Holden Evening Prayer – Becoming Together Through Generosity: People to People

John 8:1-11

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’

They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.

When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’

Note: This message includes sharing from Dan Ruth, executive director of Lutheran Partners in Global Ministry (LPGM).

Grace and peace to you, from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I want to begin this morning by telling a story that many of you know more personally and deeply than I ever will. A story that is at once woven into the fabric of this congregation, and that spreads far beyond the walls of this building or the people who have formed this community.

At 24, Tim Olson was an ambitious, idealistic young man with a dream of studying architecture at the Harvard School of Design. But before heading to Harvard, he felt the call to do a service project and, as Poul Bertelsen, the architect whom Tim contacted about ideas said, “he was looking for an adventure.” 

So in June 1991, Tim arrived in Bangui, the capital city of the small, poor, landlocked Central African Republic to spend the next year supervising the construction of a new church building for the growing Lutheran congregation there. Five months later, he was randomly and tragically shot in a remote roadside robbery gone wrong. His college girlfriend, who was visiting him in Central Africa and was in the car with him, held his head in her lap and frantically told him how much he was loved, as they prayed together the Lord’s Prayer.

Tim’s parents, Gordy and Betty, and sister, Karna — who were members of this congregation, and Gordy was choir director — learned of his death the night before Thanksgiving.

To be honest, I can’t even tell this story without getting choked up, especially as the Olson family sits here in front of me. I can truly only imagine the heart-wrenching pain and devastation of receiving that news, that your beloved son was gone.

I honestly don’t know how I would react, or know who I would be, after hearing news of my own child’s death. I don’t know if I’d curl up into a ball in an attempt to disappear forever, or strike out in rage from the pain of despair. Either would be entirely natural, appropriate even. 

Gordy and Betty, maybe you did do those things (and more). I don’t know — I can’t know — what your experience was in the days, months or years that followed Tim’s death.

But what I see is that the despair didn’t win. I’ve heard stories about how this congregation, and the choir in particular, wrapped its loving arms around you and walked with you through your grief. So that a little over a year later, people like Naomi were able to join you as you flew to Bangui for the dedication of the church building Tim had started, lovingly named by the local congregation “St. Timothy Lutheran Church.”

That was 1991, the church building was dedicated in 1993, and by 1995 a new nonprofit organization was officially registered with the Minnesota Secretary of State, called “Lutheran Partners in Global Ministry.” And that ministry would grow and expand to walk with partners in India, Tanzania, Madagascar, Argentina, Guatemala, Palestine and more in its now 25 years.

As many times as I’ve told some version of that story, it’s still a bit unbelievable to me. I am here this morning as a witness to the faithful generosity that became a “green shoot, rising from the dead earth.”

Generosity. I think that’s a good lens for this share history. Generosity.

It’s a term we use most often when referring to money, or other physical acts of giving. When someone writes a check — or gives online — to sponsor a student in India, I often thank them for their generous gift. Or when my five- and three-year-old boys are on the verge of fighting over a toy, and one of them stops to say “you can have it,” I thank him for his generosity.

But there’s a deeper, more personal, human-to-human aspect of generosity that’s missed when we only use that term with physical or financial gifts.

It’s a generosity to say, “I see you. I hear you. And I am here with you.”

In today’s Gospel reading from John, Jesus demonstrates just that type of generosity.

Let me recap the story for you, because I think it’s a story that’s both deeply ingrained in our cultural narrative, and at the same time is commonly misunderstood.

As this story begins, Jesus has been traveling around Galilee, speaking and preaching. He was explicitly avoiding going to Judea, where Jerusalem and the Temple are, because people there were looking for an excuse to arrest and kill him. 

But there’s this seven-day festival coming up, the “Festival of Booths” or Sukkot, at the temple in Jerusalem. And Jesus originally wasn’t going to go, but then changes his mind and secretly sneaks into the festival, and then (seemingly out of the blue) just decides to stand up in the temple and start teaching! 

And people are turning to each other saying, “Wait… isn’t that they guy everyone’s trying to kill? How is he openly teaching in the middle of the temple, in the middle of this holy festival? Can he really do that?!” So the chief priests tell the temple police to go arrest him. But the police return empty handed, because Jesus’ words seem so wise, but he’s a Galilean (so can’t possibly be the messiah) and it’s all so confusing… And so the chief priests are like, “Ugh, seriously? Do we have to do everything ourselves?”

And that’s where this story begins. Jesus has just come back to the temple for another morning, and people were gathering to hear him teach. And suddenly the religious leaders brought out a woman who’d been caught committing adultery and stood her in front of Jesus and the crowd.

Now let me just say we know very little about this woman. Despite pop-culture narratives, there’s no evidence she was a prostitute. It’s clear her crime was adultery. And nobody knows where her alleged partner in crime — the man who presumably was also caught committing adultery — where he was, or why the temple leaders didn’t also bring him forward to be stoned. 

But they only brought her forward, presumably now widely viewed as an easy target, a woman likely shunned by her friends, a dishonor to her family, publicly humiliated, and standing alone without her companion.

And Jesus is stuck in the middle of this very public, very fraught test. Would he stand on the side of law and order, on the side of the long tradition of God’s law, or would he disregard the laws very clearly written in scripture, choosing mercy instead which, frankly, was more in line with Jesus’ brand?

This nameless woman, being used as a prop in a political battle that has little to do with her alleged actions or sins. Who’s put on public display against her will, not really even for her own punishment or reform, but as an object, a tool who’s being used to ensare this troublemaking Jesus, so that those in power who are afraid of losing their power can try to win in the court of public opinion before the arrest and get rid of Jesus.

To them, the fate of this woman — or even the execution of God’s law — is secondary. It’s silencing this Galilean before he causes any more trouble that’s the real goal. 

We all know the famous line, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

“When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.” You can almost feel the energy of the scribes and Pharisees deflate as they walk away.

This is an act of generosity. Not simply to choose mercy and let the woman escape a horrific death sentence, but an act of generosity that happens when one human being meets another human being face to face, person to person.

It would have been very easy for a man in First Century Palestine — especially a man who knows people are whispering about him that he might be the messiah — to get wrapped up in his own greatness, or even wrapped up in his own great humility, and without even thinking twice, immediately assume that if a woman had been foolish enough to not just commit adultery, but foolish enough to get caught committing adultery, then she must deserve her punishment.

That split-second assumption — that inherent bias — against a sinful woman would have been utterly natural for a man in Jesus’ time, especially a man intent on showing his own connection to God, or avoiding a political landmine.

And yet… Jesus acts with generosity. He sees her, not as an unnamed pawn in a political game of chess, but as a person, seeing another person in all her complicated humanity.

It’s that generosity that reminds me of Gordy and Betty’s response to their son’s death.

They could have righteously pointed their fingers at an entire continent of African people who represented those who took Tim’s life and written them off as dirty, sinful people.

But with the love and support of multiple communities of faith, Gordy and Betty chose generosity. They chose to meet their Central African neighbors face to face, person to person. That act of generosity has led to two and a half decades of generosity across five continents.

It’s led to many of you — members of Bethlehem who’ve sponsored students in India — to travel there to meet them and build relationships of generosity with the students and leaders at Siloam, Saron, Melpattambakkam and Park Town, a small school serving some of the most vulnerable children in the middle of the gigantic city of Chennai.

It’s that generosity that’s dedicating part of this new capital campaign to provide housing and transportation to students at Park Town. As the local government constant tries to move many of the poorest, homeless families “out” and “away”, you’re generously giving them stability and hope: access to a quality education that’ll pay off for generations.

Now… you aren’t Jesus. Gordy and Betty aren’t Jesus. And I’m sure not, either. None of us do this perfectly.

But we have faith in a God whose perfect generosity meets you in your own great times of need; who sees you not as a one-dimensional tool to be used as a means to an end, but as the full, complicated, beautiful and broken human you are; who pulls you out of your own dirty depths of sin and despair and sends you out to meet your own neighbors.

When we come to the waters of baptism, or the table of Holy Communion, we encounter a generosity that far surpasses any written law, and we’re given a gift that we can choose to pass on to — and receive from — others. Thanks be to God.