Hey gang! Today, 'm sharing the transcript for a sermon I gave yesterday at my church. I hope it serves you, wherever you are in your relationship with the Lord!
Even though I wasn’t raised Catholic, growing up, I felt like I had a patron saint.
Patron Saints are said to guide and protect, and to offer wisdom to those who need it.
They’re advocates, guides, and inspiration.
You may have heard of my patron saint: her name is Taylor Swift.
You laugh, but as Teenage Beth, T. Swift was it, for me. No shame: to this day, I own every single one of her albums and – I’m not kidding – I know the lyrics to every single song she’s ever written, including the unreleased ones. I am a Swiftie, through and through. I grew up with Taylor. Her lyrics made me feel seen and understood.
I remember in particular when her song “Mean” came out – picture this: it’s 2010. I’m 14. The iPad is released for the first time. The first Instagram test posts are happening. Wikileaks has also just happened, and Taylor Swift releases her new single Mean.
I remember in an interview about the song, she says, “"there's constructive criticism, there's professional criticism, and then there's just being mean. And there's a line that you cross when you just start to attack everything about a person” and as a bullied teenager, I felt so deeply what she was talking about.
If you’ve been living under a rock for twelve years and have never heard the song, let me read some of the lyrics:
“You, with your words like knives
And swords and weapons that you use against me
You have knocked me off my feet again
Got me feeling like I'm nothing
You, with your voice like nails on a chalkboard
Calling me out when I'm wounded
You, picking on the weaker man.”
She goes on to sing, “Someday I’ll be / living in a big old city/ and all you’re ever going to be is mean.”
Sometimes, people are just mean, aren’t they? And it doesn’t matter what your age is, you’ve probably felt the way Swift did when she wrote these lyrics. We’ve all felt the knives of others' judgment and criticism; we’ve all been knocked down, wounded, picked on.
And what really starts to suck is that the older we get, the more we realize that we can be mean, too. At 14, I felt like a victim of everyone else’s cruelty; at 26, I stand before you confessing that I’m capable of being downright nasty to other people, too.
Meanness is unfortunately an inherently human trait. We are for whatever reason inclined to criticism. Church folks have a reputation for being hypocritical and judgmental, and if we’re honest, we can see why that’s true, right?
It’s always been this way.
The Bible shows us that that’s the case; our scripture today will discuss a particular instance of meanness, and illustrate what Jesus actually calls us to instead of criticism. We’ll also be looking at verses from Ephesians and 1 John that will act as our compass towards compassion.
"Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, 2 but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. 3 As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.
4 “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”
6 They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. 7 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8 Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
11 “No, Lord,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
-John 8:1-11
Here we see a woman who has made a mistake. We don’t know her story – we don’t even know her name. But what we do know is that her entire community sits in judgment against her, and is ready to condemn her. She is beyond being criticized – she is being condemned. The man she was caught with is suspiciously off the hook, but not her – she’s dragged before Jesus, in all of her brokenness, and awaits HIS judgment.
But what does Jesus do? He kneels in the dirt and starts doodling.
Gosh, I love this man.
I love this God who instead of condemning, draws in the sand. Jesus practices compassion, not criticism. We don’t know what He was writing. Some have argued that Jesus is writing out the sins of all the other townspeople. Some argue that He is writing verses about only God being allowed to judge. I, personally, think He just doodled because He was trying to show the people how pointless and ineffective their criticism of this woman was. No matter what He wrote, Jesus’s message was clear: “Drop the stones.” That's essentially what He says.
Drop. The. Stones.
We are, each of us, guilty of hurling stones rather than dropping them.
Our default is not compassion, it’s criticism.
So often we forget that when we judge others, that judgment doesn’t define the other person, it defines us.
Jesus knew that criticism and judgment are poisons that blind us from our own problems, our own culpability. It’s much easier to critique than to practice compassion, because compassion requires us to see ourselves in the face of the person we want to judge. And we don’t want to admit to ourselves or others that we are in need of compassion, too. It’s easier to critique because it frees us from the burden of recognizing that we need compassion too, because we are also equally messed up.
The thing about compassion is that, yes, it requires us to drop the stones. But it also requires us to actively practice it, over and over and over again. Compassion is summarized in Ephesians 4:32 like this, “ Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Compassion is kindness, understanding, and forgiveness. It is a process of continually placing oneself in the shoes of the other person. It is graciousness in action. And it is so stinkin’ hard because it isn’t our default setting; it’s a habit. And like all habits, you have to work at it in order for it become your reflex.
Compassion requires me to look beyond a person’s actions, and look to really see them not for what they do, but why they do it. Compassion goes deeper than criticism because while criticism cuts to the bone, compassion looks at a person’s true identity and motives, and seeks to understand. Compassion therefore says, “Me too.” Which is why it asks us to forgive – when we see ‘me too’ in another person, we can’t help but forgive. Not because we condone an action or agree with it, but because we can understand the true motive behind it.
And compassion matters so, so much to Jesus. 1 John 3:17 says, “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”
You who sit upon your high horse may think that you’re better than someone else, but when you close your heart against your neighbor, you risk showing people that God’s love doesn’t abide in you. That’s a big statement, isn’t it? If we have so much – whether it be material wealth or just spiritual/mental/emotional stability – and we withhold our blessings by judging those who don’t have what we do – “how does God’s love abide” in us?
The harsh reality of dropping the stones is that by dropping them, we are confessing to ourselves that we aren’t better than someone else. You are not better than anyone else. I am not better than anyone else, just because I get to stand up here once a month and talkto you.
We are not better than gay people.
We are not better than trans people.
We are not better than Black people.
We are not better than Islamic people.
We are not better than poor, or homeless people.
We are not better than addicts.
We are not better than those who are in debt.
We are not better than adulterers.
We are not better than the divorced.
We are not better or worth more or more important than anybody else.
That’s why we’re called to compassion and not criticism. That’s why we’re called to drop the stones.
If Jesus, the God of everything, withholds criticism and offers compassion, who do we think we are to be mean to other people? It’s really that simple, y’all. So many things in life aren’t simple, but this one thing is: you’re not better than anyone else, so quit being mean.
It’s time to drop the stones, friends. And I promise, I’m preaching to myself more than anyone today. It’s time to stop talking about people behind their backs. It’s time to stop judging people who are different from us. It’s time to draw in the sand when someone tries to bait us into criticizing someone else. Because we know that we aren’t perfect, either.
The woman caught in adultery could be me. It could be any of us. I don’t want to be the villager in that story, I want to be Jesus. Practicing kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness. Practicing the habit of compassion.
If you hear nothing else today, please hear this: when we are critical instead of compassionate, we are telling people their authenticity isn’t as important as our approval. We criticize, and we indirectly tell the other person that they aren’t measuring up to our own standards. And my standards don’t matter; but the standard Jesus set of loving my neighbor matters a whole heck of a lot.
Drop the stones this week. Draw in the sand, practice compassion, and drop the stones.
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