A Reflection for the Fifth Sunday of Lent
Readings: Isaiah 43:16-21 Philippians 3:8-14 John 8:1-11
An adulterous woman is shoved onto the scene in today’s Gospel reading, and her story may have been similarly shoved into St. John’s Gospel. It is not found in primary Greek manuscripts of the fourth Gospel before the sixth century; its location varies in the manuscripts; and the Greek itself differs from the rest of the Gospel, as though penned by another.
But trying to scan beyond the story, insisting on what you think really happened, is a dead end. That would be writing your own Gospel, for which you have no warrant. We only know the story as the Lord, through his church and her evangelists, gave it to us. If it did enter the fourth Gospel as an addition, it fits perfectly, standing as it does between Christ calling himself “rivers of living water” (Jn 7:37) and “the light of the world” (Jn 8:12).
Have you ever been jostled by a crowd? Really crushed, unable to move freely, unable to see, simply pushed forward? It is a terrifying experience for many. The woman must have felt at least some relief when she was finally pushed into a clearing, into what St. John considers to be a corona of light, the spot where Jesus is preaching. For the woman, whatever happens next, at least the suffocating shoving has stopped.
Having been caught in crime, she is brought into the light. It is odd that she comes alone; committing adultery is a two-person act. The fact that her companion is not with her says something about the hearts of her accusers. He may well be in the crowd, as one of them, but to suggest as much convicts me of writing my own Gospel.
If we are going to assail evil where we find it, what of the evil we do not see in ourselves?
Deuteronomy (17:6-7) commands that the witnesses of capital crimes against God’s covenant should be the ones who begin the execution. “The hands of the witnesses shall be the first raised to put the person to death.” If her crime has already come to light, why have they not done so? Why is she shoved into this clearing?
The irony is that this woman is still being made an instrument of men’s intentions. They do not care about her fate; they want to call the light itself into question. They want to show that God’s light is not truly shining among us. The disgraced woman is a ploy to discredit Christ, the light. Will he stand by the law of Israel? How can he be the Christ if he does not?
Yet if he chooses law over mercy, then how is this man any more than another prophet? He certainly cannot be the living rivers of God’s grace, which he claims to be.
It is odd that she comes alone; committing adultery is a two-person act.
Then he who is the living water, the light encircled by the powers of darkness, “bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger” (7:6). This is St. John at his best. The physical reveals the spiritual, as when water is turned to wine; the blind are given sight; the hungry are fed; and baptism and Eucharist pour forth from the wounded side of the savior.
Christ preaches into the dust. He cannot be understood. This is dry land. It rejects the living water that he came to give, that he himself is. He writes out the Gospel he proclaims; he draws himself into the dirt. Then he reveals the paradox of the pretensions surrounding him, rejecting him.
Let the one among you who is without sin
be the first to throw a stone at her (Jn 7:7).
We all live in the dark, in the dust. If we are going to assail evil where we find it, what of the evil we do not see in ourselves? The dust fills our eyes. We strike out at the darkness, no doubt wounding the innocent with the guilty. And others, seeing our evil, strike at us. We all claim the right of law.
The great irony is that her accusers have indeed shoved this woman into the light.
The only way forward, out of the crush and dust, into light and water, is what St. Paul found:
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 (Phil 3:8-9).
The great irony is that her accusers have indeed shoved this woman into the light. He, the light, stands before her, and there, out of the dust, a river of grace and mercy flows. Jesus “opens a way in the sea and a path in the mighty waters” (Is 43:16).
“Woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?”
She replied, “No one, sir.”
Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.
Go, and from now on do not sin any more” (Jn 7:10-11).
