I sat in a room surrounded by men, the most vulnerable parts of me exposed. I was there to be judged.
In that judgment, all my trauma revisited. The trauma from my childhood, my teens, my early marriage and from other religious abuse, flooded my nervous system. All the trauma messages were screaming:
- I am not safe.
- I am alone.
- I am rejected.
- I am not worth protecting.
- I deserve this.
- I have no voice.
She was surrounded by a brood of vipers who came only to bite and devour her. The malice in their retribution was only exceeded by their malevolence toward the Lord. Here she is, caught in the act of adultery, the law calls for her stoning. What will you do Jesus? They will certainly get the evidence they need against the revolutionary now. He will have to stone her if he is faithful to the Law of Moses.
Fueled by control and intolerance, for both her and Jesus, they intimidated with fear, shame and isolation. The promise of death looming.
She is laying in the dirt. The penetrating stares burning. There won’t be a trial today. There is no defense. She is convicted. She is guilty.
They saw her sin. They saw her nakedness. They saw her fear. And they liked it.
…
What Jesus does next is radical and transformational.
He gets in the dirt. With her.
This legitimate, caught-in-the-act, sinning woman is accompanied by the Son of God in her filth.
Jesus doesn’t just pardon her death penalty. Jesus gets on the ground and covers her. He shields her from accusation, from judgment and the punishment she seemed to deserve.
Jesus sees her in her humanity and her redeemabilty. He sees her value and her potential.
He created her. He breathed hope and dreams into her as he formed her in her mother’s womb. He saw the things the world did to dull the sparkle of the little girl who used to dance for him in the temple. This wasn’t what he created her for. There was so much more. And he’s going to make sure she finds it.
I don’t know what Jesus wrote in the sand that day, but it was enough to disarm her accusers and the principalities of darkness all at once.
There is no condemnation today.
Jesus is a fierce defender of the weak today. He silences the inquisition today. He is justice today.
And this is the standard church leadership is called to. This is the model of church leadership in Christ’s body. Creating safety for the weak, the vulnerable and the oppressed is Christ.
- If a religious leader or institution is more concerned with keeping people in check, rather than keeping people safe, it is not of God.
- We have an obligation to hold leaders accountable to the standard of Christ. This is His church done His way.
- Those of us who have been wounded by leadership cannot heal if we remain under the abusive rule of modern Pharisees.
Christ calls us to safety. He invites us into freedom. He offers the same future he promised her that day. We just have to be brave enough to take it.
May he defend the cause of the poor, give deliverance to the needy and crush the oppressor. Psalm 72:4
He brought me into a spacious place. Psalm 118:5
