There is an old gospel hymn entitled "Love Lifted Me". When I served as a student chaplain at Virginia State Prison in Fairfax, Virginia many years ago, it was a favorite song amongst the convicts incarcerated there. The hymn perfectly expresses the theme of the gospel for today.

In the Gospel of St. John we have today as our lesson the dramatic incident in the ministry of our Lord in which a woman was brought to him accused of adultery under pain of condemnation and execution by the Jewish law. The context of this incident follows a pattern which can be found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is a pattern of conflict between Jesus and his opponents, the Scribes and the Pharisees, who tried in various ways to present Him with a question in public whereby whatever solution He proposed He would convict himself.

What his enemies were trying to do was to impale Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. The Jewish law demanded that anyone breaking one of the Ten Commandments should be put to death. On the other hand, Jesus, claimed that He had come to save sinners. The Pharisees said to Him, "Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that she should be stoned: but what sayest Thou?" For Jesus to respond either way would be to deny Himself or the law of God. He would be humiliated by advocating either point of view. However, as was His custom, Jesus responded by transcending both sides of this dilemma and by presenting a new and profound truth about God and about man.

Rather than answering immediately, the Gospel tells us that Jesus stooped and wrote with His finger on the ground. This is a very interesting action on His part. The greatest religious figure of the world never wrote a single word except at this moment. Every teaching we have from Jesus was spoken. The only time it is mentioned that He wrote anything at all was when He wrote with His finger on the ground.

Some ancient scholars conjectured that He was writing a list of the sins of the Pharisees: such things as hypocrisy, greed, brutality, lust, envy and hatred. These faults are not specifically enumerated in the Jewish law. They are sins of the spirit. Was He listing all of the sins of these vindictive and hostile people who were trying to embarrass Him and to condemn this poor woman? Or, perhaps, He was writing something else? Was He preparing to present in one marvelous action the great new revelation that He was to bring to the world?

This new revelation is that God is not a God of condemnation and punishment of those who disobey Him. Rather, God is a God of infinite compassion and of mercy. I think it is quite obvious what Jesus was writing on the ground. He was writing the word LOVE. This word expresses the new state of existence which Jesus brought into human life and sums up our whole relationship to God and to one another. As the Apostle Paul was to put it, "Love is the fulfilling of the Law."

Jesus responded to His accusers by saying, "He that is without sin among you let him cast the first stone at her." He appealed to their conscience not to their reason or to their emotions. It is recorded that each one of them left, beginning with the oldest. The oldest one had the longest record of falling short of God's commands and God's requirements. We never outgrow our conscience. It was the oldest whose conscience was first pricked by the word of our Lord that anyone who was tainted by sin was not qualified to cast judgment on someone else.

The lynch mob melted away. Jesus was left alone with the woman. The gospel records that Jesus turned to the woman in all in her shame and sorrow. St. Augustine says that at this point ultimate misery confronted ultimate compassion. Jesus asked, "Hath no man condemned thee?" She answered, "No man, Lord." Then He said to her, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more."

This incident sums up the great gospel that the Christian church has been singing about ever since. This is the good news that God does not condemn sinful human beings. He forgives them. This is the great and wonderful truth that comes with our Lord. No matter what our conscience tells us, even though we try to suppress it and ignore it and paper it over with layers of rationalization, God does not condemn us. God forgives us. The ultimate compassion which resides in the eternal God is revealed in His son Jesus and becomes available and meaningful to us through faith in Him. The ultimate misery of this woman is transformed into infinite joy and is celebrated in that old gospel hymn, "Love Lifted Me".

This incident in the Gospel of St. John dramatizes the basic distinction between Christianity and Judaism. The Pharisees, who were the most devout and learned of the Jews, did not really understand their own scriptures. All through the Old Testament we have the teaching that behind what seems to be a vengeful God, there is the fact that He is a loving, forgiving God. The Bible teaches that the chief exponent of God's tremendous power is His compassion.

The greatest rulers of all time have been those who have shown compassion and who have shown mercy. This is the true mark of a great leader. Abraham Lincoln, is the one who illustrates this most truly in his role as the leader of our country during the terrible Civil War. In the archives of the history of the War there is a communique from General Thomas to General Sherman asking what to do with a group of deserters who had been rounded up. General Sherman replied, "Shoot them right away because if President Lincoln hears about them he will pardon them all."

I will dare to conjecture that what Jesus was writing on the ground was the word LOVE. This one word sums up the whole Christian religion. It is meant to be taken absolutely literally by every one of us regardless of who we are or what our condition may be, or may have been. Always to us God is offering His love, leading us to change our ways, to start over again, to do as this woman was told to do, "To go and sin no more." There is hope, there is strength, and there is renewal available to all of us. We can become new people whose sins have been put away. God is always offering us a second chance.

It is hard to imagine the misery of the poor woman who was apprehended by the Pharisees and brought to Jesus. Her shame and humiliation were compounded by her fear for her life. Some early commentators speculate that this woman might have been Mary Magdalene whom Jesus rescued and who became a devout follower of His. It is thought that she may have been the woman who showed her love for Jesus by anointing Him with precious oil and washing his feet with her tears. Jesus' love literally saved her from death and restored her self-esteem and spiritual health. Mary Magdalene accompanied Jesus and was with Him at the foot of the Cross. She was also, according to the Gospel of St. John, the first person to see the risen Christ.

It is not surprising that this dramatic incident, which illustrates for us the ultimate misery of human sin and the ultimate compassion of God in the person of Jesus Christ, is celebrated in Christian music, art, and literature. In the novel "Crime and Punishment", the author Fyodor Dostoyevsky used this event as the dramatic turning point in the lives of the two major characters in his book. A confessed murderer and a former prostitute, who was forced into this profession in order to feed her family, have fallen in love. They find redemption and new hope by reading together this same scripture passage in the Gospel of St. John. For these two lost souls ultimate misery and ultimate compassion meet once again.

May these words of Jesus bring redemption and new hope to all of us as we hear Him say, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more." May that old gospel hymn "Love Lifted Me" remind us of that tremendous event long ago when ultimate misery confronted ultimate compassion and the dynamic energy of Christ's love flowed into the world.