Jarrett McLaughlin
“I AM, So You Can: The Light”
March 9, 2025
John 8:1-16
Cold Open:
Today we kick off a new Sermon Series for the season of Lent.
We’re calling it “I AM, So You Can.”
It’s based on the Seven “I Am…” saying in the Gospel of John – one for each of the Sundays of Lent and then the final one on Easter Sunday.
Seven times Jesus makes claims about his own identity – he gives us seven ways to understand who he is and what he is about.
I am the good shepherd.
I am the bread of life.
I am the true vine.
I am the way, the truth and the life.
In this sermon series, we want to build on those “I Am” sayings and think about how Jesus’ identity also offers us insight and direction for our own identity.
Jesus is the bread of life, so that we can be bread for the world.
Jesus is the good shepherd so that we can be faithful to the ones we would shepherd.
Today we begin with his claim “I am the Light of the world” and we will consider what it means for us to offer light – to offer illumination – in a world that exists between the dim and the dark (JLC reference!!!).
As I mulled all of this over I got to thinking about the dark.
Were any of you ever afraid of the dark? Or still afraid of the dark?
That one always makes sense to me – It’s hard to see.
Your mind conjures up all kinds of shapes that are not there.
The dark is scary.
I have no clue how old I was, still a child for sure, when I convinced myself to make friends with the dark. I chalk it up to summer evenings playing flashlight tag. I wasn’t much of an athlete per se, I was never going to dazzle my friends on the basketball court, but by golly when it came to hide-and-seek I was committed to finding the best places to hide.
I knew that if you never wanted to be found you needed to hide in the tall, tall grass deep in the dark, dark woods because nobody wanted to go in there. But first I had to be okay sitting in there for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably 15 minutes.
I would stare down the darkest part of the woods and say to myself
“I’m not afraid of the dark. I’M NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK. The dark is afraid of me.”
Perhaps it was a shaky courage, but it was enough to put one foot in front of the other and step into the shadows.
A reading from John, chapter 8.
Scripture:
Early in the morning [Jesus] 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. 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.’
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’
Then the Pharisees said to him, ‘You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.’
Jesus answered, ‘Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgement is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me.
The Word of the Lord. THANKS BE TO GOD.
Sermon:
Some say it doesn’t belong there – this story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery.
Some say it doesn’t appear in the earliest manuscripts of John.
Some say is disrupts the narrative continuity between chapter 7 and what follows when Jesus proclaims himself “the light of the world.”
They say that the language feels much more like one of the other three Gospels – like when the Pharisees call Jesus “Teacher” – they don’t really do that in John. That’s more of a Matthew-Mark-Luke thing.
Some say that what we have here at the beginning of John 8 is an editorial addition.
Others say it does belong there.
Others say it’s just as likely that somebody commissioned a copy of John and asked the scribe to cut that part out – they didn’t want a wayward child caught in a scandal to throw this story in their face and say “Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery – you should forgive me, too.”
Others say that it flows perfectly fine from the previous section. The Temple guards refused to arrest Jesus because of his popularity among the crowds – and so it makes sense for the Priests and Elders to come back at him with a softer form of aggression. “Let’s see if we can get Jesus to discredit himself in public.”
Regardless of whether it is original to the Gospel or not, it is the text as we have received it, and I would argue that this episode is as good an illustration as any for what it means for Jesus to be the light of the world – to be the one who sheds enough light so that we can see what is really happening.
When I was in 10th grade – there was an incident in the locker room.
I was horsing around with some guys and accidentally poked a classmate in the eye.
It was my fault and I quickly moved close to him,
put my hand on his shoulder and said “I am so sorry. Are you okay?”
He was angry and so he socked me a good one – his fist landed on the top part of my forehead so I fear it hurt him more than it hurt me – but in a locker room, as soon as a punch has been thrown, there’s this frenzy that takes over. All the boys suddenly locked us inside a circle and chanted “fight – Fight – FIGHT!”
I had no interest in fighting.
It was my fault and I apologized – or was trying to – but the crowd just wanted to see blood.
As I stood there trying to think how in the world am I going to get out of this, Jesse stepped into the circle. Jesse was a year older and so had that gravity that comes with being an upper classman. He held up his hands and said “HEY! I don’t think there’s going to be a fight today!” And then he walked back to his locker and the spell was broken.
Everybody went back to stuffing sweaty gym clothes back in their bags and covering up the the smell of Body Odor as much as deodorant allows. I had never really spoken to Jesse before. I honestly didn’t speak much to him after that – but I was always grateful for the way he stepped into that circle and diffused a tense situation.
Whenever I read John 8, I think about that day in the locker room.
As Jesus is teaching in the Temple – right in the middle of his lesson – the Elders drag in some poor woman who, in their own words, was caught in the very act of adultery.
Now, how they managed to catch this woman – and only this woman – in the act of adultery will never cease to baffle me. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango. There must be somebody else, but they didn’t drag HIM out for a stoning, did they?
This is the first hint that Jesus’ opponents are not actually concerned with the integrity of the law. If they were, they would have brought the man as well, for both are liable to the same punishment under the law of Moses. Here they show their hand – this isn’t about the Law. This is about discrediting Jesus. The woman is just a means to an end – a pawn – collateral damage in their anti-Jesus campaign.
Throwing the poor woman before Jesus, they set the trap – “Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’”
This is where Jesus must walk a very thin tightrope.
If he says don’t stone her – then he disregards the Law.
Then they can say he is unfit to bear the name ‘Rabbi.’
If he says ‘follow the law and kill her’ – that will get him in trouble with Rome because, as learn later at Jesus’ crucifixion, the Empire did not permit these occupied Jews to execute anyone according to their own law. So if Jesus tells them to purge the community of sin and end this woman’s life he himself would be arrested.
Either way, the Scribes and Pharisees win. That’s the trap.
What they didn’t imagine, though, is that Jesus could, and would, choose neither.
Instead of engaging in this bad-faith debate, he stoops down and begins to write on the ground.
I know what you’re wondering – What does he write?
Everyone and their cousin want to know what Jesus was writing in that dust.
And there have been plenty of guesses.
Perhaps he wrote out the sins of everyone in the crowd.
Perhaps he wrote Deuteronomy 22:22 – “if a MAN is discovered committing adultery, both he and the woman must die.” Just so it’s clear that he knows the Law.
And perhaps right alongside it he wrote the words to Hosea 6:6 – “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.”
Perhaps he wrote out the contradictions in the witness of Scripture – to demonstrate that there is no one way to respond to this matter.
We don’t know what he was writing but I don’t think ‘the what’ is as important as the act itself.
When the powerful seek to destroy Jesus – when the powerful want to “own this Lib” so bad that they will use and abuse anybody to achieve that end – Jesus takes all the attention off the woman and puts it on himself.
You really have to imagine the scene – close your eyes if you like –
There’s an entire locker-room’s worth of men standing in a circle –
Standing over this woman with scraped knees and torn clothes who has been thrown onto the ground in the center of their circle.
They are tall and in a frenzy – they want to see blood.
She is small…occupying the low ground – quite certain she will not be getting out of this situation alive.
But then Jesus steps right into the middle of the circle – and he makes himself even smaller.
To write on the ground, he must stoop down very low.
He places himself on the same level as the woman and so draws all the attention away from her and on to himself. He occupies the lower ground with her.
Regardless of what Jesus was writing on the ground, he signals to everyone gathered – the Scribes and Pharisees trying to trick him as well as the ordinary folk who came to hear him teach – Jesus signals to all of them that he will not participate in any of this.
Dare I venture that this turns out to be the real lesson:
People are not pawns.
A sibling in this human family is not a means to some sinister end.
No life deserves such disrespect – no matter how compromised it might be.
Right on the heels of this lesson, Jesus will say of himself “I am the light of the world.”
He does have a way of illuminating what is really happening;
A knack for exposing the malicious machinery that consolidates power for the few even as it saws down the lives of countless others.
Was the story about this woman original to the Gospel of John?
Did this actually take place in the life of Jesus?
I can’t say for certain………but I sure hope so.
I hope so because that same machinery continues to whack its way through this world, grinding up the lives of way too many for the benefit of far too few.
I want…no, I need to believe that the one I call Lord and Savior is not afraid to step into the middle of it all – and like good ole’ Jesse in that locker room – say “Not today.”
Not the poor, not the immigrants, not the refugees in our midst.
Not the people who are different colors, different cultures, different creeds.
Not the queer;
Not the civil servants;
not even the incarcerated with some serious marks on their record.
I need to believe that my savior can step into the most shadow-filled parts of our human nature and say “I’m not afraid of this dark, but this dark should be afraid of me….for I am the light of the world, Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.
Did you hear it – it’s right there in that secondary statement.
Whoever follows me will have the same revealing light within them.
I am the Light, so you can be the Light.
Perhaps we too might be the kind of people who can occupy the same ground as the most vulnerable.
Perhaps we too might have courage enough to step into the circle and say ‘Not today.’
It may be a shaky courage, but by grace may it be enough to put one foot in front of the other. Amen.