The gospel story of the adulteress woman was an evil plan designed by some scribes and pharisees to trap Jesus. If justice was their concern regarding their law, they would have taken her to their judges. The Roman rulers of the time took the power to sentence someone to death away from the Jewish authorities; so the pharisees needed to bring the woman to a Roman judge if they wanted her killed. The pharisees displayed contempt toward Jesus, as if saying, this time we got you! If Jesus said, ‘stone her to death, he would defy Rome and contradict his own teachings on compassion and forgiveness; if Jesus opposed stoning her to death, he would be against the law of Moses.The irony of the situation is, ‘where is the man’ involved in the act of adultery? Gospel says, ‘they caught her’ and ‘brought her’. She was just a nobody for the crowd; they demeaned her dignity as a person and used her to trap Jesus.
The mob’s arrogance was in full display! They reduced the woman to an object to be stoned and publicly shamed. The crowds’ demand to kill her echo in our world today in the killing and displacement of Ukrainians, in the marginalization of the poor, cultures that still stone people to death, persecution of people because of their religion, race or culture and killing the planet earth by misuse of its resources [ponder what the Lord says in Isaiah, ‘even the wild animals of the forest honor me’]. Jesus’ words, ‘let the one among you without sin, first throw a stone at her’, shocked and silenced the crowd. One by one the crowd left. There is a story that Zebedee the father of James and John was among the crowd. He was angry at Jesus because two of his sons left him to follow Jesus and that ruined his fishing business. He picked a stone to throw at the woman and immediately his hand was paralyzed. In fear and trembling he begged Jesus to heal him, that Jesus did. Often our paralyzed conscience needs to be shaken up to realize what is proper and humane. The guiding presence of Jesus with us and his gospel do that for us.
Jesus became the good news for the woman when he said; ‘I do not condemn you, go sin no more’. His words redeemed the woman and saddened the self-righteous, angry crowd that turned killers. The woman experienced what Isaiah says in the first reading, a way through the sea, a way through the wilderness of chaos in her life. Her former life was not remembered. Jesus brought forth a new spring in that terrified woman. Jesus was saying to the woman, this is your opportunity to begin new, to choose wisely things you want to do with your life. As the psalm says, the woman ‘goes forth weeping and comes home rejoicing’, a wonder of God’s mercy. This is also a story about marital relationship; married couples are called to be faithful to each other in good times and bad, in sickness and health! They need to be compassionate to each other. Dalai Lama once said: ‘a person who practices compassion and forgiveness has greater inner strength, whereas aggression is usually a sign of weakness’.
The woman in the gospel would confess like Paul: ‘knowing Christ, his mercy and love, I now consider everything else rubbish’. We have become one with Christ in our baptism and we have been growing in our knowledge and love of Christ. We must be able to say: ‘In Jesus I find my true self. I let go my self-righteous, angry, violent self. I do not dwell on my past but on the richness of life I can have in Christ, as I journey through life.