6 April 2025 - over exposure

 Today's Readings
(Audio)

Teacher, this woman was caught
in the very act of committing adultery.

Why did the Pharisees have the potential test case for Jesus so close at hand? It almost seemed like they were watching and waiting for some obvious sin about which they could question Jesus. It was not a concern for the law or righteous that caused them to bring this case forward. The woman had indeed clearly sinned, but they were further exploiting her for the sake of proving a point.

Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.
So what do you say?”
They said this to test him,
so that they could have some charge to bring against him.

They thought that there was no answer that Jesus could give that would not get him into trouble. Either he would go against the law and say that she should not be stoned, or he would support the stoning, taking on him a prerogative resumed for the Roman government. Such an act could easily be viewed as an act of rebellion, one more among many violent claimants to the messianic title. Jesus might either suffer derision from the people for infidelity or repression by the Roman government as a potentially dangerous rebel.

Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger.

Jesus was not particularly impressed with their trap. Every second he delayed reveled that the Pharisees themselves were taking no action toward the woman. If Jesus was silent, why did they not simply proceed? But they didn't perceive this and persisted in pestering him.

“Let the one among you who is without sin
be the first to throw a stone at her.”

This was a barbed statement precisely because the Pharisees did believe themselves, in virtue of the ritual purity, as being without sin. As the woman's accusers they therefore should have been the ones to begin the execution. But they themselves were too afraid of the Roman authorities to proceed. Now it was not Jesus who would look foolish, but them. They walked away without throwing so much as a pebble, making it appear to onlookers that they recognized that they were sinners. Jesus, for his part, was not authorizing the execution or agreeing with the idea that it should happen. He did not believe the Pharisees were without sin, and so his words gave them no license to proceed. In actual fact, they were much worse off than the adulterous woman. Her sin had been exposed and she was ready to make a change. But the sins of the Pharisees were until then hidden and festering. Jesus exposed them, therefore, not so much to make fools of them, as to prevent them from hiding the truth from themselves and from others. Only by acknowledging their own weakness could they receive the mercy Jesus Christ came to give.

Jesus wanted these Pharisees to understood what another Pharisee, Paul would later discover, and what the guilty woman just then learned:

For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things
and I consider them so much rubbish,
that I may gain Christ and be found in him,
not having any righteousness of my own based on the law
but that which comes through faith in Christ,
the righteousness from God

There would no longer be a division of people who thought themselves perfect and others whom they viewed as imperfect. The supposedly perfect stood in need of mercy as much as anyone, for, as Paul wrote, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (see Romans 3:23). But that mercy is now no longer closed to anyone. It flows abundantly, like water in the desert. It is the new thing which God has done and continues to do in our midst. It is the power of his own resurrection to transform the sufferings of our lives into strength and our own weakness to glory. May we respond with all of the intensity of Paul:

Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind
but straining forward to what lies ahead,
I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

Shane & Shane - Come Thou Fount (Above All Else)