“So what do you say?” They said this to test him so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again, he bent down and wrote on the ground. (John 8.5-6)
As we look at the pericope or set of texts that have been chosen for our consideration on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the first thing we see is that we we have left the gospel of Luke and have gone to the gospel of John, an interesting jump from one evangelist to another that begs for an answer, especially when, at first glance, the story that is told to us seems to be straight out of Luke’s gospel, consistent with his storyline and his themes.
Scholars, by and large, consider the story of the woman caught in adultery not to have been written by John, but was inserted into his text sometime later. The proofs are found in the shift in language and in style. One telltale, among many, is that the story pairs the scribes and the Pharisees–a common partnership in the other gospels–but one that is not found anywhere else in the gospel of John.
Many believe the story belongs in the gospel of Luke, since, as we have said, it is very much consistent with other stories that are found in his gospel, which abounds with stories of Jesus’s compassion for sinners, especially those shunned and slammed by the self-righteous, such as the scribes and Pharisees. So, in theme, we have not left Luke’s gospel. The story is at home in Luke’s writings.
That this scripture has been chosen for the closing of the season of Lent also is not happenchance, since a primary focus of the story is on the efforts of those with the power–the scribes and the Pharisees–to entrap Jesus “so that they might have something to accuse him of.” Those words alone sound the alarm for the soon-to-be arrest and killing of Rabbi Jesus.
Seen from this perspective, this story is not so much the story of a woman put on trial for committing adultery, but it is more a story of Jesus being put on trial for not adhering to the Law of Moses. The scribes and Pharisees–as prosecutors–quote the Mosaic Law as to the consequences of someone committing adultery, believing that they have put Rabbi Jesus in a quandary in asking him what should be done with the woman standing before him.
It is called a trap because the Mosaic Law is clear, at least in principle, on the judgment of the woman. So, if Jesus states that the woman should not be put to death, he is advocating a breaking of the Mosaic Law. On the other hand, if he says the woman should be put to death, he is at risk of alienating the ordinary people who have followed him because of his trademark compassion in the face of human failing.
Certainly, the scribes and Pharisees are pleased with themselves whose singular mission has been to discredit Jesus in front of the crowds and to find cause to remove him permanently from the public scene. They think they have found the perfect case on which to prosecute him. It should not be overlooked that the word used here, “to test him,” is the same word that the synoptic writers will employ to describe the work of Satan when he tempts or “tests” Jesus in the wilderness.
By this word choice, the story begs us to see the connection. Just as evil stood before Rabbi Jesus in the desert, seeking to undo him, evil is afoot again here, once more trying to ruin him. And while the scribes and Pharisees may see themselves as protectors of the Law, their self-righteousness and hypocrisy make them stooges of Satan, bringing evil into the picture.
As in the wilderness–a story that began the season of Lent–so now here in the Temple in this story at the close of Lent–evil is not victorious, anticipating and predicting the inimitable victory of Easter Sunday when the evil of the crucifixion is crushed like a serpent’s head by the resurrection of the crucified Jesus from the catacomb.
Evil is not victorious here because, as before, Rabbi Jesus does not fall for the subterfuges of Satan’s minions, his refusal to be entrapped in their snare proving him far above the ways of the wicked. Faced with the catch-22 situation, Rabbi Jesus refuses to respond to the either/or situation, instead flipping the quandary onto his antagonists by forcing the decision onto them by a simple pronouncement– “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
With those words, the scribes and the Pharisees are the ones on the hot seat, not Rabbi Jesus. They must decide whether or not to stone the woman, their decision based, not on Mosaic Law, but on their sinlessness. If they pick up a stone to condemn the woman, they, in truth, have condemned themselves as liars and hypocrites because they know they are not sinless anymore than the woman in front of them is sinless.
Through this masterful challenge to the scribes and Pharisees, Rabbi Jesus forces them to identify with the woman caught in sin, seeing her no longer as inferior to them because of her failure to live a sinless life, but as someone very much like them who also fail to live sinless lives. Of course, in the end, that is the meaning of compassion–to identify with the situation and suffering of another, sharing in it, not separating oneself from it.
So, mercy once again prevails in this story as it does in the many other stories of Rabbi Jesus who was regularly accused of eating with tax collectors and sinners, in this way not condemning them, but welcoming them, expressing the heart of his heavenly Father who, as we saw last week, is far less interested in losing any of his children and more interested in bringing them back underneath his roof.
And for that reason, as well as others already stated, it is a very good story for the close of the season of Lent, a time of communal acknowledgement of sinfulness, symbolized at the start by the imposition of ashes upon our foreheads, the weeks during the season spent in making our way back home, as the wayward son did last week and as the sinful woman does this week, both finding mercy at the end of the road, not condemnation.
Jesus, standing up, saw her and said, “Woman, where are your accusers? Did no one condemn you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more.” Neither do I condemn you. There, in those few words from Rabbi Jesus, we find the moral of the story, a call to mercy, not a call to condemnation, challenging the self-righteous to find themselves in and among sinners, because that is the place of all humanity, no exceptions.
It is interesting to see also that when Rabbi Jesus tells the woman not to sin again, he does not use the word for sexual sin, which is what the scribes and Pharisees have accused her of. He uses a generic word for sin, in this way calling and challenging the woman to walk upon the path of good in all ways, not only in one way, an intentional choice of words directed again at the self-righteous who are inclined to see the sins of others as contemptible, while their own sins are viewed as negligible, if not overlooked entirely.
We need only recall the elder son from last week’s scriptures who was quick to accuse his younger brother of running through his inheritance on whores, but who failed to see his own failures as a son because of his hard-heartedness and self-righteousness. Rabbi Jesus, reading the heart of the Most High God, sees all sin as a willful distancing of ourselves from God, refusing to catalog or categorize, in this way challenging us to see the commonality of our sinfulness.
And while the words that Rabbi Jesus directs to the woman–”From now on, sin no more”–may sound as hard-lined and hard-nosed as the Mosaic Law that she was accused of breaking, they, taken in the context of his other teaching, are a reminder to all of us to seek the path of good, not the path of evil. He knows we will fail, but he challenges us to continue to strive for greater good, even if it is step by step, or step after misstep.
So, as we can surely see, the story of the woman caught in adultery is not only compatible with the storyline of Luke, whose gospel we will traverse this year, but it is compatible with the season of Lent, a time of reflection and return, and it is wholly compatible with the teaching of Rabbi Jesus, who continually presents to us the face of the Most High God, a face of compassion and mercy.
Someone who understood better than most the message of Rabbi Jesus was the Benedictine monk and spiritual teacher, Basil Cardinal Hume. The story is told that when late in life he was told that he had terminal cancer he said to a friend, “If only . . . if only I could start all over again. I would be a much better monk, a much better abbot, a much better bishop.”
He continued, “But then I thought how much better if I can come before God when I die–not to say thank you that I was such a good monk, good abbot, good bishop, but rather, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’ For, if I come empty-handed, then I will be ready to receive God’s gift.” Not long after, Basil Hume died at peace, trusting in God’s mercy.
As we walk through these final days of Lent–a spiritual journey that is our journey through life in a nutshell–we find both comfort and challenge in this story of the woman caught in adultery, a story that encapsulates the central message of Rabbi Jesus, who welcomed sinners without condemnation, mirroring the incredible mercy of his Father in heaven, whose heart is full of love, the same love that Rabbi Jesus showed the woman caught in sin.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 