Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, February 22, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
First of all, this passage has nothing to do with the woman in question. But I don’t want to discard her out of hand, simply because she is a device to try to entrap Jesus. She is a woman. A human being who, by an accident of birth, is consigned to be seen as property as long as she lives. She is oppressed. She is held to unbelievable double standards in the area of sexual activity. And her life has absolutely no value for its own sake. This is injustice to the highest degree, and Jesus knew it. Women still struggle, even in highly educated, wealthy countries that supposedly “know better”, to be given a value equal to men, which they deserve. So I just want to say unequivocally that the charge against her was unjust.
That being said, the scribes and Pharisees didn’t care one way or the other about her other than as a way to put Jesus to the test. They knew he knew the law was unjust. They also knew that if he spoke out against the law, they could get rid of him. So they put him in a position where he either had to condone the cold-blooded murder of a human being or break the law.
Jesus, of course, was way too smart for them. He didn’t say a darn thing. He took a stick and doodled in the dust. Then he just said, “You can stone her, but only if you have no sin of your own.” The shoe was on the other foot now. The scribes and Pharisees had to choose between making a proclamation of their sinlessness, which all would know to be a lie, and slinking off with their tails between their legs which, in fact, they did. And Jesus looks around with feigned surprise and says, quite snarkily, I imagine, “Where did everyone go? Didn’t they condemn you?”
Jesus didn’t condemn that poor woman, just encouraged her to do better. And he didn’t condemn the scribes and Pharisees either, but through cleverly pointing out their hypocrisy, encouraged them to do better, too. And guess what? Jesus doesn’t condemn us for our sin either. But he sure does encourage us to do better.
Are there times I am tempted to condemn others for their behavior without being honest about my own?