Fatal Convictions

51

Alex had one suit that fit perfectly-a black pin-striped suit that he liked to wear with a red power tie and a light blue shirt. It was his most traditional outfit. Old school. He normally reserved that suit for his rare appearances in federal court.

On Sunday morning, he donned the suit and slipped on a pair of black loafers. He’d once owned a pair of wingtips, but they were so uncomfortable that he’d tossed them two weeks after purchasing them. He preferred the loafer look-casual enough for the beach, dressy enough for a lawyer. His hair was still fairly short from when he had buzzed it a few weeks ago, and he was beginning to like the clean and streamlined look.

He couldn’t find the thin black belt he had worn to court on Friday, but he found a thick one that barely fit through the belt loops and looked a little funny because the buckle was too big. Oh well. He could button his suit coat in church, and no one would notice. As a final concession to the importance of the occasion, Alex had even slipped on a pair of black dress socks. Many Sundays he would go without socks, and the old folks would tease him about it. But today, there was too much on the line. His congregation needed to know he was taking this seriously.

They might vote him out of a job today, but at least he would look good leaving. He checked his reflection in the mirror one last time, stuffed his notes into his thin Bible, and smiled at the thought of the Scripture passage he had chosen for the morning’s sermon.

The most controversial story in the New Testament. At least nobody would accuse him of going down without a fight.***

On Easter Sundays, South Norfolk Community Church attendance might crack a hundred. But most weeks, Alex preached to a smattering of about seventy people in a sanctuary designed to hold three hundred. Most of the people would sit near the back, especially the third row from the back, where the hearing-aid plugs were located. The hard-of-hearing parishioners liked the aids because they could turn them up-or down-depending on the contents of the sermon.

When Alex stood to preach, he looked out over a full crowd of nearly two hundred. Many were either curiosity seekers, members of the press, or members of South Norfolk who hadn’t attended in years but had been dragged to church by friends to help stack the vote. Like most small evangelical churches, the only way that somebody got eliminated from the rolls at South Norfolk was by their own death, and even then the odds were about fifty-fifty.

At the request of the ever-hungry media, Alex had authorized television crews to set up tripods along the back wall-though only after a lengthy conference call with the deacons on Saturday. Harry Dent had been adamantly opposed to the idea but had a hard time countering Alex’s argument that this might be God’s way of broadcasting the worship service to the entire world.

“It just feels like somebody’s asking to come into my house and broadcast a family feud,” Dent argued.

“Then let’s show them a family lovefest instead,” Alex countered.

Dent cast the lone dissenting vote on the camera issue.

Before beginning his message, Alex took a deep breath to calm his nerves. His eyes landed for a split second on Nara Mobassar, seated on the aisle in the second-to-last row. She looked more stunning than ever and gave Alex a subtle nod. What’s she doing here?

“Our text this morning is a passage of Scripture that many people say should not even be in the Bible,” Alex began. In preparing this message, Alex had decided not to ignore the elephant in the room. “Naturally, since this might be my last sermon, I went straight to the most controversial passage I could find. Would everyone turn to the Gospel of John, chapter eight?”

Alex heard the rustle of Bibles among the congregants while the reporters looked clueless. Nara stayed locked on to what he was saying.

“My Bible, like most modern translations, contains a note just above this chapter that states, ‘The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-8:11.’ I’ll bet many of you didn’t even know that there was this chunk of Scripture, right in the middle of the Gospel of John, that many scholars believe doesn’t even belong in the Bible.”

A few parishioners gave Alex a quizzical look-he was right. Nara’s expression didn’t change. Alex knew that Muslims believed the Bible had been corrupted during its copying and translation. If anything, she was probably thinking, Why should I be surprised?

“While Jesus was teaching at the Temple,” Alex explained, “the religious leaders brought a woman before him who had been caught in adultery. They said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. The Law of Moses commands us to stone her. Now, what do you say?’

“Most of you probably already know Christ’s response. He wrote in the dirt with his finger a couple of times and told the religious leaders that whoever was without sin should cast the first stone. One by one, the leaders dropped their stones and left. When only Jesus and the woman remained, he looked at her and asked where all her accusers were-‘Hasn’t anyone condemned you?’ And she said, ‘No one, sir.’ Jesus responded to her with these words: ‘Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.’”

Harry Dent was squirming. Bill Fitzsimmons, located one row behind Harry, looked down at his Bible and frowned. He probably thought it wasn’t fair for Alex to use this passage today. It wasn’t hard to figure out who the religious leaders were in the analogy.

“So I want to ask two questions about this passage,” Alex said, stepping out from behind the pulpit. He wanted no barriers between him and his congregation. “What did Jesus write in the dirt? And should this passage even be in the Bible?”

Alex walked down from the platform and into the center aisle. Even with two hundred in attendance, the first few rows were empty.

“Keep in mind that this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. There was no question about her guilt or innocence.” Alex paused and surveyed the congregation. The loudest complainers had been questioning all week about Alex representing someone he knew was guilty. “And Jesus didn’t offer a substantive defense. Instead, he knelt down and wrote something in the dirt.”

Alex knelt now and pretended to write on the floor. He spoke in soft tones. “What did he write? We don’t know. Perhaps…” Alex looked up at his congregation. “Perhaps he wrote a list of sins the religious leaders had committed-maybe even the names of women they had slept with. Perhaps he was sending a message to the leaders that if they stoned this woman, their sins would be exposed as well.” Alex couldn’t help taking a quick glance at Harry. The man’s neck was turning crimson.

“Perhaps this is a reminder to all of us that we should be slow to judge and that every sin-even our own sin-is an affront to a holy God.”

Alex stood and walked a few rows deeper into the congregation. Nobody was scribbling pictures on the bulletin today. If his entire ministry hadn’t been on the line, this might have been fun.

“Or perhaps what he wrote in the dirt was the Roman statute that made it illegal for anyone but Rome to impose capital punishment. That’s why the Jewish leaders had to get the sanction of Pontius Pilate before they could crucify Christ. But whatever he wrote in the dirt was not what we would call a substantive defense. Though none of us like to think of it this way, Jesus defended this woman on a technicality.”

Ramona could not have looked more proud. Her posture, as always, was impeccable. On the other side of the sanctuary, Nara slowly nodded her approval.

“As to my second question-‘Does this passage even belong in Scripture?’-we have to determine whether this passage was added by the early church leaders or whether it was contained in the original manuscript of John and for some reason removed by the early church. As you all know, we don’t have the original manuscript. And so we must judge based on what we know about the early church and based on the thousands of ancient copies that we do have.”

Alex was starting to lose them a little. Nobody had ever accused his congregation of getting mired down in theological details. “You should know that this story is contained in a fifth-century Greek manuscript, one of our oldest copies, and in the original Latin Vulgate. The story is also referenced in several writings of the early church fathers in the third and fourth centuries.

“We know that the early church was adamant about the sin of adultery. In fact, when an early Christian literary work called The Shepherd of Hermas suggested that persons who committed major sins such as adultery could be forgiven only one time, it was roundly criticized by church leaders for being too lenient. Tertullian called it ‘The Shepherd of Adulterers.’ Given this judgmental attitude of early church leaders, it’s hard to believe that those leaders added this story rather than deleted it.

“And if that’s the case, we ought to pay careful attention to a story that is so poignant that the early church fathers couldn’t quite embrace its radical message of mercy and forgiveness. Maybe they had forgotten that Christ’s entire message was based on God’s willingness to forgive our sins, not just one time, but for all time. There is no better picture of such forgiveness than this story.”

Alex hesitated before he dove into the next part. He didn’t want to make the sermon all about him, but he knew his own future was the issue foremost on everyone’s mind.

“At the end of today’s service, you’ll have a chance to vote on whether I should remain as your pastor. Many of you are upset with me because I’ve chosen to defend a man of another faith who I believe is innocent. Many of you have already decided that he is guilty.”

Alex was getting some hard looks. He had gone from preaching to meddling. “But even if you want to assume that this man is guilty, does that mean I shouldn’t represent him? Did Christ make you prove your innocence before he died for your sins? If this story about the woman caught in adultery stands for anything, it stands for the proposition that we are never more like Jesus than when we’re defending those persons who have been rejected by everyone else. This is a story about grace. A story about forgiveness. And if you decide to fire me as your pastor, then I would urge you to do what the early church leaders seem to have done…”

Alex spoke softly now, though he knew his words were landing with nuclear force. One thing that South Norfolk Community Church believed was that you didn’t mess with Scripture. So Alex reached into the back of a pew and pulled out the nearest Bible that the church had placed there next to the hymnals. “If you decide to vote against me, have somebody take a pair of scissors, open each Bible to John chapter eight, and cut that chapter out. And along with it, some other teachings on grace in the New Testament.”

Harry Dent was actually shaking his head from side to side, the equivalent in church of a declaration of war. Ramona had a thin but pleased smile on her lips.

Alex hoped that his message today had given her some good ammunition for the business meeting that would take place after the service. An hour from now, he would know whether it was enough.