Rocks vs Grace – Sermon – Pastor Laura Gaffan

In biblical times, there was a way that people dealt with sin, rocks. So, they brought her in, and they threw her down in the dirt and they gathered around her angrily with rocks in their hands. Clothes, if she had any torn off, tears spilling in the dirt, can you imagine the shame and the anger. Where was the man? No way to know, but she was alone. They were there though, surrounding her. They, the self-proclaimed, upholders of moral rightness. They, the super-pious pillars of the moral assembly, armed with their bludgeoning hypocrisy and worked up indignation. She was in big trouble because she had sinned. Dead ending her into a circle of angry religious people with rocks in their hands.

Have you ever been there? Interesting thing about throwing rocks, especially when you throw them hard, it kind of feels good, like you’re a little safer inside, like you’re glad that’s gone, like the rock takes on the evil and you cast it away from yourself. No, you say inside, you can’t do that, you were wrong, that was bad. Like you’ve done your part to stop it. I told her exactly what I thought of that sin. Problem is, rocks don’t hit sin, they hit people.

Remember that scene in Forest Gump, where Jennie goes back to her childhood house and she stares at that shack where her father had abused her for so many years. She picks up a rock and she flings it at the house breaking a window. And she stares, and she stares hard as the tears start to sting her eyes, and then she flings another as hard as she can. She throws and she throws, crying until she collapses on the ground. Then quietly and in his own simple way, Forrest pronounces, sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks.

There aren’t. Jennie was hurling those rocks at the right thing, sin, dark, the blackness that overcomes people’s hearts and makes them unrecognizable as human beings. But there aren’t enough rocks in the entire world to beat the sin out of someone.

What we want to beat out of the world with our rocks has never come out yet, so when one man stepped out of the crowd and scribbled something in the dirt, he reminded a group of people who wanted to beat the sin out of her that it just wasn’t possible and He wasn’t going to let them try so they could feel better. They could kill her, but it wouldn’t solve the bigger problem, and He came to solve the bigger problem, so we didn’t have to try, with our little pathetic rocks.

But we won’t put them down.

A group of teenagers are killed on a Friday night, and we lob our rocks; well, they shouldn’t have been drinking. No, they shouldn’t have, but does our saying that ease the pain and the guilt of those parents? But we drag them in the circle of public opinion and throw our rocks.

No one knows what He scribbled in the dirt that day. Some have speculated that maybe it was the names of the men in the crowd that she had been with. Others say He just traced designs and patterns giving the people time for their anger to diminish because that day He backed it up with these words, “Anyone among you who is without sin or blackness in their own hearts step forward first and throw your rock.”

Silence.

And in that silence, He saved us all, He leveled the playing field. He gave those amongst us who have made the worst choices of our lives a place to be broken but not destroyed. Giving us a picture that He would stand between us and them, and He gave those that felt that they had reason and right to throw the rock, the freedom to choose love instead. And that is a drop your rock moment.

They’ve come at different times for each of us, maybe, you’ve come running with your rock only to find your loved one in the center of the circle and what was so easy to judge before, now has a very familiar face. When your teenage daughter tells you she is pregnant, or you best friend confesses that he is leaving his family.

Your anger comes first, your teeth clench, and your grip on your rock tightens, and you want to throw it. You want to tell them exactly what you think of that sin, just beat it out of them, but you don’t; and you realize that you can drop the rock. Your grip loosens, and the tears fall. Can you imagine what she felt that day, hunched over waiting to feel the pain of all those rocks and instead hearing them drop to the ground? Have you ever trembled and told a friend something that you had done terribly wrong and then hunched over emotionally waiting to hear those stone-cold words of judgment hit you in the back and instead you hear the flat thud of grace as the rock hits the ground.

I wonder if what keeps us from extending grace is that we simply don’t understand it. I don’t think we will ever fully understand the depth of grace given to us on this side of eternity. God’s word provides us with so many pictures of grace. Maybe we haven’t connected them and maybe, just maybe, if we are honest with ourselves, in the deepest part of us maybe this is where our problem lies. We are so skilled at seeing the sin in others and yet so unaware of our own. If this is as true for you as it is for me, then we need look no further than our Saviour. Jesus was perfect at putting a face on grace.

It is important for us to remember who Jesus was from an ethnic and cultural standpoint. As a devout Jew, His life would been shaped by the Temple and the great feasts such as Passover. Each morning and evening He would have prayed the Shema Israel from Deuteronomy 6:4-5,

“Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Therefore, you shall love the Lord, our God, with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

But it was those laws, the observance of the 613 laws contained in the Torah, that the Pharisees and Sadducees intended to uphold above all else and use to bring Jesus down, baiting Him in the temple where He sat to teach. “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

The scene is a trap. Levitical law, specifically, Leviticus 20:10 demanded both parties be put to death, but there is no man. If Jesus took the hard stance and consented, He would then be responsible to the Romans for her death.

“If anyone of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

He doesn’t address either problem.

He doesn’t ask her if she is sorry, doesn’t make her beg for forgiveness. He doesn’t even address her until her accuser’s slink away, and I wonder if His posture would have put Him at eye level with her. I wonder if for the first time in her life, she felt seen.

“Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?”

“No one, Master.”

“Neither do I. Go on your way and from now on, don’t sin.”

He doesn’t dismiss her sin; in fact, He tells her to leave her life of sin. But clearly, grace came before the law.

Grace was expressed through His tenderness and compassion.

Jesus gives us another clear example of the Father’s grace in the parable of the prodigal son. We tend to focus more on the son that takes his father’s inheritance and squanders the wealth in wild living. Broke and broken, living with the pigs, making it very clear to His Jewish listeners how far this son had fallen for that was a big “no-no” rule for a Jew, he returns to his father who, as it says in Luke 15:21,

“When he was a long way off, saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him and kissed him.”

Even before the apology, the father is standing waiting expectantly, so filled with love and compassion, he can’t wait, and He runs to greet him. In the middle east, this parable is called, “The Running Father” because Jewish men did not hike up their robes and run, it was considered undignified and scandalous, but this is the picture of radical grace Jesus is painting for His listeners.

But what of the law-abiding older son? Bitter and resentful at the injustice of it all, he tells his father exactly what he thinks, “All these years I have been slaving for you and have never disobeyed your orders, yet you have never even given me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.” Clearly, his rule keeping has kept him a slave. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that in order for the younger son to get his inheritance to blow in the first place, the older son would have received his double portion as prescribed by the law. In essence, his sons were telling the father that they wished him dead and wanted his money. The Father’s response? “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” The older brother’s inability to forgive had not only robbed him of the joy of experiencing the grace extended to his brother, but he missed the grace that had been there for him all along.

In Mathew 20:1-16 Jesus tells the parable of the workers who were hired by the man who owned a vineyard. Some were hired early in the morning, and others were hired at different times throughout the day, but regardless of how long they had worked, each was paid the same. Yet the workers hired early, began to grumble about the unfairness of it all. Had they not started earlier, worked not only longer, but harder? The vineyard owners’ response? “Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man that was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” This is actually an incredibly strong teaching on grace. The vineyard owner is generous across the board. Unfair? By our standards, absolutely. But in God’s economy, grace in unearned, unmerited favour. Grace by its very nature, is unfair.

In Jesus’ parables and His ministry, forgiveness and grace are extended to prostitutes and beggars, those who were hated among the Jews like Samaritans and Roman Officials. Corrupt tax collectors and desperately poor widows. And it is extended to you. Does it disturb you to be lumped in with these? Have we subconsciously bought into the lie that all of our rule keeping, and work has somehow put us in a better standing than others? Do we celebrate with the younger son, living joyfully in the freedom of grace, knowing the pit of sin from which we have been dragged time and time again? Or complain bitterly about those who don’t keep the rules and the unfairness of it all, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, the older son and workers in the vineyard? Is this grace scandalous to you? Then stare again at the scandal that is the cross. The ultimate story of grace. Where those crossbeams intersect, so do love and mercy to cover us with forgiveness and grace. It is what He extends to the thief on the cross when He declares, “today, you will be with me in glory.” And the final act before He died. For you, for me. Because of you because of me, because we all have a sin problem, some are easier to hide than other, but before our Holy God, all of it is unacceptable and all of it demands one price. Death. But because of the cross, because of Christ’s death, because of His blood, it has been paid in full.

He paid the price so we wouldn’t have to.

We are free to choose it and free because of it!

Yes, grace is unfair and thank you God that it is!

This is a scandalous love that our Father has for us. And maybe we know this so well in our heads, but do we live it on a heart level? Do you feel the freedom of grace so much that it spills over and on to the lives around you. Sincere Christ followers should be the most gracious, forgiving people. In John 15:12 Jesus tells us,

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

Love each other, sacrificially and grace filled as Jesus loved. But we harbour resentment and carry hurts that rival any unbeliever. Unwilling to look at the sin in our lives that hurts others, we fixate on their sin. This is as much for me as it is for you if not more so. I can throw a rock faster and with more precision that the best major league baseball pitcher! I can let a painful word fester like no one else I know, paint a smile on my face, feed my unforgiving heart with all sorts of excuses and never admit the failure to see that the Jesus who died for me was leveling the playing field and died for you as well. All of us sinners, all saved by grace.

I wanted to tie this together so neatly for you. To tie it in a beautiful gift that would be so much more palatable. But the words of a preacher keep me from soft pedaling this message. He said, “The only offence coming from the church should be from its pulpits”. There are no shortcuts to the kind of life Jesus is calling us to and modeling for us in these passages. This grace that calls us to go over and above. In a devotional by one of my favourite authors, Brennan Manning who wrote the “Raggamuffin Gospel”, he writes,

“You know, in spite of the fact that Christianity speaks of the cross, redemption, and sin, we’re unwilling to admit failure in our lives. Why? Partially, I guess, because it’s human nature’s defense mechanism against its own inadequacies. But even more so, it’s because of the successful image our culture demands of us. There are some real problems with projecting the perfect image. First of all, it’s simply not true-we are not always happy, optimistic, in command. Second, projecting the flawless image keeps us from reaching people who feel we just wouldn’t understand them. And third, even if we could live a life with no conflict, suffering, or mistakes, it would be a shallow existence. The Christian with depth is the person who has failed and who has learned to live with his failure.”

I would like to suggest that there is a fourth: lack of freedom. The façade of perfection, rule keeping and our works that keep us shackled.

Romans 6:14, “Sin will have no dominion over you, since we are not under laws but under grace.”

John 8:36, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

It is so much more than the fire insurance salvation many of us signed on for! What if we acted in our freedom, lived in and extended the grace? Or is there just more safely in our rule keeping? Is it just easier to say at the end of the day, I kept the rules, but I know they broke rules 47 and 345? I wonder if there is a wildness about freedom in Christ that frightens us. But the words of Brennan Manning haunt me, “projecting the flawless image keeps us from reaching people, who feel we just wouldn’t understand them.” I’m afraid our rule and flawless image keeping has kept us at arms length from a world dying for our authenticity. Living in the freedom of grace would be messy because we are called to then extend it to those around us, as Manning goes on to say, “God wants us to respect one another; He wants us to fuss and worry about, to be concerned about and involved with, to forgive and make excuses for, to be good to and love one another until the day we die and ever after. Jesus commands it repeatedly and reemphasizes it on the night before His death. And here’s a sobering question, how much impact would we have if we were the forgiving, grace-filled people God is clearly calling us to be?

In his book, “I Forgrace you”, Dr. David Anderson writes,

“Grace is unfair. Grace doesn’t make sense, it’s too good to be true. Grace is defined as unmerited, unearned favour. It’s extra goodness that is bestowed on us by God for no good reason. We don’t deserve it, can’t earn or repay it. It’s crazy. Yet, this is what God gives to us every day. “Gracism”, a term he coined means to extend grace regardless…. God extends grace to the human race because we are in such need of his extra favour. He is the biggest gracist of us all.”

Forgiveness is something, hopefully, we have been given and have received from one another, but here is where Dr. Anderson takes our faith walk to a more “Christ-like” pace. It is a life that calls for radical conversion. Forgiveness means to release people from retaliation and revenge. It is setting them free from the prison of our unforgiving heart and not holding against them what they did to us. The act of forgiveness is both a choice and a process. The choice to forgive must be made repeatedly and then reaffirmed every time our emotions cause us to want to strangle afresh those who hurt us.

When we forgive, we are letting the other person go. For us. We are releasing him or her to God, trusting that He knows how to deal with the person and their sin. But time and time again, His teaching, His ministry and by His example, Jesus is calling us to something greater. Grace beyond forgiveness is “Forgraceness”. For those teachers amongst us, yes, I know that’s not a word, but maybe it should be!

“Forgraceness” is the act of extending grace that goes beyond forgiveness to people who have hurt us or caused us pain. Beyond forgiveness, forgraceness beckons us to be kind to our offender and even seek their well-being.

Imagine what this other worldly concept would look like to this dark, divisive world!

I can think of no better example than that of Corrie Ten Boom, who wrote the book, “The Hiding Place”. Corrie’s family was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp after it was discovered that they had been hiding Jews during World War 2. More than 96,000 women were killed there, one of which was Corrie’s beloved sister, Betsie.

Some years later, Corrie gave a speech at a church after which a heavyset man approached her. Corrie recognized him as one of the most brutal guards in her camp. She froze in pain and anguish. The man said to her, “Since that time, I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from you lips as well. Fraulein – will you forgive me?” Corrie wrestled with what he said. It was the most difficult thing she ever did. She wrote, “I had to do it, I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.” And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. “I forgive you, brother!” I cried, “With all my heart!” For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then. And so, I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness, any more than on our goodness the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

To err is human, to forgive, divine, to extend grace above it all? Only through the power of the Holy Spirit and modelling the lead of our Saviour.

Can you imagine how we could change the landscape of our world with grace? The relationships that would be restored. The shame, the guilt, the bitterness that would no longer have power.

Our rocks will never change the world. Only pock mark it with hate and fear. And maybe, just maybe Jesus wrote in the sand that day, “My rock is bigger than yours, I’ll handle this one, so you can drop your rock.”