The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, "Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?" This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.- St. John 8:3-6
If you are a parent, or if you deal with children in any way, you know this dilemma: when they do something wrong, how do you discipline them in a way that’s serious enough to teach them the lesson they need to learn, but which isn’t so harsh that it discourages them or just makes them rebel against the discipline? How do you make them understand that there are certain things that are always wrong, and yet still allow for the fact that we all make mistakes? Often it is a difficult call – we want to be gentle and loving and merciful, but we don’t want them to fall into the danger of confusing what is objectively right and wrong.
For guidance we can look to the example of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His encounter with the woman taken in adultery we see our Lord dealing with someone breaking God’s Law, and yet He balanced His response with a wonderful combination of justice and mercy.
This was the situation: a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery was dragged by the scribes and Pharisees into the presence of Christ. This wasn’t accidental – they had timed this confrontation very carefully. Jesus had just spent the whole night before in prayer on the Mount of Olives. At dawn He returned to the temple, and as usual, the people crowded around Him to hear His teaching. Christ’s popularity was a very upsetting thing to the scribes and Pharisees. Repeatedly they have tried to destroy His reputation, or to catch Him in some breach of the Law, so that they could show the crowds that He was a phony, and so get the people to stop listening to Him. But every time they tried, they failed. They just can’t seem to get rid of Him.
But this time, the whole situation seems to be in their favour. This time, they’re sure they’re going to succeed, because the circumstances provided a perfect trap for them to spring on Him.
They bring the woman to Him. They pretend to be respectful by addressing Him as “Teacher.” “Teacher,” they say, “this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?” It is the perfect trap. They would force Jesus either to obey or disobey the law of Moses in full view of people. The scribes and Pharisees are certain they’re going to win this round, because they don’t see how He can possibly win, no matter which choice He makes. If He goes along with the punishment of stoning, He’s contradicting the message of mercy which He had been preaching, and which was a large cause of His popularity. But if He rejects the penalty of stoning, then He’s disobeying the law, and they’ll be able to bring Him up before the authorities as a law-breaker. This is a moment of high drama, and it looks like the whole ministry of Christ is hanging in the balance.
So what does He do? By all appearances, nothing. In fact, He doesn’t seem to show very much interest at all in what the scribes and Pharisees have said. Instead, He bends down and traces with His finger on the ground. But the scribes and Pharisees aren’t going to be put off that easily. They press for an answer. So He gives them an answer: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”
It is the perfect answer – not because it’s clever, not because it puts the scribes and Pharisees in their places – no, it is perfect because not only does Jesus not reject the law or disobey any part of it, but the answer gives the law its real meaning. Until this point the law had been used as a way of lording it over others; it had been turned into something that divided people between those who kept the law, and those who didn’t. But Jesus lifts the law up to the level of carrying out God’s plan for each person. He’s making the point that to break God’s law doesn’t hurt the law; rather, when we break God’s law we’re really hurting ourselves. When Jesus said to the woman, “Go, and do not sin again,” He wasn’t dismissing the sin; rather, He was dismissing those who were trying to use the occasion of someone’s sin as a way of making themselves appear to be holier than they really were.
This event tells us something important about our own relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. We can know that if we commit a serious sin, we shouldn’t feel like outcasts or second-rate Christians; rather, we can go to Christ with a repentant heart and ask for His forgiveness. And as soon as the thorn of sin is extracted, Christ the Great Physician of our souls, will heal the wound. And we can count on that – that’s the promise Christ makes, that if we come to Him with repentance and confess our sins, He’ll always forgive and heal us.
And that’s the way we must act towards those who have wronged us. All too often, people have the heart of the scribes and Pharisees, finding it hard to forget the sins of others, always dredging them up, almost as a way of feeling better about themselves. But Christ shows us how wrong that is, and in fact it’s an echo of what we hear from the prophet Isaiah, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.” To refrain from throwing someone’s sin in their face isn’t sweeping things under the carpet – it’s not a lessening of the seriousness of sin – rather, it’s a way of putting things back into their proper place. If only we were half as merciful towards others as we want God to be toward us!
When it comes to sin and repentance, Christ wants broken hearts from us, not broken hopes. When He hung on the cross, He prayed for His enemies who were filled with hatred towards Him, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Even then, with death close by, Christ showed mercy towards those who had brought Him to the hill and who had nailed Him to the cross.
If we’re supposed to be Christ’s ambassadors in the world, then we certainly must show something of Christ’s mercy in our own attitudes towards others. It is a far greater victory for Christ if His enemies are converted to His truth, than it would be for Him to deliver them over to eternal punishment.
Every single day we pray in the Mass that God will deliver us from eternal damnation and number us in the fold of the elect. We’ve all done evil in God’s sight; we’re all deserving of death. But in His mercy, and by our repentance, He forgives us – not only once; not only seven times; but seventy times seven and even beyond that.
It is a wicked thing to be as the scribes and Pharisees were, to judge and condemn others. We’ve been shown God’s mercy, and we need to show it to others. That’s what it is to have the mind of Christ in us. It is in showing His mercy towards others that will make us more like Christ. That’s what will win people over to Him: to speak the truth and then to show mercy, just as each one of us knows the truth, and still has been shown mercy.
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Painting: "The Woman taken in Adultery"
by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri - Il Guercino (1591-1666)