About halfway through the Broadway show, Hamilton, there’s a song called “It’s Quiet Uptown.” Alexander Hamilton had let himself fall into an affair, ruining any chance to be President and humiliating his wife, Eliza. But healing happens. And as the forlorn couple stand in their garden, Eliza’s sister Angelica narrates the event for the audience in song:
There are moments that the words don’t reach
There is a grace too powerful to name
We push away what we can never understand
We push away the unimaginable
They are standing in the garden
Alexander by Eliza’s side
She takes his hand—
Then the chorus of voices on stage behind them lifts up this line twice in quiet wonder:
Forgiveness. Can you imagine?
Forgiveness. Can you imagine?
I cry every time we get to that song while listening to the soundtrack. Every dang time.
God extends that kind of grace to us, setting us free from the misery of failure and restoring us to himself. I see this in the next story in my walk through the Gospel of John this year. In John 8, we read about how the enemies of Jesus cast a woman to the ground before him and declared she had been caught in the very act of adultery. The law demanded she be stoned to death by the community, and they wanted to know what Jesus had to say about it.
It was an obvious trap, and Jesus replied, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
They left in defeat. Jesus said to the woman, “It appears no one is left to accuse you Neither do I. Go and leave your life of sin.”
Forgiveness. Can you imagine?
You need this same grace from Jesus. So let’s marvel over this story from John 8:2-11 this Sunday. We meet online or on campus starting at 10am. Find out more at www.hillcrest.church.
(By the way, most Bibles today include a notation that this story is not in the earliest manuscripts. In your sermon notes this Sunday I will provide some guidance on how to think about this subject.)
--Tom
Sign up here to receive Tom Goodman’s weekly devotional in your email inbox. Tom serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter.