5th Sunday of Lent – Year C
This Sunday’s Readings
- First Reading
Isaiah 43:16-21
The Lord is doing something new for his people. - Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 126:1-6
A song in praise of the Lord’s marvelous deeds - Second Reading
Philippians 3:8-14
Paul says that he counts all things as lot and focuses on one goal, Christ. - Gospel Reading
John 8:1-11
Jesus does not condemn the woman caught in adultery.
Background on the Gospel Reading
The Gospel for the fifth Sunday of Lent continues to offer lessons about God’s mercy and forgiveness. Last Sunday we heard the Parable of the Prodigal Son from the Gospel of Luke. Today we hear not a parable, but the report from John’s Gospel of an encounter among Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees, and a woman caught in adultery.
In John’s Gospel, the conflict between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees occurs much earlier than in the Synoptic Gospels. Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple in Jerusalem is reported at the beginning of John’s Gospel. Even after this event, Jesus continues to teach in the Temple. After returning to Galilee for a time, Jesus again enters Jerusalem and cures a man on the Sabbath. From this point forward in John’s Gospel, the Pharisees are described as making plans for Jesus’ arrest and seeking his death.
In the chapter preceding today’s Gospel, Jesus was teaching in the Temple area. Feeling threatened by his teaching and his actions, the chief priests and the Pharisees are already sending guards to arrest Jesus. The guards return, however, without arresting Jesus because they have been impressed by his words. Even more than this, some among the crowds are considering the possibility that Jesus is the Messiah. The chief priests and the Pharisees change their plan. Before making an arrest, they seek to gather more evidence against Jesus by posing a question intended to trap Jesus.
Today’s Gospel begins by reporting that Jesus is again teaching the crowds in the vicinity of the Temple. The scribes and the Pharisees approach Jesus, bringing a woman who has been caught in the act of adultery. They put to Jesus the question of what ought to be done in this case.
The Pharisees state clearly that according to the Law of Moses, those caught in the act of adultery were to be stoned to death. Under Roman occupation, however, the Jewish people did not have the authority to execute people; this is cited in John’s passion narrative. To answer the Pharisees’ question, Jesus must propose an action that will be either contrary to the Law of Moses or contrary to Roman law. The purpose of the question appears to be similar to the question about paying taxes found in Mark 12:13-17. Either answer, yes or no, will support the Pharisees’ case against Jesus.
Jesus avoids the trap, however, by offering an answer that was not anticipated by those who posed the question. Jesus, after writing on the ground with his finger, addresses those who stand before him and suggests that the one without sin cast the first stone. Jesus then returns to his writing. This Scripture reading, by the way, is the only evidence we have of Jesus writing. Yet there are no specific details about what he wrote.
We can easily imagine the scene as the Pharisees and the elders disperse, one by one. Jesus has eluded the trap they had prepared. We might also give credit to the elders and the Pharisees who do not, in the end, claim to be sinless and worthy of passing judgment. These Pharisees are not as self-righteous as the portrait found in the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector (See Luke 18:9-14).
Left alone with the woman, Jesus asks where the accusers have gone. With no one remaining to condemn the woman, Jesus (the one who truly is without sin) sends the woman on her way, refusing to pass judgment on her and exhorting her to avoid future sin.
Jesus’ response to those who accuse the woman is more than a caution to us about making judgment of others. It is a profound lesson in divine mercy and forgiveness. As sinners, we are all unworthy to judge the sins of others and we would stand convicted by God for our transgressions. Yet Jesus, the one without sin and thus our judge, offers us who are sinners his mercy and forgiveness. Redeemed by Jesus’ compassion, we are sent to sin no more and to live in God’s love and peace.
“The Woman Caught in Adultery”
Kathleen Rushton
Although the story of Jesus, the woman and her accusers is thought to go back to the life of Jesus, it was not until the third century that it was included in the canonical tradition. Even then, this incident took a long time to settle into John’s gospel where we find it today, in John 8:1-11. Some ancient manuscripts place it in two other places, others in Luke’s gospel, and some omit it altogether.
The story was opposed and suppressed because Jesus’ forgiving words were at odds with the ancient Church’s penitential discipline. Augustine, for example, wrote that men feared this story would “make their women immune to punishment for their sins.”
Scripture scholar, Raymond Brown, described the essence of the story as a “succinct expression of the mercy of Jesus.” Augustine had also commented on the woman and Jesus — “only two remain, the wretched one and the incarnation of mercy.” The delicate balance between Jesus’ justice in not condoning the sin and his mercy towards the woman, invites us to ponder our practice in this Year of Mercy.
Scene one: “To stone such women”
It is early morning. “All the people” come to Jesus, who begins teaching in the Temple (Jn 8:1–2). Three scenes follow about both the Scribes and Pharisees, and the woman (Jn 8:3–6a; Jn 8:6b–7; Jn 8:8–11). In the first scene, the Scribes and Pharisees led to Jesus a woman caught in adultery, to ask him to join in condemning her because the Torah said: “Moses commanded us to stone such women.”
In her recent novel about the morally complex King David, The Secret Chord, Geraldine Brooks describes stoning in the voice of Batsheva, David’s eighth wife. Batsheva was Uriah’s wife when David watched her bathing during her ritual purification and desired her. David sent for her and raped her in the palace. Batsheva asks: “Have you ever seen a woman stoned to death, Natan? I have. My father made me watch when I was a girl so I would know what became of faithless wives. And when my monthly signs did not come, I thought of that woman, the sounds of her moans, her mashed flesh, her shattered bone . . . At the end she had no face . . .”
It is important not to pit Jesus against Judaism, by seeing the stoning of women as unique to the Jewish Torah. According to the New Testament scholar Luise Schottroff, “every legal system of antiquity threatens women, whose sexuality is the possession of a man (father or husband), with severe punishment or death in the case of adultery or pre-marital intercourse.”
Stoning is an execution performed by a group, or community, that is threatened by a particular deed. Men throw stones at the victim in a specific order related to the rank of those who were injured, or claim to be so.
An account of the stoning of an allegedly adulterous Iranian woman in 1990, records that her father threw the first stone, followed by her husband, the Imam and then her sons. Each man was plaintiff, judge, and executioner. A crowd participated in the collective rage. The woman was buried in a hole up to her shoulders. The mayor drew a chalk circle around her. She was in the middle.
“In the middle”
Jesus faces a real event not a theoretical debate. The stoning is imminent. The woman is placed literally “in the middle” (Jn 8:3) – other translations have “in full view of everyone” or “before them all”. She is facing death. The Scribes and Pharisees expected Jesus, a Jewish male, to be responsible and to condemn and to participate.
However, not all Scribes and Pharisees (or Imams and their communities) behave in this way. The ones in the Johannine text are zealots, indignantly enforcing the Torah. They are intent on finding fault with Jesus by opposing him to the Torah. They have no interest in the woman, her allegedly wronged husband, or the other man. If they had, both the man and woman caught in adultery should die (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22).
Scene two: Jesus and the Scribes and Pharisees
The collective nature of the way the woman was seized and condemned calls on Jesus to take his place in the male hierarchy. They expect him to collude with the male collective as judge and executioner. But he does not answer.
Jesus bends and writes on the ground with his finger. His action disrupts their expectations. They continue to press for an answer so Jesus stands and addresses them directly: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (Jn 8:7).
Scene Three: Jesus and the Woman
Then Jesus again bends, writing on the ground. The crowd of accusers leave one-by-one, according to rank. Then Jesus speaks to the woman for the first time: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
He addresses the woman as “you” (Jn 8:10). She is no longer an object. Through unconditional forgiveness, she is able to enter into a relationship with Jesus. On the basis of this relationship, Jesus can challenge her to sin no more. “From this moment on” (literally “from this now on”), the moment of her encounter with Jesus, she is offered the possibility of new life: physical life and a life of right relationship with God.
Civic Moral Courage
Jesus, as an independent interpreter of the Torah, places the offence of adultery, which in patriarchal society made women vulnerable to unjust allegations and treatment, on a level with offences such as theft and defamation. He disputes the status of adultery (shared with idolatry) as a crime requiring death. Scripture scholar, Luise Schottroff, calls his action, civic moral courage.
This story shows gender social constructions. The paper, Women as Actors in Addressing Climate Change, from the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, 2015, defines it as: “the array of ‘socially constructed’ roles, behaviours, attributes, aptitudes, and relative powers linked with being a woman or a man in a society at any given time. The term ‘socially constructed’ means that they are not ‘innate’ or ‘natural’ characteristics but constructions and products of a society and, as such, can be modified and transformed.”
Jesus acted with courage. Benedictine Sister, Maria Boulding noted: “The Pharisees are tense, but [Jesus] is calm and relaxed throughout; he accepts the woman openly and lovingly, as an adult and as a person. He has a sureness of touch; he can handle the situation with her because he has nothing to be afraid of in himself . . . He must have completely accepted and integrated his own sexuality. Only a man who has, or at least begun to do so, can relate properly to women.”
This year of Mercy is our opportunity to practise courage too.
God Saves, He does not Condemn
Gospel reflection – John 8:1-11
Fernando Armellini
If reading a book we happen to find that a page has been torn, probably we would think that the story had to contain unreasonable details and that a pious hand, to prevent trouble for some less mature readers, has removed the offending text.
Well, in the early centuries of the Church, when the books of the New Testament were transcribed, from almost all copies of the Bible the page of today’s Gospel was removed..
Luke must have composed it (the theme, style, language are his) and its natural place is at the end of Chapter 21. It is there, in fact, that it is placed by a large group of ancient manuscripts. Certainly it was not John and no one knows how it entered the eighth chapter of the Fourth Gospel. Perhaps because, after a few verses, there is the phrase of Jesus: I do not judge anyone (Jn 8:15). In any case it is clear that this text has had a rather troubled history.
The reason? St. Augustine gave his a bit dismissive and obvious reason: “Some members of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, probably feared that the welcome Jesus gave to the sinful woman grant immunity to their women.” Simply put: husbands, parents, community leaders must have thought that the words of Jesus “I do not condemn you” could be misunderstood and then… it is better to ignore the story.
The real reason of suspicion for this episode, however, is perhaps another: the penitential practice that had been established in the early centuries of the Church.
With the increased number of Christians, in the first centuries quality had lapsed and a certain laxity that led to justify any behavior and retained all as licit was introduced. In response a belief spread wide and far that, against those who sinned seriously, the church could act granting pardon, yes, but only once in life. Repeat offenders has only to wait for the severe judgment of God. Clearly the rigorists preferred to put aside, not to give any importance to the episode of the adulteress.
Those who advocated a more gentle and understanding attitude gladly recalled this story. In the apostolic constitutions—an important book of the fourth century—it is recommended to the Bishop to imitate what Jesus did “to the woman who had sinned and that older people had set before him.”
Looked with a certain suspicion or with sympathy, the passage still remained. Then it was necessary to come up with an explanation for the offending sentence. Someone would have preferred that Jesus did not utter: “I do not condemn you.”
He had begun by saying: see how good is the Lord? The woman had to be stoned, but since she was more than repentant, Jesus first defended her and then forgave her.
But if it was so, why would the fact raise many objections to the point of trying to delete it from the Gospel? Would there be anything strange if Jesus had forgiven a repentant sinner? This is where the crux of the problem lies: there is absolutely nothing to suppose that she had repented.
Let us not confuse her with the sinner Luke speaks about in another part of his Gospel. That one repented: wept, anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair (Lk 7:36-50), but the adulteress in today’s Gospel has not done any of this. She was caught in the act, grabbed, threatened, perhaps beaten, then was thrown in front of Jesus. Nothing else. Of course, she must have been shocked, scared, ashamed. But supposing that, in those conditions, she may have thought of an “act of perfect contrition” is pure fantasy!
Why bother to excuse Jesus? He has no need of our justifications. Does it surprise us? Does it upset us? Fine. We may not even agree with his behavior, but you cannot deny, modify, minimize the scope of the fact. Let’s figure it out.
A woman is caught… while she was not reciting the rosary! It is strange that the man was not also grabbed. It is the same old story: aggression, violence, passion is unleashed always on the weakest; the strong always manage somehow to escape and get away with it.
The law punished adultery with death (Lev 20:10). In practice, however, the judges were not severe, always shut one eye and never condemned to death. Moreover, when the Bible imposed this penalty, it does not intend the real execution. It only underscores the seriousness of the crime. Just think that it is also provided for one who beats his own father (Ex 21:15).
We do not know who were the authors of the morality of Jerusalem, but one thing is certain: then, as now, there were people obsessed by the fact that others committed sexual sins. How do you explain this fanaticism in the defense of public decency? Are these moralizers really innocent and pure? Why do they enjoy putting in public the sins of others? Maybe these are people who would like to do the same things, but, not being able to, they attacked those who practice them.
Someone in this group of moral vigilance must have made the proposal: and if we drag this w… (sinful woman!) to the Galilean teacher? Yes, from the man who is always on the side of these corrupt people? He will certainly not have the courage to defend her! You will see how he will be embarrassed when forced to speak out against “his friends” (Mt 11:19)!
They find him sitting in the yard of the temple, surrounded by many people who listen to him carefully. They drag the woman in the middle, “standing in front of all” and, with a smile full of innuendo, they ask him: “Master, the law orders that such women be stoned to death, what do you say?”
Jesus does not respond. He bends down and begins to write on the ground. What does he write? Opinion—which spread from St. Jerome—that he wrote the sins of the accusers is meaningless and no one supports it. However the custom among the Semitic peoples of scribbling on the ground while one is thinking or want to release tension or control the irritation before another who asks absurd or provocative questions is well documented.
Jesus could get out of trouble in a very simple way: by inviting the accusers to address the legitimate judges. The court of the Sanhedrin is not more than a hundred meters away. But this would mean abandoning the woman that the “defenders of public morality” now consider a trophy, a prey. For this he raises his head and says: “Let anyone among you who has no sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Then he bends again and continues to draw lines on the ground.
At that point the audience start to not feel more at home: they have been exposed. Their hypocrisy has been stripped. They lower their eyes, trying to take a cavalier attitude, to hide the embarrassment and shame. They move away, starting with the elders, the “priests”—says the Greek text. None remain except Jesus and the woman alone.
Let us consider well the position of the two. The woman was standing, as was the case with the accused during trials (v. 3) and Jesus was sitting (v. 2). Throughout the dialogue the position is the same: Jesus bends (v. 6), raised his head (v. 7) and leans back (v. 8), but remains always seated and the woman standing, “there in the middle” (v. 9).
In verse 10 of our text says, “Then Jesus stood up,” giving the idea that, to give judgment, he stood. Not so. The verb used is the same as in verse 7 and has been translated as “raised his head.” Jesus has remained where he was, down, in the position of the servant, not the judge who looks down on those who did wrong. He only lifted his head to talk to the woman, with the sweetness of his gaze, the tenderness of God that does not condemn anyone. They’ve all gone—says the text—thus, together with prosecutors, the crowd and even the disciples left. Only Jesus remained to pronounce his surprising judgment: no condemnation.
The Gospel emphasizes that the first to leave were the elders. Maybe they are the more mature people in the community who are invited to make an examination of conscience. Often they are the ones who delight in “throwing stones” with gossips and slanders.
If Jesus does not judge or condemn, then does it mean that sin is a small thing? To behave well or badly does not matter?
No! Sin is a very serious evil because it destroys the lives of those who commit it. Jesus does not say to the woman: “Go in peace, you did wrong to betray your husband, do not repeat the error of ruining your life for a moment of pleasure.”
Nobody hates sin more than Jesus, because nobody loves people more than him. However he does not condemn those who make mistakes (and he allows nobody to throw stones) in order not to add more evil to that which the sinner has already done.
Maybe he does not condemn now, but one day will he judge and punish his children who commit evil? Let’s pay attention. Jesus does not say to the sinful woman: “For this time I do not condemn you.” This would be good also for purists of the first centuries. He says: “I do not condemn you”, neither today, nor tomorrow, not ever.
This page of the Gospel today does not disturb less than yesterday. It does not leave tranquil those who continue to claim the right, from the unassailable fortress of their respectability, of hurling stones no longer with the hands, but defaming, isolating, uttering harsh judgments, fueling distrust, spreading gossips. Jesus does not tolerate anyone who throws these painful and cruel stones against those who hold with difficulty, bent under the weight of their own mistak
Fernando Armellini
Italian missionary and biblical scholar
https://sundaycommentaries.wordpress.com
Not stones! God saves by loving
Romeo Ballan, mccj
The theme of this Sunday’s three Readings is “new life”. Jesus in the Gospel gives life to the woman caught in adultery: “Go and sin no more” (v. 11). It was already announced to the exiles in Babylon by the Prophet Isaiah (I Reading), foretelling a return to the homeland: “See, I am doing a new deed, even now it comes to light” (v. 19). The promise came with two eloquent signs: a road in the wilderness and rivers in the wild. For Paul (II Reading), the new life is a person, Christ Jesus, the only treasure that makes everything else seem like so much rubbish (v. 8). It is the only goal to reach, by running with total effort. Paul finds that this commitment is not a burden, but rather a response of love for Christ who captured him (v. 12). From this experience springs the missionary impulse of Paul.
“At daybreak” (Gospel), in the open area of the temple of Jerusalem, a new life began also for a woman who had been “caught in the act of committing adultery” (v. 4): a woman to be stoned, according to the law. She is thrown in front of Jesus like a rag, the only person accused of a crime that, by its very nature, should have had two guilty partners; but the other has managed to slip away… Jesus saves her from the hail of stones by his surprising attitudes which turn the situation right over: first of all the disconcerting silence of Jesus, then the “writing on the ground with his finger” (v. 6.8) of some signs that history will never be able to explain and, lastly, the challenge to throw the first stone (v. 7) that shows up the hypocrisy of all those pitiless accusers.
In the end, the woman and Jesus remain there alone: ‘miserable with mercy’ as St. Augustine puts it. Jesus speaks to the woman, whom nobody had addressed until then: they had bundled her along with insults and accusations. He speaks to her politely, softly, not with coarse words but with respect, recognising her dignity; he calls her ‘woman’, as he often did with his mother (Jn 2:4; 19:26). Jesus makes a distinction between her, a weak woman certainly, and her sin, of which he does not approve, of course. Adultery is, and remains, a sin (Mt 5:32), even in the case of dishonest desires (Mt 5:28 and the 9th Commandment). Jesus condemns the sin, but not the sinner; he does not dwell on and analyse her past, but projects her into life again, reopens the future to her. The kernel of the account is not the sin, but the Heart of God who loves, and wants us to live. This is the image of God-Love that Jesus wants to hand on: the woman must know, by experience, that God loves her as she is. Hence she feels in herself that she is respected, loved, protected and so she is able to take on the urging of Jesus “not to sin again” (v. 11). God saves by loving. Only love can convert and save!
This uncomfortable episode in the Gospel had a difficult history: it was left out of several antique codices, and is moved elsewhere in others. Some think that it is not part of John’s Gospel, but of Luke’s, given the style and the message that are so similar to the Parable of the Merciful Father (Lk 15: last week’s Gospel). The woman is like the younger son; the Scribes and Pharisees are in the role of the elder brother; and Jesus is in the perfect role of the Father. A modern writer, Oliver Clément, ponders on it: “An impossible text, left out of a number of manuscripts. The moral conscience, and even the religious conscience of many, cannot accept that Jesus refused to condemn the woman… She was caught in the act; she had committed one of the gravest sins recognised by the Law… Christ confounds the accusers by reminding them that evil is universal; even they, spiritually, are adulterers; even they, in one way or another, have betrayed love. ‘If there is one of you who has not sinned…’. Nobody is without sin, and He concludes with the words: «Go and do not sin again»: words that open up a new future”.
The Gospel reading is an exciting programme of missionary methodology, with proclamation, conversion and education in the faith and in life’s values. Love generates and regenerates a person, makes them free; Jesus educates us in a love that is lived in freedom and gratefulness. It is when these conditions are recognised that we understand why we have to let the stones fall from our hands – the very stones we wanted to throw at others. The fact that people slipped away, beginning with the oldest (v. 9) shows the sense of sin, of shame or of having learned the lesson. Lastly, it becomes clear that anyone who works and struggles for equal opportunities between men and women has in Jesus an ideal precursor, a pioneer and an ally.
