The woman caught in adultery: ‘John 8 v 1-11: Go now and leave your life of sin’.
The tabloid press are ever looking for sensational headlines – anything that will sell newspapers. I was listening recently to an interview with Mike Gatting, former England cricket captain, who was asked about how he coped with media intrusion and criticism during his career. Whilst he greatly respected some of the cricket correspondents that wrote about him he did not really have a good word to say for the tabloids. He cited one occasion when an England bowler had performed really well taking eight wickets against the then mighty West Indies. However instead of focusing on a praiseworthy positive, the tabloids gave the headline to an England batsman who had shown dissent when being given out. His point was that an exemplary bit of bowling came second to a sensationalist headline. Don’t get me wrong, the batsman in question should have accepted his dismissal, but it reflects what seems to be an increasingly insatiable thirst for anything with a whiff of scandal to go on the front page. I suspect that many of those who edit such newspapers would not particularly like some of their own mistakes and wrongdoings to become public. The simple truth is that in judging others we are actually, as equally flawed human beings, judging ourselves (see Mat 7 v 1-2) - which is what this passage is all about.
The woman caught in adultery was deliberately brought to Jesus in a very public place right in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles when Jerusalem and its Temple would be full of pilgrims. For her it was humiliating and terrifying, like finding yourself on the front page of the tabloids as well as staring a particularly horrible way to die in the face; only the stone that would finally suck the life from her body would end the agony that was coming her way. Yet given that it takes two to tango, where was the other participant in this adulterous fling? The man she was caught with has got away with it even though the Jewish Law was unequivocal in demanding that he too suffer the ultimate penalty Lev 20 v 10). It is a sad truth that, without in any way condoning her behaviour, her presence and the absence of her lover is typical of the kind of prejudice women have suffered since time immemorial. She, rather than he, is the one being used as a pawn in a cynical game of entrapment intended to catch Jesus out in order to arrest him (see John 7 v 30; 45). The religious teachers demand the ultimate penalty for her (v 5) without seeming remotely to care where he is.
So the trap is set; if Jesus says ‘don’t kill her’ he will be publicly driving a coach and horses through the Law of Moses, but if he says ‘go ahead’, he will be driving another coach and horses through everything that he has been teaching.
Jesus’ response is to write on the ground. Tantalisingly we have no idea at all what he was writing but the fact that he continues to do this after his challenge to any of accusers who are without sin to be the first to hurl a stone (v 7) suggests that it was to give people, including himself, time to think. Once the elders begin to melt away everyone else takes their cue until Jesus is left alone with the woman (v 9b).
It’s important to see that Jesus does not condone her adulterous behaviour; it isn’t the case that he is somehow on her side of the argument and lets her off. But he doesn’t condemn her either. Her other accusers all trudged off because they were made to realise that when you live in a glass house you really shouldn’t be throwing stones. But Jesus, the one whose sinless life does potentially give him the right to condemn her, refuses to do so. Instead he offers her an opportunity to transform her life and make a new start.
It is Jesus’ clear understanding that judgement is meant to be restorative rather than retributive that I think undergirds his words and actions in this story. One wouldn’t be forgiven for thinking that quite a lot of judgement in the Old Testament looks pretty vindictive, the Genesis flood and the wholesale slaughter of Canaanite communities by the invading Israelites are cases in point. But the Jewish people returning from exile in Babylon came to understand that God’s judgement on them and their consequent journey into exile wasn’t a capricious act of revenge because they had turned their backs on him but a ‘last resort’ attempt to restore and renew their vocation as the people of God (Is 48 v 17-20). In our passage Jesus is giving us an example of restorative judgement, in effect saying to her, ‘whatever you have done wrong, learn from it and move on to better things.’ It goes without saying that this would be impossible if she were to end up lying lifeless in the dust.
Judgement is, of course, a key theme in the Bible. Yet there is also a vision of universal restoration present in the earliest Christian proclamation (Acts 3 v 21) as well as the teachings of Paul (Rom 8 v 19-21). Add to that Paul’s belief that God’s intention is that every human should come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2 v 4) and the restorative rather than retributive nature of judgement starts to come into focus. We have to do some thinking about what kind of God we believe in. Is he essentially vengeful, dishing out nasty stuff to those who have offended him even to the extent that exclusion from his light and love is permanent and non-negotiable no matter what the torment involved?
Of course we have to take seriously the concept of God as judge. One of the tenets of the Christian faith is that what kind of person you are, how you treat other people and what you believe to be true all matter very much. This means that thoughts, words and acts which are cruel, selfish, hurtful, careless and hateful, or to put it another way ‘sinful’, can’t just be swept under the table as if they didn’t matter. Yet as we weigh Jesus’ words that he came into the world to save it rather than to judge it (John 12 v 47) we need to remember that Christianity is, at its heart, a faith that rest on love rather than fear. This in turn rests on the fact that although God judges, he does so mercifully, so much so that he gifts his only Son to atone for our sins in a way that is so vast and mysterious that however we describe it falls far short of its full wonder. Which means, taking us back to the woman caught in adultery, that God does not stand with the stone throwers whose idea of judgement is to destroy, but instead wants her, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, to ‘turn from her wickedness and live’. This means living life in all its fullness as a restored and loving human being.
So when you are tempted, with the tabloid press, to throw metaphorical stones at those who fail to come up to scratch just bear in mind that Jesus gave his life for your sins as well as theirs and that all any of us can do is to kneel at the foot of the cross and say, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
Questions: Why do you think people have sometimes found Christians judgemental? How do we reconcile the judgement of God and the mercy of God?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, when we are tempted to judge, remind us of the loving mercy you have shown to us and to all people. Amen.