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.”
Boy, do we get a lot of insights into human nature in this encounter ! First – where is the man? Adultery still takes 2 persons. And if they were caught in the act, he must have been there. Was he hiding? Or in the crowd? But thats a whole other topic !
Most of us go straight to the woman in the story to nuance out some insights. But, instead, lets take a minute to look at the crowd. They were fitting examples of mob frenzy, so ready to condemn with gusto and moral superiority. You can sense the anger of the crowd building as they prepare to kill the woman. But I suspect their very actions tell us more about them, than about the woman.
How like us that is…..
We also seem all too ready to participate in character assassination, distortion of facts, embellishing the truth, passing on half-truths and rumours, whether at the office, at school, or at home We tear apart others so that we can feel morally superior to them.
Interestingly, Jesus didn’t react to the crowd. I wonder why that is?
I think that he saw that the anger and hatred that poured forth from the crowd was not because of anything that this woman had done to them(only the man’s wife and maybe his mother would likely be most angered)
He saw something about us that we don’t like to admit – and that is the things that we get angry about in others is often a thing that is also a part of us that we don’t want to admit.
We get unduly angry at the person in the office who is stubborn – it may be that we react to the stubbornness that is a part of ourselves, but that we don’t admit to. Or we condemn the person we see as controlling, failing to see our own controlling nature.
We are very adept at confessing everyone else’s sins, but not so good at confessing our own.
The emotion the crowd felt is less about a legitimate anger at this woman who had done them no individual injury, but rather, seeing her reminded them that they too are capable of (and maybe even guilty of) the same things for which they condemn.
And that applies to us as well. How often, rather than admit that we are capable of the things we condemn, we join in an outward expression of anger against these things, leaving the impression with others that it is not part of who WE are.
I think Jesus saw beyond the surface of the crowd, to see deep within the persons within it.
He didn’t condemn the crowd. He understood that their inner conflict drove their outward behaviour. And so, what did he do?
He exposed it.
He took them where they didn’t want to go. He exposed the darkness within that they denied even existed, both to others, and to themselves. They are all guilty. What was in dark, was brought into the light. He snaps them out of their behaviour not by condemning the behaviour but by revealing the inner attitudes that drove it. Not by giving them a rebuke, or another rule to run their lives, but by helping them change the dispositions of their hearts.
Like the woman, we are all guilty of sin, and yet, while other persons will be quick to condemn us, God does not condemn us. He just calls us, like the woman, to go on in our life, being more aware of Gods love and mercy.
I wonder what happened to that woman. I’ll never know.
But one thing I am pretty sure of is that the woman’s life would not have been changed by adding another rule of behaviour…. She (and the man) had already broken some of those rules. No – her life would have been changed because she had experienced, in a time when she least expected it, the love and mercy of God.
Which leaves us with but one question – How has our encounter with God’s love and mercy changed our behaviours? Or are we still stuck in the crowd.