. Hear Jesus speak to you and to me: I do not condemn you but walk a new path still dirty with dust from the ground and accept the transformation which comes to those who are filled with my spirit, who see with my eyes, who hold with my hands.