Throw No Stones

Video Clip of Nickel Mines.

I think back to the reaction I had to the Amish school shootings at Nickel Mines in Lancaster County – my reaction was not again, and why here? Why anywhere? But as the story was covered, it unfolded in a very different way than was expected. Like Columbine, in the midst of the senseless tragedy we listened for voices of faith and assurance. But the Amish are quiet. They spoke, as they usually do, with action more than words. The Amish community at Nickel Mines acted, but it wasn’t in outrage and disgust at the immoral and violent world outside their fellowship. No one would have been surprised by that. It was their due. They would justified in saying that this world was going hell. But they didn’t say that. Instead their community reached out to the family of the killer, the man who executed their little girls, and the Amish forgave.

And really, who understood that? Of all the people paying any sort of attention to the tragedy really understood this response. If you asked the Amish why they forgave, in so many words, they would tell you “Jesus.” But that answer is equally perplexing and unintelligible to a lot of the world these days. But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, Jesus says a lot about himself and the Kingdom. He tells us a lot about forgiveness. I want to briefly look at three episodes in the Gospels today that very much share a common theme – the generous forgiveness of God.

The first parable we have just read together – it is sometimes called “the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.” It begins really with a preface, and that preface is a question from Peter to Jesus –

“Lord, how many times do I have to forgive my brother?”

Peter’s question implies that there must be a reasonable limit to forgiveness. There must be boundaries for the immoral and wicked. There must even be boundaries for people we know, family members, people we go to church with, who nevertheless offend us one too many times. So what is it, Lord? Religious people want to know.

So Jesus answers the question with a number, seventy times seven, that means a lot more than the sum. Seven is a biblical number. Seven satisfies. It implies wholeness – justice. So when Jesus says, “Not seven, but seventy times seven, “ Jesus is really saying – infinity. You’re never done forgiving.

Peter’s reaction is probably pretty similar to the above mentioned reaction to the Amish at Nickel Mines – disbelief. Why would anyone forgive like that?

So Jesus tells a story about a king who begins to reckon the debts owed him. He finds one slave who cannot possibly repay him, but instead of the just punishment, the king has pity and forgives the debt. This is turn sets up the forgiven slave for an opportunity to pass on the forgiveness to another who owes him.

One thing this parable tells us is . . .everybody owes somebody. We are all in debt.

You know how the world operates. You wanna play you gotta pay. There is no free lunch. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the money this month, the creditor is still going to call. This is the way things work. We understand this. How could it be any different?

Except that Jesus talks like it can be different – like it is different.


prod-i-gal/ 1. recklessly extravagant 2. having spent everything

“A man had two sons. The younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance and so the father complies and divides the estate between the younger and older son. The younger son goes off to a far country and burns through his inheritance.” We call this the Parable of the Prodigal Son because we make it mostly about how the father forgives this younger son his sins. It is about that. But it is equally, if not more, about the older brother’s sins. There are two lost sons here, only the older one doesn’t know it. Each son represents a different way to be alienated from God.

The word “prodigal” doesn’t mean wayward, Timothy Keller points out. Prodigal means “recklessly spendthrift.” It means to spend until you have nothing left.

Timothy Keller points out that two groups of people have come out to hear Jesus: the first is the tax collectors and sinners; the second is the Pharisees and religious teachers. The first group is represented by the prodigal younger son in the parable. The second group, the religious leaders, are represented by the older son. These leaders are truly perplexed because these sinners keep coming out to hear Jesus preach. “These people never come to our services! He must be telling them what they want to hear!” That’s how the Pharisees rationalize the situation.

The sinners hear this story of forgiveness and their eyes well up with tears. Jesus is talking their language. He understands. But they are not only ones Jesus is talking to. Jesus is talking, pleading with the religious leaders to see the bankruptcy of their religion. He wants them to understand they too, have spent everything recklessly. They too are in debt.

Stone woman

Another time the Pharisees bring a woman who was caught in adultery. If they had newspapers then the headlines would have screamed, “Village Temptress Caught On Tape!” What nobody said was that the woman was “caught” only because she was so well known. She was so well known because so many men of the village went to visit her after dark. But for the Pharisees, she is an easy target. No reason to divide blame when it can all be piled at her door.

Doesn’t it seem like there is a relationship between the loose moral standards of a culture and the judgmental nature of its religion. It is not a cause/effect relationship. It’s more like a symbiotic one – the more loosey goosey people are with morality, the more judgmental these same people can be. It doesn’t make much sense really. We are like children who think they can make the bad deed go away by hiding it or burying it in the ground.

In this case, the people said, “Let’s stone her. That will solve the problem.”

Jesus said, “Only perfect people are qualified to throw stones. Who’s first?”

And the children went away in bewilderment, even in shock and awe.


It seems that God’s relationship to us and our sin works somewhat differently. The more reckless we become, the more forgiving God is. When it comes to grace and forgiveness, we have a prodigal God.

He spends himself in forgiveness, recklessly forgiving, sparing nothing of himself. God spares not pain, spares no blood, spares not His own Son, so that our sins are not “reckoned against us sinners.

“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses” 2 Corinthians 5.19

I’m wondering maybe if a lot of us don’t see ourselves in the older brother of the Parable of Two Sons. Have you been blind to your alienation from God because you have spent most of your time seeing oh so clearly the reckless sins of others? Have you ever kept someone away from God by your harsh words of judgment and condemnation?

Judgment kills. It kills the one to whom it is directed, and it kills anyone not perfectly qualified, not perfectly just, to meet it out. We’re not qualified to throw stones.

What we are qualified to give, because we ourselves have received it, is forgiveness.

Forgiveness heals. I know this not just in theory. I know it in my life. Forgiveness dances in a thousand places.

Put down your stones and forgiveness will dance in your life. Forgiveness will dance in our community. Those prodigal people out there, they’ll come to our services if they really hear and see the forgiveness of Jesus in this place.