“Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.””
John 8:1-11 NLT
Jesus returned to His accommodation on the Mount of Olives after His eventful last day at the Feast of Tabernacles. A day in which He had declared an invitation, “ … Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart’” (John 7:37b-38). A day during which He had nearly been arrested for blasphemy. A day when many in the crowd in the Temple started to declare that He was the Messiah. But John recorded that He was soon back in the Temple the next day and a crowd gathered around Him. In accordance with the Rabbinic custom of His day, Jesus then sat down and started to teach them. But the religious leaders had a disruptive plan, hoping to trap Jesus into committing an error that would give them another reason to arrest Him. How they managed it we don’t know, but somehow they found a woman “who had been caught in the act of adultery”, and they displayed her publicly right there in the Temple in front of Jesus.
As an aside, one person was conspicuously absent from the Pharisees’ plans – the man. The act of adultery takes two people, a man and a woman, to be accomplished, so where was the man? The Pharisees and the other religious leaders present quoted the Law of Moses from Deuteronomy 22:22, “If a man is discovered committing adultery, both he and the woman must die. In this way, you will purge Israel of such evil”. There is another verse in Leviticus 20:10, “If a man commits adultery with his neighbour’s wife, both the man and the woman who have committed adultery must be put to death”. The misogyny of the religious leaders was symptomatic of an age when women were considered little better than the farm animals in a man’s stable.
The religious leaders were trying to catch Jesus out, by putting Him in a no-win position. If He recommended that the woman was released, then He could have been accused once again of treating the Law of Moses with contempt. On the other hand, if He agreed with the leaders that the woman should be stoned then the Roman authorities, who exclusively had the mandate to administer a death sentence, might be upset and arrest Him. But what followed was a moment of reality to the accusers. They realised that they were all sinners, and had no mandate to judge another sinner. So when Jesus said to them that only the sinless had the authority to stone a sinner, they dropped their stones and walked away. Something powerful happened that day, even in the lives of the religious leaders who liked to display their personal righteousness before the people. Because of their public humiliation they now hated Jesus even more. But they had encountered the Son of God Himself, and perhaps received a glimpse into God’s heart of love and grace, contrasting their rigid and legalistic faith. Jesus said that His Kingdom was close at hand, and sadly the religious leaders possibly missed an opportunity to enter it.
Father God. We pray that Your Kingdom will come to this devil-ruled world. And soon. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 