John 7:53-8:11

07/19/09
John 7:53-8:11
Hudson UMC

Our passage for this morning is the beloved story where Jesus shows mercy on the woman caught in adultery. When we look at where it lands in the Gospel, we must admit that it seems somewhat out of place. Right before this, Jesus is the subject of inquiry at the festival of booths. He has been calling Himself the Living Water and the source of salvation. In the passage that comes after this, Jesus goes right back into His teaching, saying that He is the Light of the World. This story about people bringing a woman caught in the midst of sin sticks out so much that many scholars think that it may have been added later. However, regardless of any of that, we cannot doubt that this story shows us the kind of heart that we would expect to see in the Son of God.

Whenever I read this story, a bunch of questions come into my head. One of the things that I wonder is how they were able to catch this woman in the very act, as the Scripture says, of adultery. Were they spying on her? Were they setting her up? How is it that they were able to be in the middle of her affair? I want to know why the people presuppose that there is a conflict between Jesus and Moses. I want to know, if the Scribes and Pharisees are trying to show that Jesus is really evil and that they are really righteous, why they are using a human life as a pawn to prove that they are right? Doesn’t that sound pretty hypocritical? Even if Jesus really were evil, would that justify their evil behavior?

I want to spend the most time this morning tracing out what I think is a major theme in this passage. Our human minds like to make categories for things. In fact, we only understand reality in terms of our mental categories. If we do not have a framework that can deal with some idea, we either have to revise the way we think about things or we have no choice but to understand it in some way that does not do it justice.

More to the point, one of the ways that we most like to think about things is to talk about them in terms of opposites. We love to think about the opposite nature of us and them, hot and cold, Democrat and Republican. Part of the reason that this works is that there are some things that really are opposites. Hot and cold really are the opposites of one another; the same is true for light and dark. The problem is that we can very quickly put ourselves into situations were we are convinced that there are only two opposite and extreme options and we need to choose the better of them. In fact, sometimes, we even take two ideas that are not really opposed to one another and manufacture them into opposites. I sometimes wonder if the fact that we Americans live in a country that has only two political parties contributes to this. In other countries, politics are on more than a spectrum, but on a two dimensional map. Here, you are either liberal or conservative and I think our two-party system tends to polarize people when we do not have to be.

The reason why I bring all this up is because Jesus’ enemies almost always pose questions to Jesus that seem to have only two opposing answers, neither of which can be clearly said to be “right.” For example, we read in Matthew and Mark about the Pharisees and the Herodians coming to Jesus to ask Him if it is right to pay taxes. They are hoping that Jesus will either say “yes” or “no” because He cannot win with either of those answers. If He says yes, He is trapped by the Pharisees who will criticize Him for His loyalty to the political authorities. If He says no, He is trapped by the Herodians who love the Roman government and will have Him arrested for tax evasion. Instead of giving them the answer they want, He takes a third option. “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and give to God the things that are God’s.” He refused to be sucked into a dualistic way of thinking that makes everything seem like it has to have an opposite. Indeed, one time, Jesus actually uses this technique against his enemies. When Jesus forced them to choose between two opposite answers, they did not know what to say.

So, with all that in mind, I want to draw out some of the either/or, forced choices that are in this passage, especially since they do not jump right out at us. The Scribes and Pharisees come to Jesus and say, “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?” Do you see what they have done? They have basically said, “You have two options, agree with Moses or disagree with him, but always remember that, if you disagree with Moses, you set yourself against God’s revelation and therefore against God Himself.” Now, it is important to realize that, when they ask whether Jesus agrees with Moses, they are really asking if Jesus agrees with that particular interpretation of Moses. As far as the Scribes and Pharisees were concerned, there are only two options. Jesus does not want to say that He is against Moses, but neither does He want to have this woman killed who, though she is guilty, is clearly being used as a pawn by evil men. What will He do?

The other forced choice that they are trapping Him into involves the nature of capital punishment within the Roman Empire at the time. We will read later on in the Gospel that, when the Jewish leaders wanted to execute Jesus, they did not take matters into their own hands, but took Him to Pilate. When Pilate tells them to execute Him themselves, they respond that they are not allowed to put anyone to death. Rome had, in an effort to control this turbulent region, forbidden anyone but the official Roman authorities to put anyone to death. We might not think that this is important, but it really plays a huge role in our understanding of the death of Christ. For example, the traditional way that the Jews executed criminals was by stoning them. However, none of the prophecies of the death of the Messiah fit in with that way of death. It is striking that the texts that predict the death of Christ do so using images that do not fit in with the Jewish mode of execution but fit in perfectly well with a Roman method of execution that had not yet been invented.

The reason why this fact, that the Jews were not authorized to execute anyone, is relevant to our passage today because the people were trying to force Jesus into yet another either/or situation. The choice came down to this, either say that she should not be executed and violate the laws of Moses or say that she needs to be executed by the Jews by stoning and violate the laws of the Romans. If He says she should live, He is condemned by His own tradition; if He says she should die, He is condemned by the secular authorities.

So, Jesus has been set up to choose between two very undesirable choices. It seems, when we look at the way the Scribes and Pharisees framed the question, that there is no good way to answer it. They hope that He is stuck and they will be able to condemn Him regardless of which way He answers. However, He deals with the situation by showing that, even though it looks like there are two possible answers, the question has been framed poorly and that they needed to look at it from another point of view.

Jesus’ response to the accusation was, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” When the choices seem to be to follow our interpretation of Moses or you are against God, Jesus emphasized the heart of the law. His actions show that He understands, unlike the Pharisees, that the purpose of the law was not the kill people, but rather to reform them and keep them from sin. The punishment for adultery was not meant to kill adulterers but to prevent adultery. It is by appealing to the intention of Moses and therefore the intention of God that Jesus opposed their interpretation of Moses. In the end, Jesus was so far from being against Moses that He was far more in favor of Moses than the people who claimed to be the authoritative teachers of Moses. Jesus is not saying that her sin is not bad, but He is reminding the teachers of the law that they may not be as innocent as they think they are. It might just be that they also are deserving of death and should show others the same grace that they have been shown.

When we look at the problem from the other point of view, as a political trap that seems like it would force Jesus to turn His back on Moses or secure His condemnation by the Romans, Jesus simply refuses to answer the question. In a sense, by refusing to take action, He is turning the question back on the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus is basically saying that this is not a question that only He needs to deal with. They are in the same boat. Even if they are able to condemn Jesus, they do not get to avoid the issue. They have already concluded that, according to Moses, they need to stone her to death. What are they going to do? Are they going to listen to Moses? If they do, they also will find themselves under attack from the Roman government. If they don’t, they will go against their own conviction. Jesus, though He is the one without sin who could throw the first stone, refuses to do so. Jesus allows the trap to be turned around to His accusers. When people try to trap God, God often lets them realize that they are also in that same trap.

I want to bring up one more way that we could look at this situation in a dualistic way. Even if we were to step out of the ancient world and into our modern situation, we can apply the lesson that we learn in this passage to our attitude regarding sin. One view of sin, which can be more or less associated with the conservative branch of the church, says that sin is very serious indeed and cannot be ignored whatsoever. If sin is not dealt with according to the severity it deserves, we promote nothing but lawlessness. Serious sins against others or against society at large need to be strictly dealt with. If we were to take this view, the only response we could give is that the woman would need to die for what she had done. Who does the execution is not as important as the fact that the execution takes place. Any other response would be a cheapening of the commands of God and a corruption of the holiness that God has called us to and would basically grant moral license and bring about a complete moral breakdown of the society.

The other view, which is often considered the only other option, can be more or less associated with the liberal branch of the church. This view is that mercy is so much the primary response to sin that any kind of punishment is seen as harsh authoritarianism. Most of the time, this view is so afraid of coming off as judgmental or harsh that there is a hesitancy to say that anything is wrong in the sense that it needs to be corrected. This view loves it when Jesus says, “Has no one condemned you? Neither do I condemn you. Go your way.”

When we look at how we should deal with sin and see only two options, full and fierce punishment, or a lack of real standards, we tend to look at them and have uneasiness concerning both of them. It is hard to reconcile a harsh, punishment-centered view with the mercy we see in Jesus, not least in this story, but it is equally hard to imagine that Jesus had no ethical standards whatsoever. The way the options are usually presented, it seems that if you do not want to affirm one, you must necessarily affirm the other, but is that really true? If we refuse to always bring the severe punishment that sin deserves, do we have no choice but to live in a lawless state? If we refuse to do away with our morality and mercy, must we become angry and rigid interpreters of the law?

Jesus takes this issue and shows that there is a third option. Jesus places the sin of the woman in the larger context of the sinfulness of all humanity. No matter how good we may think we are, if we were to insist that people should get what they deserve, not one of us would be alive today. The woman has indeed sinned and Jesus is not trying to deny that; what He is trying to show is that she is not the only one who deserves to face condemnation. The only one who can pass judgment on a sinful person is one that has never sinned. The Scribes and Pharisees, in spite of the fact that they prided themselves on their strict following of the law, were all too aware of their sin to throw the stones at the woman. He reminded the people that an individual person’s sin cannot be considered by itself, but must be considered in light of all of sinful humanity.

The other thing we absolutely need to pay very close attention to is all of what Jesus said. “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” Jesus, in saying this, does not fit in with either of the two opinions we just talked about. In His forgiving the woman, He does not exact upon her the punishment that she deserves according to the law; in his commanding her to no longer continue in her sin, He is maintaining an objective standard of morality, that though He has forgiven her, her lifestyle of adultery was fundamentally destructive and she needed to change. He has shown us what it means to hate the sin but love the sinner. We cannot, under any circumstances love sin, but neither can we, under any circumstances, hate sinners. After all, if someone had to be perfect before they could be loved, even by God, not a single one of us would be good enough. And yet, God gives us that love that we do not deserve.

So, as we continue to ponder this story, which is so often quoted by people all over the theological map, let us live in the tension that it sets up. It tells us that we need to love all sinners with the perfect love of God and that we need to hate all sin with the perfect hatred of God, but, and this is important, we must be sure that this hatred is aimed first and foremost at our own sin. The words that Jesus spoke to the woman are the same words that God has spoken to us. God has not condemned us, let us go our way and not sin again. Let us allow the grace of God to work in us what the law and our own willpower could not do. Let us allow the mercy of our Lord rub off on us, that we might show mercy to those that the world hates and allow the love of God to move in our very being when our world tries to pull us into extremes. Mercy and justice have been joined together in the very being of God. What God has joined together, let us not separate. Let us pray.

AMEN