Tomorrow it's time to find time to start reading this year's Lent book - as in recent years I'm using the Archbish's recommendation.  So Life Conquers Death by John Arnold.  Two chapters (meaning 40 to 50 pages) a week - should force me to slow down a bit in order to get it done.

... Ash Wednesday almost upon us and nothing written, all today at Didoct, tomorrow a funeral and a lunch club... last night's late night attempt for your comments and criticism!  I'm not the world's best creative writer, but hopefully you can work out what I'm trying to do - and let me know if it succeeds even to 1%.

The Woman Caught In Adultery

In Lieu of a Sermon

Open your eyes and look at her…

I can see you all, looking at me, I feel your eyes piercing me, the heat of your scorn, the assurance that I am a wanton woman who is doubly to be despised, for I have interrupted your meeting simply by being caught.

You don’t know me.

Don’t know my name.

Don’t know anything about me.

Yet you sit there, as judge, jury and executioners.

I wonder what you think of me, what thoughts are running through your heads.

Where is the man?  Where indeed.  But then this is not about justice; it isn’t me they are seeking to try but him - Jesus.

What were we doing?  I can almost hear you salivate as you wonder and imagine some sordid, steamy encounter.  You assume you know exactly what and why, don’t you?

Who was he?  Does it matter?  Synagogue official, Roman soldier, carpenter, fisherman… what do you imagine?

And me?  What do think of me?  A harlot?  A wanton woman?  A bored housewife?

And what drove us to it?  Lust or loneliness?  Desire or despair…?

What do you actually know, as you sit there, so still, so silent, so staring…?

A woman caught in adultery.  Someone who has done wrong.  Someone who deserves to die.  Someone with a sinful past who has no right to a future…

What’s that?  He’s speaking…

“Let the one who has no sin cast the first stone”

Still you sit there, looking at me.  You weigh the words, heavy words, emotive words…

What will you do?

 

Close your eyes as you ponder what you will do.  Don’t leap to a conclusion, ponder who she is, what she has done, what she deserves… 

Ponder your own life, what are the adulteries of your heart?  Money?  Power?  Success?  Busyness?  Food?  Alcohol?

Weigh the words, ponder your attitudes and slowly, quietly walk back to the present, to this church building, to this service.  Feel the hard wooden pew beneath you.  Become aware of the smells and sounds of this place…

And then, in your own time, open your eyes…

She is gone, the crowd melted away, one by one, until only Jesus remained.  And he gave her new hope – go, and sin no more.

Often we wonder about the man, why he wasn’t there when she was, feeling, instinctively, that he got off free, whilst she faced death, alone and terrified.  But I wonder if actually, as it turned out, she got the better deal?

This Lent our Bible studies explore the theme of ‘calling’ or ‘vocation’ and we will be looking at how God calls each of us in different ways and to different roles.

In this incident, we find two very different examples of calling, as experienced by the woman.

Firstly, she was called to account by the people who brought her to Jesus.  The woman has done wrong, no question of it, she had been caught ‘in the act.’  At one level the scribes and Pharisees behaved perfectly properly in addressing the situation they found.  But at another, they were equally sinful since their aim was not to bring her to justice but to trap Jesus.  Already he had a reputation for mixing with undesirables and seemed far too liberal in his attitudes – what would he do now?

For those who had come to listen to Jesus this must have been a very tense time.  I imagine some of them were angry that they had been interrupted.  Others would have been incensed by the woman’s behaviour. Maybe a few had their own consciences stirred.  We have no way of knowing.

Jesus doodled on the ground, refusing to be drawn.  And the tension mounted.

Eventually he stood up and spoke: directly and powerfully.  Whoever has no sin, let them throw the first stone.  These words should cut into us, as they would have cut into the first hearers.  Not one could look Jesus in the eye and say and say they had never sinned.  As realisation dawned one by one they all drifted away, with plenty to think about.

And then Jesus spoke to the woman again, calling her onwards to a new beginning, new hope, new possibilities.  Go… one of the classic Bible words of calling from God.  Go to a new place… go and make disciples… go and sin no more.

This woman had the opportunity to start afresh.  What was past was past, she had been called out of despair into hope, out of fear into courage, out of death into life, out of darkness into light…  As for the man, well we just don’t know, do we.  But he didn’t have the blessing of being personally set free by Jesus as she did.

Lent is our time of preparation for Easter, our time of being called to account – to repentance or penitence – and our time of being called on – to forgiveness, new life, and new hope.  As we reflect on all that Christ has achieved for us through the cross, so it is good also to hear his voice calling us on – your sins are forgiven you, go…

Remember that old cider (?) advert where hedgehogs squashed cars - the opposite of usual experience.  I had one of those experiences this morning.

I went to do a funeral visit for someone who was 'a life-long Baptist' of whom none of my folk had heard.  It transpired that she had been part of our church, her daughter proudly showed me the Bible she'd been presented with by the Sunday School back in 1932, when she would have been 17.  It appears she was never baptised and stopped attendling long before she met and married a Roman Catholic in 1948.

It was a long visit - two hours - and I felt for the daughter who has many problems, and is now left without her 'rock.'  At the end of the visit I prayed with her, and then she prayed, thanking God for me.  Now that was a first.  Not even in church households have I encountered the family offering a prayer.  This lady doesn't attend church, and would be regarded with suspicion by many 'decent church folk,' but by gum, she showed me she has faith.

Just hope the funeral service does what she needs it to do.

I received this circular email this moring and it made me smile (then I added the PS)...

My thanks to all those who have sent me emails in 2007........

I must send my thanks to whoever sent me the one about rat s**t in the glue on envelopes because I now have to use a wet towel with every envelope that needs sealing.

Also, I now have to scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason.

I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl (Penny Brown); who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time.

I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the £15,000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program.............

Or from the senior bank clerk in Nigeria who wants me to split £7 million with me for pretending to be a long lost relative of a customer who died intestate.

I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me, and St. Theresa's novena has granted my every wish.

I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot ay.

Thanks to you, I have learned that my prayers only get answered if I forward e-mail to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes.

Because of your concern I no longer drink Coca-Cola because it can remove toilet stains.

I can no longer buy petrol without taking a friend along to watch the car so a serial killer won't crawl in my back seat when I'm filling up.

I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with an aftershave sample and rob me.

I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number for which I will get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore, and Uzbekistan.

Thanks to you, I can't use anyone's toilet but mine because a big brown African spider is lurking under the seat to cause me instant death when it bites my bum.

And thanks to your great advice, I can't even pick up the £10 I found dropped in the car park because it probably was placed there by a sex molester waiting underneath my car to grab my leg.

If you don't send this e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 70 minutes, a large dove with diarrhoea will land on your head at 5:00pm this afternoon and the fleas from 12 camels will infest your back, causing you  to grow a hairy hump.

I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbour's ex-mother-in-law's second husband's cousin's beauticians relative once removed.

By the way....a South American scientist after a lengthy study has discovered that people with low IQ who have infrequent sexual activity always read their e-mails with their hand on the mouse.

Don't bother taking it off now, it's too late!

Have a great 2008!!!

PS, I have also gained the emails addresses of 12739 people I don't know because people don't remove this information when they forward emails

And have just sent out for pizza, Sunday or not, I don't care!

We had a good service, despite bitter cold and high winds most people made the effort to come out.  The communion preparer who does first Sunday is seriously ill, no one had arranged to cover for her, so my treasurer went home to fetch some bread and two other ladies offered to set up as none of the communion ladies had arrived.  All went well.

After the service, the two communion ladies, who were present by now, went off for a cup of tea, leaving the used glasses unwashed.  Eventually one of my lovely deacons took them away and washed them.  My pianist cleared the table, my treasurer put the banners away.  And after I'd chatted to a few peple I hadn't seen for over a week, I started to pack away the projection equipment.

Then one dear lady chose to come and tell me that I hadn't been to speak to speak to some of the people (true, I'd spoken to them last week).  I wasn't impressed and pointed out that they could come to speak to me.  No, not feeling at all holy now!

I thought back over the years when I was an ordinary church member.  At one time, the minister stood at the door and we all dutifully filed past, thanked him (as it was then) for his service and went home.  Then came the invention of after service coffee, so the minister moved to a location en route to coffee and we continued the ritual.  Then came the minister tries to juggle coffee cup in one hand and shake hands with the other, and most people simply go to coffee unless they want to speak to her/him.  Never, until I came to this neck of the woods did I encounter 'we sit in our seats and you must come to us every week.'

A small number of my people are frail, and I do try to get to speak to them regularly on Sundays.  Another small number have big stuff that they need to update me on.  Most though, like any church, have life that plods on, and whilst it is nice to be spoken to, it isn't essential.

Times have changed for sure, and cultures vary, but only here have I encountered this approach to 'after service' conversations.

OK, rant over, my pizza is here, so I can (finally) relax a bit.