March 28, 2004
Isaiah 43:16-21 + Phillipias 3:8-14 + John 8:1-11
This is a classic story of human behavior, and an essential lesson in a spirituality that is truly repentant. The image of these scribes and the Pharisees standing there with their fingers pointing and their fists full of stones is positively chilling. So quickly, so easily, so publicly they point and accuse, blame and shame. Then all of a sudden, they are gone. Sometimes I think their encounter with Jesus is more important than hers. Certainly, we miss the wealth of this story if we only reflect upon Jesus or identify with the woman in the story. She is not the only sinner John puts before us today.
Proclaiming this gospel and pondering its truth in the midst of Lent leads us to turn our gaze inward and look at ourselves, not someone else. That is the trouble with these scribes and Pharisees, and it is the challenge Jesus puts in their face! “Look at yourselves”, he suggests, “Don’t be pointing your finger of accusation and blame at another.” The God of mercy calls us to drop the stones we are so willing and so readily hurl at another and use these remaining Lenten days for our own repentance and our own forgiveness.
There is something always troubling about this story which is a late addition to John’s Gospel suggesting that the early community had trouble with it before they inserted it into later manuscripts. Adultery is a sin committed by a woman and man. The law prescribes that both the man and the woman should be put to death. That prescription is found in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but there is no evidence that the law was ever enforced; in fact, to protect the innocent, more than one witness was required. While the words of Jesus to the woman give us a strong focus on God’s mercy, the absence of the other party to this sin allows us to shift our attention in the context of John’s Gospel to the scribes and Pharisees.
This is another of many confrontation stories between Jesus and these scribes and Pharisees. He confronts a kind of scribe and Pharisee that can exist in any religious group or business, or community those who are inflexibly certain that they are right, and that the truth begins and ends with them. The scribes in this gospel are so certain Jesus is not from God that to get evidence against him they are willing to use a woman, publicly shame her, perhaps protect her male partner, and forget that they themselves are sinners.
Unlike them, Jesus condemns no one, neither the woman nor the scribes and Pharisees. Instead, by his silence, he creates some space for them to see themselves and give them room for self-recognition. It is interesting to note that the first ones to leave are the elders. The law requires that they initiate the stoning by throwing first. As they depart, we have a sense that they do so with the stones still in their hands. They will be back pointing their fingers in accusation and raging with their death demands. The next time their victim will be the one who saves them.
Somewhere in this story, we must find ourselves: either in the one who got away,
the one who knows the mercy and compassion of God, or the ones who point and accuse failing to recognize, in spite of all the signs, the presence of the one who has come to set them free. Or perhaps we can begin to find ourselves in the Holy One who is by his gentleness the very healing, loving, forgiving presence of God.
However it works, we cannot stand outside the story and be spectators or there will be no conversion in our hearts.