Seeing the Spirit: Gentleness; July 19, 2026

speaker-0: the first reading is from Matthew. Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. The word of the Lord.

speaker-1: Our second reading is from the Gospel of John, chapter 8, and verses 1 through 11. The first scripture that we read from Matthew was the words of Jesus. And this is a story of Jesus in action. So listen with me for the word of the Lord. Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. And 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. Now, what do you say? They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. And Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And 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. And when they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders. And Jesus was left alone with a woman standing before him, Jesus straightened up and he said to her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? And she said, No one, sir. And Jesus said, Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on, do not sin again. The word of the Lord.

John 8 · chapter mention

speaker-0: Okay.

speaker-1: Let us pray. Good and gracious God, you are the gentle one, and you are teaching us to be like you. So by your word and by your spirit may it be so today. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. O Christ, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. I had a in my first call I had a choir director who sounded like a a character from like a nineteen twenties. Noir film. She always talked like this, see? Had never lived a day of her life in New York City, but she sounded like she had lived there all of her life. And she is blessedly past. she's she was a wonderful person, but she always she adored her father, and and she always used to talk about him as though he was just the gentlest man that had ever lived. She'd say, even when we kids would fight with one another. he would never get loud. He wouldn't raise his voice. He'd never yell at us. Matter of fact, when he got loud or when we got loud, he would get quieter. I never understood that. Because I sometimes do that, but it sounds like this.

speaker-0: Come over here right now.

speaker-1: Which I don't think is what she had in mind. I just don't know that many people, honestly, for whom when I when I think about them I I care categorize them first as gentle. Gentleness is a strange thing. Gentleness is also our next to last Fruit of the Spirit, a gift of God's own work within us. Gentleness is also kind of by definition like the blandest of adjectives. It is the milkiest of toasts. It is the condition, the dictionary says, of being gentle. Thanks. Helpful. of being kind or mild-mannered, it's it's softness or Courteousness. If I was it would be more effective if I was wearing my robe today, but

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: so if you spend your AI tokens making Jesus look like a charter member of Gold's Gym, you just hate this. You know what gentleness ain't blowing things up and not looking at them, right? Like a cool guy. Gentleness ain't eating raw liver and ripping phone books in half. Tell you that right now, brother. In short, Gentleness codes feminine. And whether we say it out loud or not, the whole Western world has sort of been raised on hating women. It's a man's world, James Brown once proclaimed, and the history of Western Civ has borne out. Even if that same man admitted that it wouldn't be nothing without a woman. And because gentleness reads feminine, men have been taught and are currently being discipled by the online manosphere. Take a minute and look some of this nonsense up. Men are being taught to bristle at encouragements toward being gentle because feminine is synonymous with being weak, which is of course sexist, right? Anybody decrying the feminization of Christianity isn't doing Christianity anymore. They're just doing misogyny, right? And calling it Christianity. But I'd submit that there isn't actually anything wrong with weakness. The Bible says when we are weak, Christ is strong, but that's a subject for another day. I'd also submit to you to the that women know a strength of character that men do not. Indeed, we cannot. What it's like, for instance, to live in a society that assumes you can't handle power because you might act irrationally depending on the date on the calendar. Or what it's like, maybe to have given birth to every man walking around God's green earth and then be told that it's your God-given duty to submit to the authority of men, oftentimes by the church. At any rate, if gentleness is feminine, in fact, we should all sign up, not least because women offer the witness of a distinctive strength in our world, but also because the Lord Jesus is gentle. Mary read it. It's right there in Jesus' own words. I am gentle and humble of heart, Jesus says. And also because there is a deep and unique strength in gentleness that is actually quite a lot more interesting than the meek and mild dictionary version of the Characteristic. Consider with me just how incredibly and obviously good and gentle Jesus acts in our passage, and at the same time, how surprising and daring he is. Have you considered how this passage really plays out in real time if you had been there? It's like shocking. This woman has been caught in the very act, the scriptures say, of adultery. And maybe, maybe some misogynist told you one day that she was, like all sinners, strident and bold in her rebellion against God and neighbor, and so she stood held head held high in the face of these accusations. But my lord, that doesn't seem to comport with the reality of being caught in the act of sleeping with your neighbor's husband, does it? Especially in the context of an honor and shame-based society like Rome was, or like Jerusalem was, the Eastern World was. Add to that the obvious distress of being either dragged out of some man's bedroom or maybe snatched up while she tries to sneak away in the early light of day, and stir into that cauldron the fury and grief that must have filled her, being named a whore worthy of the death penalty while her lover rules. Rolls over to sleep away the rest of the morning. Why wasn't he there? Talk to me about misogyny. Or maybe, maybe he doesn't roll over and go back to sleep. Maybe even worse, he gets stressed so that he can go to the stoning too. What mental state do you think she'd have been in at this point? I imagine that the dust. That Jesus scribbles in that after that morning is surrounded by the puddle of her tears and snot an awful sense of shame. Who knows if they even let her get dressed? To make matters worse, these religious leaders don't really care about her or her transgression against the law. She's just an expendable pawn in their ongoing feud with Jesus. They're just using her to get at him. They're really hoping. That he will forgive her so that he can, so that they can indict him on charges of offending against the seriousness of the law, or with charges of playing at being God. Because to them, depending on the day, he's either an anarchist or a blasphemer. And she, in all her exposure in every way, is just a means for them to win that argument with him. They need him in this moment to show. How strong he is on law and order. He needs to prove he's not gentle on crime. There is an alternate account, though, of gentleness, even in the ancient world. One that considers gentleness not as weakness, but as a form of its own unique strength. In Roman circles, the concept of gentleness wasn't meekness. It was something like not enforcing the full weight of the law when you had every right to do so. Gentleness is having power and choosing not to use it. Which comes with a side dish of self-awareness and other awareness, right? Knowing how much power you have, knowing how much power somebody else doesn't have. Gentleness is the ability to put the pedal to the metal, but being sensitive enough to the needs and situation of another as to let off the gas. Gentleness is the maturity. That asks not just what can I do or what can I get away with, but what should I do here? What is God calling me to do in this situation? The antonym of of gentleness then would be harshness or severity. A world without gentleness has no space for shades of gray, just stones in hand. And so it creates dichotomies. People are either good guys or bad guys, traitors or patriots, right or wrong. I think we've seen this in our time. And such a continual hardening of the arteries of our national life give rise not to gentleness, but to the cruel brutality that flashes on the post push. Notifications of our phones in overwhelming fashion. We've simply not learned Christ's lessons well enough. So the stone-hearted men standing around this woman know what the law says. They know what the law says about her infraction, and they might say, in their sternness, in their harshness, and their severity: well, if she just hadn't broken the law. She wouldn't be in this position. Right. The law says that she should be stoned, so we're gonna stone her. And they want to know what Jesus thinks. Will he be an anarchist today and flout the law? Or will he be a blasphemer today and proclaim that he has the authority to forgive sins like God? And in fact, he does neither. Instead, he bends over. To draw in the sand with the speaker. Incredibly curious. We don't know what he's drawing. We have no idea. But for a moment, maybe because it's so odd, everyone is quiet. But silence never lasts very long. And so when they take up again their badgering of him, he says, listen, those of you who are sinless should absolutely stone her, since we all care so very much about the law. And then he goes back to doodling. Which is a gambit that I would not have loved if I was the woman caught in adultery standing before him. And I don't think that Jesus was out of danger here himself. In just like a chapter and a half, they're gonna try to stone him too. So he's putting himself in the line of fire a little bit. Now, the pettiest part of me hopes that he's just doodling and treating this chauvinistic charade with the contempt that it deserves. Maybe Jesus actually was feeling a flush of anger himself and knew that he needed to take a minute and breathe. Fidget toys weren't a thing in the first century, but he had a finger and he had dust and he knew what to do. And for those of us who don't naturally flow in the ways of gentleness, maybe we can learn something here. Take a beat. Count to ten, even if your breath sees from between your teeth. Or, or What if Jesus was scribbling other sins into the dirt? I love this theory. Pride. Lust. Meanwhile he's making eye contact with the guys that are standing around. Hate hatefulness. Dishonesty. That one's for you, Derek, I know. Covetousness.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: Laziness. You see in this, Gerald? And maybe, maybe, in a moment of grace where they don't immediately start to rear back a fist, this crowd of men whose hands hold models of their hearts see what Jesus is doodling, and they begin to consider their own last 24 hours. They begin to consider the arguments that they had just last night before laying down to sleep in their own anger. Maybe the seething jealousy they nurtured only yesterday for Harry's new shiny wagon and the self-loathing that they fed because they don't have such nice things. The pride and the superiority they felt just this morning at not being caught in their own sins. Grateful that no one could see what they were thinking moments ago about this woman half-dressed before them. And thanks be to God, the gambit pays off. And miraculously, one by one, they drop their stones and they leave. And when they leave, Jesus proves his brilliance. He doesn't brush away her sin. He doesn't take it unseriously. But he also reads the Dadgum Room. She is clearly in distress. She is clearly out of power and out of spoons. Her life is on the line. Her spirit is broken. And Jesus has not come, as the Gospel of Matthew says of Jesus, to break bruised reeds or to quench flickering flames. Jesus is the only one in the space with a record worthy of throwing a stone, and he doesn't even pick one up to consider the act. He's gentle. Where did they go? Has no one condemned you? Neither do I. Go and sin no more. Last night I stood with two people who wanted their marriage to be marked by precisely this. He chose a passage of scripture from Peter that simply says, Let your gentleness be known to everyone. Not your strength, not your righteousness, not your correctness, your gentleness. They wanted gentleness to be the first thing that was said about them as a married couple.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: And I thought about us as I was standing there last night. And I thought we could do worse than that as a church. Yeah. Cause here's what I think that gentleness is after all of this. It's every opportunity that we have to see someone else's pain and lessen it even when we could do otherwise. Even if they're wrong. That's it. That's the whole shebang. When you are annoyed by your neighbors, in a court of law, when your kids are driving you nuts, or in a marriage, when everything in you wants to be harsh because you are right, dang it, or in a temp your t temple courtyard with dust still settling around a woman who never gotta put her shoes back on. When you have a stone in your hand and the law on your side and a crowd behind you and everything is about to break along those old familiar lines of right and wrong, gentleness is a holy invasion of a moment where you actually see a person. A person whom God loves and whom God made. And you decide to flout the rules and be gentle. Would that our clocks be littered with such moments. For gentleness isn't weakness, it is strength. And indeed, even if it is weakness, that is where Christ makes us strong. Gentleness isn't boring, it is bold. Gentleness is what God is like. By faith and by grace and by gift. It is what God is making us. Thanks be to God. Amen.