How often do we look upon the actions of another, and mentally pronounce sentence upon them based on our own interpretation of either secular justice, or even to do so in the presumption of truly understanding God’s justice? It is at times like these, that we should have the understanding and good sense to simply fall upon our faces and ask His forgiveness. Yet, more often than not, we seem to spend time trying to justify ourselves instead, both to others, and if we are sufficiently introspective – to ourselves.
Our Lord told us that through the prophet Isaiah that he was doing something new. He told us that we should not even consider the past, and He did not so much mean His, as He meant our own. Our own old ways of doing things, and our own old ways of understanding and thinking. He would instead bring forth new life to areas where there had traditionally been none, He would bring forth new hope to those who had none, and He would embrace those who had been considered untouchable. He would take us from a desert existence into a new a fertile land to exist in, both physically and spiritually.
If there was a crime that was reviled in some ways perhaps at least as much both in the Old and New Testaments as the crime of murder, it was that of adultery. Why we may ask – would that much emphasis be placed upon acts that today, we are consistently told by secular society, is not even a crime at all, but is portrayed as a form of love? The answer is that the people of that time grasped the destructive potential of that crime far better than we seem to today because not only had they witnessed the effects throughout their history and were more attuned to learning from that, but they could see the impact in their own time and within their own communities, and therefore recognized the misery it could bring. They were keenly aware of why God had placed this within the list of Ten Commandments that He had given us. They understood the fundamental violation of marital trust this generated between spouses, the animosity and strife between families, and the unbridgeable gap that could be created as a result within those structures, as well as the community as a whole. They understood how this kind of crime affected many more people than just those directly involved, and it was for this reason, they reserved one of the most brutal punishments imaginable – the act of stoning, for those found guilty of this crime.
In our Gospel today, our Lord confronts both a woman accused of adultery, and those who accused her. There seems little doubt of her guilt in the matter, as she was caught in the very act, and her accusers seize upon the opportunity to try to test our Lord to see if He will fulfill the law and see that their version of justice is done. The question is asked, and our Lord does not at first respond, yet when pressed, His response is one of crystalline clarity and precision – “Let the one among you who has not sinned, cast the first stone”. Those gathered were likely stunned with such a revelation, yet when they pondered it, they knew deep within that to claim to be without sin was a hypocrisy that even they could not defend. Those who were oldest among them no doubt had enough in terms of life experience to immediately recognize their inability to act within such terms, and they were the first to simply leave, followed eventually by all who had been gathered. Our Lord then addresses the woman directly, and His words are just as precise – He knows of her guilt, but He does not condemn her, because that is not why He came, He instead tells her pointedly to go forth and to not sin anymore. Of all those gathered there, He alone would have been justified in carrying out the sentence, but He alone was also there for a completely different purpose – to save, rather than to punish or condemn. So it is with His view of each one of us, and as I said at the beginning, when we ponder this, we should fall on our faces, this time with gratitude for a Lord who loves us so much that He took all our sins upon himself, rather than leave us to shoulder what we had rightfully earned. To this God of mercy and compassion, we kneel humbly before Him, and let our tears of shame fall at His feet and look with love upon so beautiful a Savior.
PodCast Link
The Deacons Bench 