Today is the fifth and final week of our message series, “Attitude Adjustment.” I will admit, this message series has been a bit different because I was away for the last two Sundays, and I did not feel right telling the priests who were covering for me what to preach on. So after introducing the series in week one, the deacons developed it in week two, but for weeks three and four you would have had to read my bulletin columns for the last two weekends to continue the message series. So let me summarize what we have been talking about.

The “Attitude Adjustment” that we have been talking about in this series is one that all of us have to work on, all the time. If we think we don’t need to, that means we really need to work on it. Of course we are talking about developing the attitude of humility. Humility is not a low opinion of yourself. It's a clear opinion of yourself. Humility is knowledge of yourself as you really are. If we can be humble, we can learn and grow. If we can be humble, we can bring peace into our relationships. If we can be humble, we can cultivate patience for the world around us.

In the first week of this series, I said that humility is grounded in the reality that everything we have ultimately comes from somewhere else, from someone else and ultimately, that someone is God. During the second week, the deacons talked about one of the keys to becoming humble is to learn to listen. Humble people are listeners, and they listen first and foremost to God. For week three, in my column I discussed the comparison trap, which damages and destroys humility. We are tempted all the time to compare ourselves to others, especially to compare ourselves to other people's faults and failures to feel better about ourselves. But every time we do that, we're just inflaming pride and creating a distraction for ourselves. Finally, last week in my column I mentioned that to grow in humility we need to learn to admit to our own failures and faults, instead of ignoring them or passing the buck.

So as I bring this message series to an end, this week I want to look at how helpful the attitude of humility can be when it comes to recognizing and eliminating sin in our life, and we are going use today’s Gospel reading to see this. Today’s passage comes when Jesus was near the end of His public ministry. He has been spending most days in the Temple in Jerusalem, teaching the people, while at night He and His disciples would go just outside the city walls to the Mount of Olives to camp.

So Jesus is in the Temple teaching a large group of people, when “the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle.” They create this huge scene simply to trip up Jesus and trap him as somebody who breaks the law. Jewish law called for death by stoning for anyone caught committing adultery, but the Roman law did not allow “conquered people,” like the Jews, to execute anyone (only the Romans could put people to death). So, however, Jesus answered He would be breaking someone's law, thereby setting Himself up for trouble with the authorities, which is exactly what His enemies wanted. Beyond that was the obvious and stark contrast between Jesus' consistent teaching of mercy and forgiveness, and grace juxtaposed against this harsh law.

In the face of this test, and the seemingly impossible challenge at hand, here's what Jesus did. He bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. So he just slows things down. I don't know about you, but when I get in situations where I'm stressed out, where someone is attacking me or trying to trip me up, my emotions can command my response and I'm tempted to respond in an impulsive way that very rarely serves me well. That's not what he does here. He just slows down.

One of the most effective things you can do when confronted with unexpected conflict or sudden emergency or surprise is to just pause because there's power in the pause. So he takes his time to answer and when he finally does, here's what he says, "Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone." One of the all-time brilliant responses, he totally reframes the issue so that it's not about the accusation, it's about the accusers and their sinfulness. Then Jesus goes back to writing in the sand.

Through the centuries people have pondered, "What was he writing?" It's the only time the Bible records Jesus ever wrote anything, and John doesn't even tell us what it is he's writing. Some people think he was writing the names of the leaders themselves as well as their sin as a way of shaming them. And some people think he was writing out the law itself, which demanded that both the woman and the man be punished. These religious leaders had only brought the woman, so he's calling attention to the fact that they're actually also in violation of the law. 

We don't know. All we know is that, "In response, they went away one by one. So Jesus was left alone with the woman before him and Jesus straightened up and said to her, 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?' 'No one sir.' Then Jesus said, 'Then neither do I condemn you.'"

He humbles the religious leaders who had exalted themselves with so much pride that they couldn't even recognize the Messiah they were waiting for when they saw him. He humbles the mighty and in the process, he exalts the humble, lifting this woman up out of her shame and giving her a way forward. His charge is, "Go, and sin no more."

The reason pride is the most serious sin is because it blinds us to other sin in our life and thereby can be the most consequential of sins. Did you know that sometimes God actually allows us to struggle with sin and did you know that it's very possible the reason that God allows us to struggle with sin is to teach us humility? Sometimes God saves us from the worst possible sin, the sin of pride, as we struggle with lesser sin. Little daily reminders of how far from perfect we are. Humble acknowledgment of our sin, to ourselves and before God, first of all, but also to others when appropriate, and from time to time, perhaps in the sacrament of confession, can be the path out of sin and the path into a future freer from sin. Because while pride blinds us to sin and inevitably leads to more sin, humility can recognize it and help us with the grace of our Savior to move beyond it.