This gospel passage is full of questions; explicit questions asked and questions not asked that come to mind. If this woman was caught in the act of adultery, where was the man? Why wasn’t he captured? Did he run off or did they let him go scot-free?
This leaves me wondering if adultery is really the issue here or if the woman was just an easy target for the Pharisees, who were conniving to find a way to trap Jesus? In her shame and naked vulnerability, she is paraded through the streets and brought to Jesus. How will he react? Hoping to find something to use against him, the Pharisees presume that they have Jesus in a no-win situation. No matter what he says, so they think, he will not satisfy everyone.
Naturally, Jesus’ response is of great concern to the accused woman. Will he uphold the Law of Moses and thus allow her to be stoned to death? Or will he override that Law and spare her life? The suspense builds as he stoops down to write on the ground.
As is often the case when it comes to dealing with the Pharisees, Jesus turns the tables on them. They had made the woman the focus of attention, but standing up, Jesus makes them the focal point of the trial. He said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” One by one, the onlookers slinked away.
The heart of the matter is not the sexual wrongdoing of the woman but the hypocrisy of the men accusing her. As she stood there in her shame, anticipating the horrendous fate of stoning by those nearby holding rocks and judging her, notice that Jesus kept his head down, writing in the sand for he doesn’t want to add to her shame. Only when they are alone, does he look at her.
In a brief conversation, made up of more questions, Jesus and the woman agreed that a sin was committed and the law had been broken, but Jesus doesn’t want the woman to be held hostage by it. “Neither do I condemn you,” he said, “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
There is a tendency in our society to deny that some things are sinful, such as shoplifting, lying, fornication, malicious gossip, or even abortion, but Jesus doesn’t deny the reality of sin. He knows that every sin has consequences and the potential to do much harm and destroy us, so he wisely counsels us too, “Go and sin no more.”Can we readily identify with the accused woman? Have we known the experience of shame and vulnerability? Have we had people point the finger at us? If so, then the message of the gospel and the healing and forgiving words of Jesus will have special meaning and appeal to us as well.
At the start of every Mass, we acknowledge that we are sinners in need of God’s mercy. But do we fully appreciate the enormous depth of God’s forgiveness? Whether our sins are big or small, mortal or venial, Jesus wants to restore our dignity and help us along the way. He is not in the business of stunting our spiritual growth and keeping us mired in guilt.
This gospel passage reminds us of God’s readiness to forgive sin, bind up broken lives, and restore people to his friendship. The Church has us focus our attention on the plight of the sinful woman because before God all of us stand silent in our sinfulness. Her story of sin committed and forgiven is not an isolated event but an example of the boundless mercy and compassion shown by Jesus to all sinners. The lesson is not that sin is unimportant but that God in his mercy extends pardon to the sinner.
Jesus’ offer of forgiveness and compassion to this publicly humiliated woman points to our call to be a forgiving people, committed to reconciliation. Yet many times we are as self-righteous as the Pharisees. There are times when we are only too ready to spread scandal with a bit of spicy gossip, impugning someone’s reputation. It is so easy to criticize and condemn others, thus act just as the Pharisees did.
Are there times when, we have been self-righteous at the expense of someone else’s dignity? Have we, in dealings with others, been hypocritical? If so, then the message of this gospel and the words of Jesus have significance for us.
The prayers of our liturgy constantly remind us that in the sight of God, we are equal and as such, we are brothers and sisters. We have a duty to care for one another, and that care includes generous and wholehearted forgiveness when the need arises. While we might dole out forgiveness gradually, Jesus blots out the whole debt of guilt all at once, provided that we seek his forgiveness with sincere contrition.
Granted, forgiveness isn’t always easy to express or do but if we are more apt to judge than to forgive, we run the risk of being hypocritical like the Pharisees. Thank God, Jesus’ response to sin is not to condemn, but to be generous in mercy, in the hope that we will see the errors of our ways and respond by going and sinning no more.
None of us can condemn another person as a sinner. When we do, we are really condemning ourselves. Now is the time to open our fists and let the rocks drop. The next time we find ourselves thinking thoughts that condemn someone, we might look for a way instead to extend our hands to the other person in compassion and mercy just as Jesus would