Oct 11th: The Men Who Walked Away, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.
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The Men Who Walked Away, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: Unhurried. A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: John 8.2-11.
Ever feel like life moves so fast you barely have time to share a meal or hear another’s story? This week’s message invites you to slow down, make space at your table, and discover how welcome can change a life. Whether you’re juggling a busy schedule, feeling isolated, or simply craving connection, we’ll explore the power of an unhurried, generous table. Join us online or in person this Sunday.
Transcript:
Speaker 0 00:00:01 Friends, before we begin, I wanna let you know that this week’s sermon speaks about sexual assault. If that touches something painful in your own story, please take care of yourself in whatever way you need. 10 years ago this month, I preached about an access Hollywood tape. A man running for president had been recorded. Bragging that when you’re a star, women let you do anything. I spent that week being outraged. Then someone came to see me because years earlier they had been sexually assaulted. And, and that tape along with the chorus of men just simply shrugging it off as locker room talk, had dragged them back into a room they had spent years climbing out of they didn’t need by commentary, they just needed to make it to Friday. That left me with a, a harder question, would I keep pointing at him or would I look at myself? I told you then that boys will be the boys we teach them to be.
Speaker 0 00:01:22 This week, I realized how much of that I had let drift back to sleep. Hear these words from the gospel of John. At dawn, Jesus appeared in the temple courts and, and people gathered around him and he sat down to teach the teachers of the law. And the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the crowd and said, teacher, this woman was caught in the act. The law of Moses commands us to stone such women. What do you say? Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger. When they kept questioning him, he, he straightened up and said, let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. And again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground. One at a time, the men dropped their stones and walked away. The older ones first until only Jesus was left with the woman. Where are they? Has no one condemned? You condemn no one. Sir, neither do I condemn you.
Speaker 1 00:02:58 Go now and live the life God intends for you. So we’ve been learning to live unhurried this fall. So let’s not hurry past this scene. And pictured a circle of men with stones in their hands, a woman dragged into the middle as, as a prop simply to trap Jesus. Uh, notice who isn’t there. As she was caught in the act, they say, uh, last I checked, the act takes two people. So where’s he? The law they’re quoting says, the man and the woman are to be punished together. Yet he, she stands alone. And, and nobody asks where he went. To understand why it helps to know what it, what it meant to be a woman in the first century. She didn’t belong to herself. She belonged to her father, then to her husband. And if he died, she had to depend on her sons. Adultery wasn’t a betrayal of heart. It was damage to a man’s property. Without the protection of those men, she could literally lose everything. And her own tary testimony carried very, very little weight in court. Her survival, her survival, her very survival depended on the good graces of men who held nearly all the power.
Speaker 1 00:04:46 And the men in the story knew exactly how to use that power. Think about it. To catch someone in the act, someone has to be watching, waiting. More than a few scholars are, have wondered whether this woman was set up by men who needed a woman’s body to simply make their point and trap Jesus. Meanwhile, the man has quietly been excused, men protecting men, protecting other men. Nobody, nobody protecting her. 2000 years later, we now no longer say a, a woman belongs to a man. But we still build circles where a woman’s safety depends on whether the men around her decide she’s worth protecting.
Speaker 1 00:06:01 In October of 2024, uh, a 20-year-old student at Cornell University went to a fraternity house. According to a lawsuit she filed just last month, seven members of that fraternity drugged her and sexually assaulted her over several hours at 1 42 in the morning, the lawsuit says one of them posted, posted to a fraternity group chat of about 50 young men. The message told them, a woman was up upstairs and available the way you might announce leftover pizza in the kitchen. Later, someone asked if the shop was too still open and too answered. Yes, the shop is still open.
Speaker 1 00:07:02 Now I wanna be clear. The accused men deny it. None have been charged with a crime. I mean, they deserve due process. A court will decide what the seven did. But I keep thinking about the 50, the 50 phones that buzzed in the middle of the night. It’s so easy to scroll past nothing, nothing I’ve read tells of a single one climbing the stairs, knocking on the door, or even typing one word that said, stop. Here we have another circle of men and no stones. This time just silence. And silence can do just as much damage.
Speaker 1 00:08:04 I’m angry at the men accused of treating a defenseless young woman as a thing. I’m angry at a brotherhood that that read about it and went back to bed. But underneath the anger is, is something harder to say out loud. Honestly, guilt. Now, I’ve never been in a group chat like that, but that doesn’t settle it. I I, I’ve stood in circles of men where someone has said something about a woman that that should have ended the conversation. And I let it keep going. A couple of times I laughed mostly to keep my place in the circle, not rock the boat.
Speaker 2 00:08:56 That small cowardice kind of feels like being easygoing. The 50 were not a different species. They were what that small cowardice looks like. After enough practice. Notice that Jesus refuses to hurry in in the story. Jesus bends down, writes in the dirt and lets the silence work. Then he turns the question around. Suddenly. Suddenly all of these men aren’t looking at her. They’re being asked to look at themselves. I mean, when I point my finger at those 50 young men, three fingers are pointed back at me. Somewhere along the way, most of us men have decided sexual assault was a conversation women we’re supposed to have with each other. I mean, watch a drink. Only walk in pair. Share your location. Text when you get home, know which houses to avoid.
Speaker 2 00:10:15 They learned how to be safe from us. Men. Cornell’s own survey found that more than a third let that sink in. More than a third of undergraduate women reported being sexually assaulted since arriving on campus. That’s not one terrible night. That’s a climate, that’s a culture. I saw a post this week. I
Speaker 3 00:11:52 Stands next to the woman. That’s what Jesus did. He didn’t join the mob and he didn’t run from it. He stood with her. So men, especially men, I need us to listen. This, this one is ours. It it’s time. We stopped asking women how they can stay safe. And we started asking each other why they have to. That will cost something. It might, it might cost a friendship. It might mean being the guy who makes it weird. Who leaves? Who leaves the group chat? Who sends the screenshot to someone who can act? It might mean walking up the stairs. It might mean ruining the night. Ruin it. A ruined night means somebody gets home safe.
Speaker 3 00:12:57 Manhood was, manhood was never, was never proven by what you can get away with. If it’s proven by anything, it’s by who is safer because you were in the room. And for those of us raising sons and grandsons, this conversation starts the first time. A boy, here’s a man he admires. Talk about women as conquests and watches other men grin. Jesus moved among women in a world that treated women as property. Yet Jesus listened to them. Jesus learned from them. Jesus called them by name. And on Easter morning, while the men hid behind locked doors, it was a woman who first carried the news that love could not be killed in a world where a woman’s T testimony barely counted God, trusted a woman with the most important testimony of all man. It’s our turn to follow. So here’s my challenge for this week. Notice the circles you stand in and what’s your silence may be doing there. Refuse to laugh at what degrades another. Say the uncomfortable thing even if
Speaker 4 00:14:50 It costs you and guards your heart so that your anger protects rather than destroys. You know, I really don’t know if, if we’ll be the generation of men that finally gets this right. Women have every reason to doubt us, but I’d rather be doubted and trying than trusted and silent in that courtyard. One by one, the men walked away. I like to imagine one of them went home changed, and the next time he stood in a circle of men, he remembered the woman in the dirt and he remembered the man who stood beside her. May we be the ones who remember, may we be the ones who walk up the stairs. May we be the ones willing to stand up and speak up. May the God who stood with the woman give us the courage to stand there too. Amen. So be it.
