“Scandalous”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Friday, December 30, 2022
John 7:53-8:11 (Forward, p. 62) CEV p. 1111
Many people have problems with this story about Jesus and the woman caught in the very act of adultery. To some, it makes it sound as if Jesus was ‘soft’ on sin and ‘soft’ on upholding and obeying the Law. Indeed, that is what Jesus’ detractors were hoping for. They hoped that by showing mercy towards the woman, Jesus could be labelled as a wrongdoer, as someone who disobeyed the Law when it suited Him.
Actually, Jesus complied completely with the Law, but put its practice securely back on the shoulders of those who had accused her. The Law said that the charge must be sustained by the witness of two or three witnesses, and, in many cases, that those witnesses must be the first to throw the stones.
But here we have a rather odd situation: these witnesses have brought forward only one of the guilty parties, not two. (After all, it takes two!) In reality, both the man and the woman should have been brought before Jesus, but here is only the woman. The man has been protected, shielded, from scrutiny, shame and prosecution. Already, then, the witnesses are complicit in some wrongdoing, in a cover-up. So, already these men cannot claim that they are without sin.
However, note one other rather revealing detail in the story. It says that the older men present were the first to slink away without imposing the death penalty on the woman. It was probably because they knew all too well their own hearts, their own lives. They felt within themselves that It was not as if any of them were fit to judge another person.
Other people actually like the passage because, to them, it goes easy on sin and punishment. They forget Jesus’ words, ‘Go and sin no more.’ In other words, Jesus is giving her a brand new, fresh, start in life, where she will not be defined by her past, by her past mistakes. But the onus is completely on her: will she break with the past and past relationships and start over, or will she slip into the same old rut? Jesus has given her the chance: it is now up to her.
Interestingly, the Communist Party of China has chosen to completely re-write this passage. Once the crowd has disappeared, and the two of them—Jesus and the woman--are alone together, Jesus Himself stones her to death. You might think that they justified this re-telling by saying that Jesus, being sinless, was eminently qualified to judge her, and therefore, condemn her to death.
But, no, that is not how the Party tells puts it. In their re-telling of the story, Jesus freely admits that He too is a sinner, but that, in spite of that seeming impediment, He should still be obedient to the Law and stone her to death. It is the Communist Party’s way of saying that even corrupt, terribly flawed and sinful party officials should be obeyed regardless of their personal moral standing.
That not-withstanding, even with its misinterpretation, many over the years have assigned great value to this story. Indeed, while there is some confusion about where this small section of Scripture (called a pericope) should be located in the overall canon of the New Testament. Present translations locate it in chapter 8 of John’s gospel but certain ancient manuscripts place it earlier in John, in chapter 7, or at its end, or in Luke’s gospel. This discrepancy, however, obscures one very relevant fact, namely that all of them agreed that it should be included.
To those who value this story it tells one great and important truth, namely that God, in Jesus Christ, offers forgiveness and redemption and the prospect of a brand-new start--and that is regardless of what our past might have been. And He does this, not by going soft on sin and punishment, but by bearing this sin Himself and bearing its punishment upon the Cross. He was uniquely able to do this, precisely because He, as someone without sin, could do so without needing to firstly atone for His own sin. And, so this story of Jesus and the woman offers great hope and promise to all of us, no matter who we might be or where we’ve ‘come from’. Amen.
Forward notes: ”They said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him” (chapter 8, verse 4-6a).
“How weary Jesus must have been, having to prove himself over and over to those who should have known better. I think about my early working days and how I often felt I had to prove myself to my male counterparts and authority figures. Women at that time were to become wives and mothers. Having a job was questionable; wanting a career wasn’t to be considered.
“Jesus wanted nothing for himself. His mission was clear from his first sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth: heal the sick, bring sight to the blind, set captives free, and proclaim the year of God’s favour. The religious leaders wanted to keep themselves safe by following the rules, while Jesus was following God’s agenda for redemption.
“Jesus turns his accusers away and advises the adulterous woman to sin no more. Jesus sets one more person free from judgment and pain.”
MOVING FORWARD: “Do you find it easier to follow the rules than to engage in kingdom work?”
A concluding note: I think that it is a false and potentially misleading dichotomy to contrast rules with kingdom work. After all, the ‘rules’ were God’s rules, even if they were the Law of Moses. There can be, however, some problems with the rules. There can be a problem in how we apply them, particularly here in the New Testament era when Christ has completed the Law, nullified it in effect, through His own death on the Cross. We no longer need to die for our sins, because Jesus has done that for us. And a second problem is when we define ourselves by our rule-keeping and somehow act, and think, that by keeping them we are somehow safe, whereas it is only by placing our trust in Jesus that we are even kept safe.