Preke - Sermons - 2022

Dear congregation,

I have been in a rehab clinic on Föhr for 3 weeks now and it did me a lot of good. The therapy, the people and last but not least the location by the sea. The vastness and the wind that always comes from the front when you ride your bike and stirs up the sand, which then feels like peeling on your skin. Sand is fascinating.

Burying your feet in the sand or writing or painting in the sand. And none of it remains. Unlike when something is carved in stone and endures for all time.

I think of the stone tablets that Moses received from God, on which the 10 Commandments were written on Mount Sinai. 

We heard the sermon text in the reading. Jesus and the adulteress. This is how Luther gave his heading to this text. And the scribes and Pharisees were right. Set in stone. Adultery. Caught in the act. According to Jewish law, the woman forfeited her life.

So after the angry crowd had dragged this half-naked woman, defenseless, before Jesus, placed in the middle, the text says.

... But Jesus stooped down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

What might he have written? We do not know.

In general... nothing written about Jesus has been handed down to us. The disciples told us about him from mouth to mouth. What he did and said was blown by the wind, by the spirit, so to speak, into all the world. The enraged men want lynch law. But the woman serves them only as a means for their purpose. And that is to put Jesus to the test.

Their question, "What do you say to that?" is a trick question.

How will Jesus react?

He knows what his opponents are up to. And once again, he behaves differently than expected. He doesn't answer them at all. Sovereign and calm, he bends down and writes on the ground. Everyone waits for his word: the opponents full of self-assurance, the woman full of fear, the people full of tension.

Just by Jesus' stooping down, by returning to the ground of facts, the earth, Jesus leaves the questions of his challengers hanging in the air. Now they stand there with their hearts turned to stone and their words wanting to become stone.

Is writing to the earth meant to demonstrate his calm? Is he trying to give them time to think about themselves? Is he writing down their sins?

Perhaps he points to a word of the prophet Jeremiah.

In him it says in one place:

"All who forsake God are written in the dust, those who fall away from Him, their names on the earth. For they have forsaken the fountain of living waters, the Lord."

One thing is certain: Jesus confronts the accusers with Himself.

And, in so doing, confronts us with ourselves. Cold stares, hearts of stone. And the invitation that we ourselves go on the track after the principles in us that have become stone, after the assumptions that we do not question.

How easily we take sides in disputes without questioning the dispute as such. How mistaken we can be in our convictions and values. Jesus contrasts the people who rise and speak above others with a humble person who is silent. He contrasts words that have become stone with flowing movements in the sand. Against words that want to become flying stones, he writes words that the wind blows away. Thus, his words become living words that can go anywhere through the wind/the spirit.

But the angry crowd remains stubborn. Only briefly Jesus interrupts his writing and straightens up and 

speaks the words that I think are among the most significant words of Jesus ever: "He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her."

This wonderful phrase manages to break down the accusers' wall. Jesus reminds them of their own transgressions. Can they themselves wash their hands of it? Are they blameless? Jesus wants them to be insightful to the point that everyone must admit to themselves: who am I to judge others.

"Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone at her."  And Jesus' word hits. It hits to the core. Without sin, wholly innocent, no one is!

None of the accusers dare to throw a stone. They retreat, one by one. Jesus remains alone with the woman. Jesus asks, "Has no one condemned you?"

Now the woman speaks for the first time. Relieved and liberated, she answers, "No one, Lord!"

And Jesus? He, who alone would have the right ... He does not give her a moral sermon. He does not ask the question of guilt at all. He only registers: nobody has condemned her. And he shows her a new future: I also do not condemn you; go and sin no more.

Here a basic trait of Jesus becomes visible: he does not ask about sins committed. He promises forgiveness.

The accusers had only stones ready. But Jesus has a heart. He gives them a new beginning.

This story is one of the highlights of the Gospel. Jesus trusts that forgiveness of sins hits a person in the innermost and moves him to repentance. God's love calls our love!

No matter where I am.

When I stand by the sea and feel the sand, it may remind me of this. What Jesus did and said, what he died for and rose from the dead, is blown by the wind, by the Spirit, so to speak, into all the world. Over walls and borders, so that the joyful and liberating message reaches all people in all parts of the world. And also me. Again and again.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. So says a word of Jesus at one point in the Gospel of Matthew. Precisely because words move freely, they remain forever and ever. You can rely on that. Amen