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The Government of Turkey is putting forward a bill proposing that adultery be made a criminal offence in Turkey punishable by a jail sentence. Should this bill go through, then it would ‘criminalise’ anyone found guilty of adultery. This doesn’t make sense to me, not only because it will place yet more strain on Turkey’s already full jails but also because it offers the guilty parties little or no opportunity to redeem themselves.  

A similar situation  prevailed at the time of story we read in  the Gospel  today, where  a woman is accused of adultery. According to Hebrew law, as it was practiced 2000 years ago, adultery was in fact a criminal offence and the harsh punishment for both people involved, was death by stoning.

The story opens with Jesus teaching in the temple courts. A group of men, Pharisees and teachers of the law, bring a woman before Jesus whom they declare was caught in the act of adultery. It seems that her accusers want retribution. They  publicly humiliate her before the crowd as they bring their case against her and her fate to all intents and purposes appears to be  sealed.

As I examined the story I wondered.

q       Where was the woman’s partner, the bloke, I wonder?  We all know that adultery cannot be committed alone.

q       Who were the peeping toms that caught the woman in the act?

q       What did Jesus write in the sand that day?  Was it a word of Scripture , something along the lines Exodus 23 which states: “Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness.”? Or was he writing down the sins of those who were accusing her?

We’ll probably never know the answers to these questions but, whichever way you look at it, the motives of the teachers of the law are suspect.  The Pharisees use her case to try and trap Jesus into breaking either the Law of his people which requires the woman to be stoned for adultery, or  Roman Law which did not allow the Jews to carry out death sentences.

Jesus reveals his brilliance by raising the discussion to a whole new level. He disarms them by upholding the law, but by pointing  to the sinfulness of each of the woman’s accusers, he  introduces a qualification for throwing the stones which prevents anyone in  the crowd from picking up the first stone. So, they melt away one by one into the shadows until only he is left. Then he gracefully  says to the woman, “neither do I condemn you”.

Does this mean that Jesus is condoning her sins? 

Certainly not, for he then declares “Go now and leave your life of sin”.

Jesus’ gracious response to the woman is consistent with the way he responds in all the other gospel stories to sin and sinners and what impresses me is how different it is from the world’s response! There is no hint of retribution here. Jesus does not get all judgemental and condemn the woman like the Pharisees had. Yet, neither does he condone the sin. Instead he embraces the sinner but excludes the sin. Lovingly  he challenges the woman to a new life

With Jesus, Failure is no longer  the last word. And here is the hope for each of us also. Jesus offered her and he offers each of us an opportunity to detach  from our past life. No matter what we have done wrong in our lives , He reaches out to us in love and it is this love that forgives us and is our source of strength.

So he challenges the woman :  ”Go now and leave your life of sin”. 

This challenge is at the heart of what I want to explore today, 
the matter of repentance.

I have an irritating habit  which plagues my life and  annoys those around me. Here’s my quandary: Much as I dislike being late, I hate being early for appointments. I like to use every minute of my time as usefully as I can and to my way of thinking, being early doesn’t fit the category of useful. So I will carry on doing  my chores until the very last moment before I am due for an appointment.  I often misjudge how long things will take and then find myself late for someone. Well then the ‘guilts’ set in as I have an attack of remorse.  I feel badly because I know it is dishonouring of people to be late and so I apologise profusely: ”I am so sorry, I really am”, I hear myself patting off, and believe me I mean it.  But you know what … the next day or the next hour or the next minute, I buy into exactly the same habitual pattern again. 

So what’s my remorse worth? What’s my ‘I’m so sorry’ worth? Nothing.

This pattern of behaviour depresses me.  It leaves me with a sense of failure.

This week I asked myself the w.w.j.d. question in this regard and  the penny suddenly dropped.

I  found myself challenged by Jesus’ statement to the woman: “Go now and leave your life of sin”. It is the challenge to repentance. 

But, How on earth do I do it?

It suddenly occurred to me that repentance is less about feeling sorry for what I have done and more about using my remorse to ensure that I am on the road to changing my behaviour pattern.

I am sure:

q       that the man who batters his wife when he is drunk is mortified that he has done so once he is sober;

q        that the woman who cheats on her husband is remorseful after the deed;

q       that the child who stole money from her mother’s purse is regretful when she is found out;

q       and that the teenager who hurls abuse at his parents is genuinely sorry after he has cooled down.

But this is not enough, and this is not repentance, and this is not what Jesus requires of us.

What Jesus requires in all of these instances is repentance,  which is quite different.  Repentance may be initiated by sorrow, regret, remorse and mortification but it is much, much more.

q       Repentance is coming to a kind of understanding.

The Greek word for repentance is Metanoeo.  Meta means after and noeo means to perceive; to know; to understand. So, repentance is to understand after the deed, the full purport of what you have done.  In the New Testament it is always used in the sense of regret for sin and it is used to describe a change of mind and heart that involves turning to God for help and attempting to make amends for harm which the sin has caused.  

q       Repentance is also a feeling. It is a felt response.  Deep within each of us is the well of repentance that we access when we are confronted with the truth of what we have done and the reality of who we are in relation to God’s goodness and love

Paul writes in Romans 2:4,  that “God’s kindness leads us towards repentance”.

When we truly, deeply and prayerfully encounter Jesus, who brings the kingdom of God’s love, we become aware of our need for repentance and feel shame for what we have done. Jesus whose love and compassion was so great that he healed the sick; comforted the lonely; befriended those who were ostracised, spoke out for mercy for people like the woman in today’s story and died a humiliating and painful sacrificial death on the cross for sins of the world.

John the Baptist’s refrain, “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand”, means “Repent for Jesus your saviour is right here waiting for you.

Allow him to change your life.”

In 2 Corinthians 7: 10 we read that:

 “Godly sorrow   brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret.” It is the feeling of Godly sorrow that brings us to repentance.

q       Finally repentance is a process whereby there is a change of lifestyle or behaviour.

The change of mind and heart that happens during repentance brings about a change of behaviour. The change that happens within us is reflected in our altered  behaviour .

This is why Jesus says in Matthew 3:8 :  “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” and in the book of Acts, Paul says “prove your repentance by your deeds” (Acts 26:20).

If I carry on being late, I have not experienced true repentance even though I may feel remorse. When I take steps to cease being late, then I know that there is true repentance in my heart.

So Jesus says to the woman: “ Go now (this moment; don’t wait; time is of the essence; do it now) and leave your life of sin. (“ Leave it behind you, change your ways, change your focus.)

Now, I know from experience that  all this is more easily said than done. Thus I can empathise with the woman who has been challenged by Jesus to “Go now and leave her life of sin”.  I am well aware of how difficult it is to do this and how miserable my own success rate is. For each of us knows

we are not sinners because we sin,

we sin because we are all sinners.

Yet, we ignore the call to repentance at our own peril.

Perhaps it is helpful to ask why Jesus placed such importance on the need for repentance? 

Why did he want the woman to leave her life of sin?

Jesus says in Luke 13: 5: “I tell you unless you repent you will perish”.

Sin is destructive. It causes disease. It spreads darkness and unhappiness.  It makes us anxious, guilty and weary. It skews our thinking and sucks our energy. It destroys our souls.  Sin is bad for us.

All sins are bad for us. This is why Jesus calls each of us to leave our lives of sin, to turn to him, to rest and rely on his love and to invite him into our lives and trust that he will transform us with his healing. This is repentance and this is how we are to be saved.

Repentance is the antidote to spiritual death and destruction.

The point is beautifully articulated in Isaiah 30, where the Lord God says:

“In repentance and rest is your salvation ; in quietness and trust is your strength”.

For “the Lord longs to be gracious to us.  He rises to show us compassion.” (Is30:15 and 18).

Repentance and God’s love are inextricably linked .

God’s love and repentance  go together for we repent as a response to the love of God.

So, to summarise: Jesus challenges each of us to Repentance

The process of repentance  involves

            turning our backs on our desire to do what is wrong,

            closing the door on a life where we try to go it alone .

            and turning instead  towards Christ

            and focusing on his love and truth.

“Repent and Live”

Like the woman in the Gospel story,

            we  each of us must look into our lives

            and ask Jesus to show us the sins we need to face up to.

            Then in a spirit of repentance let us turn from those sins

            and invite Jesus to infil our lives and renew our spirits

            so that we may lead a different life,

            and in his strength detach ourselves from the sins that bind us.

This is Christ’s salvation.

 to“Repent and Live”

 Let us pray…