Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 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. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’]]

Two women stand before us. Both are vulnerable; one is innocent, the other is not. Susanna is falsely accused and finally vindicated. Her innocence looks to the innocence of the crucified Jesus, about which the Gospels leave no doubt: if he was executed, it wasn’t because he was guilty. The nameless woman caught in adultery is different. She is certainly guilty; no one denies that. The Law of Moses made clear provision for such people: they were to be stoned to death.

But the opponents of Jesus aren’t interested in her. They’re using her to get at Jesus. She’s just a nameless pawn in a lethal game. If he defends her against him, he’s speaking openly against the Law of Moses. But if he defends the Law, he’s condemning her to a brutal death, with her male partner nowhere in sight.

Jesus won’t play his opponents’ game; he won’t meet them on their ground. He shifts the focus onto their own sin, and one by one they drop the stones and drift away, leaving just Jesus and the woman. Where she might expect a chiding from Jesus, she gets nothing of the sort. Instead, he speaks a word to the woman as a person, speaking to her dignity. It’s a liberating word which opens a new door into the future.