John 8:1-11... a woman caught in adultery… it is the portable passage. This narrative has also been placed after Jn 7:36 & found at the end of the John’s Gospel. In other writings, it even jumps over into the 21st chapter of Luke’s Gospel. I love that this passage is so movable – a liminal narrative – a safe place for all those who are weak & guilty. It is the narrative that exists in-between; the marginal story of Jesus standing up in defence of the marginal one without a defence.
The context for this tale is Jesus at a Center - teaching people in the Temple. This is God’s place but it is a dangerous place ! The story is old & too familiar – a group of men bring a woman caught in another man’s bed before Jesus… ‘Where is the man ?’ A woman caught in a concrete act – shamed – nakedness beyond nakedness. Shame and a double bind. The real motive is to catch out Jesus, the defender of outcasts, the marginal, & the unrighteous ones.
The narrative turns on a question ! ‘What will Jesus do in the face of an ethical principal set on behalf of the many & his ethical responsibility in the face of this particular other ?’
The tale unfolds & Jesus is bending down, writing with his finger in the dirt… the image of a pondering judge that invokes the writing of the 10 commandments. Keep paying attention as we step between – the creative movement sideways – on behalf of compassion, mercy & justice. Jesus never says this woman isn’t guilty. He posits no clever theological formula, nor calls down any miraculous intervention. Instead, he gives permission… “You may throw the stone if you are without sin…”. The question is answered. And once again, this moment of undeserved mercy is bounded by an image of justice – of Jesus bending & writing in the dirt… the sins of each of the woman’s accusers.
How much easier it is to gather around the sins of another to relieve our own inner strife.
Yet beyond dispassionate judgement, beyond the structured institutionalism of the Law applied by men is grace – the step sideways, the opportunity to begin again. The humility we need is the truth that we are all bound together in unholy community by our sinful acts. Jesus doesn’t freeze or define people by the litany of their selfish actions. I love it that in its usual place in John 8, in the very next passage Jesus says, “You judge by human standards, I judge no one… Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12-15).
The light of life accompanying the concrete action of following Jesus.
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