The Gospel Story everyone gets wrong.
Most focus on the wrong person
The story is of course the woman caught in adultery and everyone says, this shows God's mercy in Christ, it shows God's forgiveness. Guess what? It does not. No one is forgiven here. I will explain that later.
Further, everyone has you focused on the wrong person, don't focus on the woman, instead focus on the crowd.
According to Mosaic law adultery was punishable by stoning to death. She is caught in the act of adultery and dragged before Jesus. No one is disputing that she is guilty, no one.
So, to trip up Jesus they want him to condemn her to death and they are ready to throw the stones.
This is where Jesus writes in the sand which today is a mystery and then says those famous words. “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.”
The whole key to the story is what happens next.
The law said that those caught in adultery were to be stoned to death. The person who first witnessed the act was to throw the first stone.
They are all in grave sin because as much as adultery is against the law of Moses, everything they are doing is against the law of Moses on many accounts. First, the man is not there. They are protecting him but he is to be stoned too. Therefore, they are bearing false witness and breaking a commandment. The law of Moses also condemned lying, manipulation and more that they are doing. Jesus just demonstrated that he knows they are committing sins in their act with this woman. When they drop the stones and walk away, they condemned themselves. They are not at this point forgiven for they have been caught in grave sin and have just admitted it to him and all around them.
Then he tells her he does not condemn her. This is key. He does not forgive her because he does not condemn her in the first place. He calls her to repent of her sin and then he will forgive her but he does not condemn her. Meanwhile, everyone else is not condemned by him, they condemned themselves.
This is a powerful story of people using their religion for political purposes and it is a warning against those who do so. This is literally, an ancient case of lawfare.
Jesus puts a human face on God's laws
Jesus’ mission is to humanize God's laws and lead people to love one another and not to live as slaves to the text of the law but to live by the actual law which calls all to mercy and love of God and each other.
This is always the war in religion, the people who can cite every jot and tittle of the law may be no more close to Christ than those who simply try to live their faith. That is because forcing people to live by the letter of the law is bad religion. In Catholicism, the law is written on our hearts. We must live by the meaning of the law which is to act in love to all people.
She is probably a prostitute and I will not rule out that she was set up by those who hated Jesus. They were caught, and it is possibe that the man was in the crowd standing with the others and they hid his identity. It does not matter because they end up condemning themselves and revealing themselves as the real sinners.
Jesus calls us not to condemn sinners but to love all. That is the road to our own conversion and that of others.
Fr. Robert J Carr is pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Allston, MA
The parish podcast is at CatholicAudioMedia.com
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The newest edition of Fr Robert J Carr's latest book is now available. Christ in Our Humanity. You can find it here.