We’re just getting started here at the Red Letter Church. One of the things that we want to try out at our first service is having a discussion of the Gospel Reading that we’ll have that day. So to help people think about the passage in advance, I wanted to go ahead and share it here:
Excerpt from John, Chapters 7 and 8:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nJesus tried to travel to Judea in secret, hoping to not cause a disruption. He and the disciples traveled separately to attended the Festival of the Tabernacles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But over the days of the festival the crowd recognized Jesus and continued to ask him to teach. He taught and argued and showed them the way for days. Always trying to avoid being noticed but always being asked to help. All the while the Temple heard rumors of his teaching. And sent their guards to watch for him. To see if they could arrest him.
Finally, on the last and greatest day of the festival, after days of hiding and avoiding the guards, Jesus stood above the crowd and said in a loud voice, \u201cLet anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. As the scripture has said, who ever believes as I do must have ‘rivers of living water flowing out from them.’\u201d<\/mark>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOn hearing his words, some of the people said, \u201cSurely this man is the Prophet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others said, \u201cHe is the Messiah.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still others asked, \u201cHow can the Messiah come from Galilee? Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David\u2019s descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?\u201d And so the people were once again divided because of Jesus. Some wanted to drag him to the court, but in the end no one laid a hand on him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally the temple guards who had been watching Jesus went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you bring him in?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo one ever spoke the way this man does,\u201d the guards replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou mean he has deceived you also?\u201d the Pharisees retorted. \u201cHave any of the rulers or any of us believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law\u2014there is a curse on them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of the Pharisees, asked, \u201cDoes our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They replied, \u201cAre you from Galilee, too? Open your eyes, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then they all went home, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They threw her before Jesus and demanded that if he was a teacher, he should be the one to judge her, \u201cTeacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?\u201d They hoped to trap him. Either he would denounce what he’d been teaching, or tell them to disobey Moses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he said to them, \u201cLet any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.\u201d<\/mark> And he continued to draw in the dirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, \u201cWoman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo one, sir,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThen neither do I,\u201d<\/mark> Jesus declared. \u201cGo now and sin no more\u201d<\/mark><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’re just getting started here at the Red Letter Church. One of the things that we want to try out at our first service is having a discussion of the Gospel Reading that we’ll have that day. So to help people think about the passage in advance, I wanted to go ahead and share it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-72","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redletterchurch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redletterchurch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redletterchurch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redletterchurch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redletterchurch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/redletterchurch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/redletterchurch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/72\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redletterchurch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}