When I Know More Than I Want to Know

One of the privileges of pastoral ministry (at least it must seem like a privilege to others) is the innate opportunity to know more about more people than one ought or wants to know. I can't count the number of times someone has sidled up to me after a morning service or in the post office or standing in the parking lot or eating in a restaurant and offered the prelude of the privileged: "Pastor, I see you've encouraged such and so, and they were in church on Sunday. Did you know . . .?" The well meaning conspirator then proceeds to rehearse some well known community secret about such and so to their apparently completely out of touch pastor.

Guess what? We all have stories. We all have stories we could tell. We all have stories we pray will never be told. Such is life in a fallen and broken world. There simply are no perfect stories in an imperfect world. Well, I take that back. There is one perfect story in an imperfect world, but that's another story.

The stories of our lives are never completely public, nor are they ever completely private. This presents a real challenge for storytellers. It means, no matter what a storyteller thinks they know, they never know the whole story.

Here's an example from John 8. "Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, and placing her in their midst they said to him, 'Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. What do you say?'"

Let's get our hearts around what's happening here. Jesus is teaching the people. He's got a crowd of intent learners at his feet which is growing bigger than the crowd at the feet of the Pharisees, so there's some jealousy, some sin, at the root of this incident in the heart of the storytellers. Their motive for telling this woman's life story is neither pure nor compassionate. They are using her to satisfy their own needs for self-indulgence and self-exaltation. That makes the woman NOT the only adulterer in the story.

Next, they caught this woman in the act. There is no way these guys were scouring the highways and biways looking for someone engaging in an illicit relationship. This woman had a reputation. She had a story. They knew where to find her. They knew when to find her. One almost wonders if they had not found her themselves from time to time and had even set her up to "catch her in the act." This woman is NOT the only scoundrel harboring an untold story.

And don't miss this. If the woman was an adulterer, and everyone knew it, and no one had followed through on the Law prior to this moment, then all of her accusers are equally lawbreakers with a story written in disobedience.

The point is that there is always more to the story than a storyteller can , or sometimes will, tell. I wonder about this woman. I wonder what life events led her to feel safe in the arms of dangerous men. I wonder what loneliness and pain, what brokenness, what woundedness leads to such risk, to such sin, to such abandonment of soul. I wonder what is the story that is not told.

And I wonder about God. What has been God's story? He leaves the woman uncaught and unpunished until this moment. Why? What story is he content to write patiently in her life while she flits about in sin and disobedience? I believe it must be the story of soveriegn glory and redemptive grace.

Consider Jesus. Study his response to the story the Pharisees have imposed on him. I believe he knew this woman's story as well as he knew the story of the Samaritan woman with five husbands and a live in boyfriend. Consider Jesus and his words to this woman, her story so unceremoniously made public. "Has no one condemned you? . . . Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more" (John 8:10-11, ESV).

Jesus communicates two truths: "I know your story," and "Having met me, it's time for a new story." Jesus does not excuse her lifestyle, her previous story. He accounts for it as sin, and as sin worthy of condemnation and judgment. He identifies her story for what it is, a lifelong account of unholy choices and soul-destructing practice. He does not gloss over the full story. Instead, he sums her story up with forgiveness. "Neither do I condemn you." He could, but he does not. That is the sovereign choice of the gracious and merciful God who knows every syllable of our story.

Then, having forgiven her, he sets the structure for her new story. It is a story without the burden of the past: "sin no more." It is a story of life lived fully in the present, "go, and sin no more." It is a story of hope and new direction and eternal life and future glory: "neither do I condemn you."

Storytellers, this is what I have learned. Jesus knows the full story of each life, but I do not. I do not even know the full story of God's work in my own life let alone yours or someone else's. But Jesus, who knows the stories of men and women, offers forgiveness and a new story from the moment we meet him. And that is where I want to be, what I want to be, one who accounts the past story as forgiven and tomorrow's story written in the blood of Christ.

I don't want to know, dear storyteller where a person has been, I want to know where Jesus will take them. I don't really want to know from you what story they have written in their sin, since their story will not be essentially different than mine or yours. I want to know what story Jesus will write when they meet him. And I want that, the new story Jesus will write, to be more important to you than telling your pastor what you think he needs to know about someone else's half-finished, partly known story, still to be written story.