John 9:1-7; 2
Corinthians 5:12-19; Isaiah 8:1-10
In the Name of the Father and of the
+ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The woman caught in adultery was not a
prostitute. She was married. For, the Jewish law commands that, “If a man
commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the
adulteress shall surely be put to death.” But, where was the adulterer? Where
was the man? Should he not have been charged with adultery also and stoned to
death along with the woman? After all, it takes two to tango. Nonetheless, this
woman was not a prostitute. She had a husband, and she was unfaithful to him.
Now, while the story of the adulterous
woman is a true, factual, and historical account, the adulterous woman is also
symbolic of the Church. For, the Church – the people of Israel then, and the
New Israel now – is we, and we have also been adulterous and unfaithful to our
Husband, the Lord. Yet, just as the Lord refused to judge and condemn the
woman, though He is the righteous and innocent Lord of heaven and earth and all
things, so does He refuse to judge His Bride, the Church. Instead, out of love
for Her and supreme mercy, He put Himself in Her place, the Innocent for the
guilty, the Judge for the judged, and received in Himself the condemnation and
penalty She deserved, death.
The scribes and the Pharisees, that is, Satan,
wanted to entrap Jesus. The woman, the Church, was but a pawn in his game. He
doesn’t give a rip about Her. He doesn’t give a rip about you. But, he hates
God the Father, and he hates Jesus, your Bridegroom, and, therefore, he hates
you, His Bride. So, he thought he had Jesus this time. For, if Jesus condemned the
woman, as the Law demands, the Romans would have arrested him, for Roman law
did not permit the Jews to render the death penalty or to execute anyone. However,
if He showed mercy, then He would have been accused of breaking the Law of God.
But, Jesus didn’t take the bait. Instead, He kept the Law and He showed mercy upon
the woman at the same time, and, in so doing, He exposed the scribes and the
Pharisees for the hypocrites they were by turning the Law back on them and by showing
that they weren’t interested in obeying it or preserving it, but only in using
it to entrap Jesus. They had no regard for God’s Law at all, demonstrated in
the fact that they brought only the woman caught in adultery before Jesus, and
not the adulterer, the man, whom they, necessarily, had also caught red-handed in
the act.
So, what did Jesus do? He wrote with His
finger in the dirt. It was the Sabbath, and to write anything that would leave
a permanent mark would be a violation of the Sabbath Law. However, writing in
the dirt was not considered a violation, for the wind and the weather would
soon erase what was written. So, by writing in the dirt, Jesus did not violate
the Law, but He kept it, and He fulfilled it, in what He wrote. What did He
write? Well, the Scriptures do not tell us. However, as the scribes and the
Pharisees brought the woman to Jesus so that He would be forced to make a
judgment, what He wrote was most likely the judgment against her according to
the Law. I believe that He simply wrote the words of the judgment: “Kill her.”
Why? Because that is precisely what the Law commanded for the punishment of an
adulterer. And, then, after having made the judgment, Jesus uttered the method
of execution saying, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to
throw a stone at her.” And, therein, the would-be entrapped became the
entrapper. For, if any one of them threw a stone at her, the Roman soldiers
would arrest them immediately. And, yet, to drop their stones and walk away
would be to demonstrate their fear of men before and above God. Thus, one by
one, beginning with the elders, who were ashamed, having been exposed in their
treachery, they each dropped their stones and walked away to plot against Jesus
for another day.
Then Jesus turned to the woman herself
and pointed out the obvious, that there was no one left to condemn her except
Himself. Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you.” In these words Jesus
pronounces the mercy He came to show to His Bride in not giving Her the bad
things that She deserves because of Her adultery, Her sinful disobedience to
God’s Law. But, in Her stead, in Her place, and as Her substitute, Jesus, the
Bridegroom, would suffer the penalty for Her transgression in His suffering and
death upon the cross. However, Jesus did not permit Her to believe that Her
adultery, Her sin, did not matter, but in his final words to the woman Jesus
neither condemned her nor overlooked her self-destructive lifestyle. He walked
a razor's edge between the two with the words, “Neither do I condemn you; go,
and from now on sin no more.”
Your Lord continues to speak these very
words to you, His Bride, over and over, again and again, in the Holy Liturgy of
the Divine Service. As you confess your sins anew in humility and repentance,
you do so in the certain hope, knowledge, and expectation of His absolution:
“Neither do I condemn you.” Then, clinging to His absolution in faith and
trust, you set your heart and your mind once again, not out of fear or
compulsion, as to a slave master, but out of love and thankfulness to your
Husband and Lord who loves you with perfect and selfless love, to obey His
command, “Go, and from now on sin no more.”
Truly, in the Holy Liturgy of the Divine
Service, you live your life in Jesus’ speech. His “Word is very near you. It is
in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” The Law remains, but
it no longer condemns. St. Paul describes your life in Christ in his Epistle to
the Church in Corinth saying, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and
beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,
bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving
each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”
Thus, you must not take up stones of
condemnation to throw at your brother or sister in Christ, or at your neighbor,
for your Lord Jesus has borne the condemnation you, and all, have rightly
deserved, and there is now no one to condemn you. Therefore, do not condemn one
another, but forgive, as you have been forgiven. “And above all,” St. Paul
continues, “put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were
called in one body [His Bride, the Church]. And be thankful. Let the Word of
Christ dwell in you richly [in the Holy Liturgy of the Divine Service],
teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns
and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you
do, in word or deed, do everything in the Name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks
to God the Father through Him.”
In
the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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