"Neither do I condemn you"

Readings: Isa 43:16-21; Ps 126:1-6; Phil 3:8-14; John 8:1-11

It is difficult to comment on the pericope of the woman caught in adultery without commenting on the history of this text. Even though it now appears in all printed versions of the Bible as John 8:1-11, it does not appear in the most ancient manuscripts of any of the canonical Gospels. In some manuscripts of Saint John’s Gospel, in addition to its settled location, it also appears, depending on the manuscript, in two other places. In some manuscripts, it is found in what many scholars argue is its more natural place, in the Gospel of St. Luke. But, again, even in Luke it is found in two different places.

Don't worry! The story of the woman forgiven for adultery by Jesus has sufficient apostolic credentials to be included in Scripture. Eusebius, the early church historian, writes that Papias, an early second-century bishop, told the story “of a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord.” More insight is gleaned about the story by its appearance in a third-century book, The Apostolic Constitutions, where it is used to warn bishops who are too strict. St. Augustine speculates that the story was omitted from the Gospel text "to avoid giving scandal." It seems he feared that conveying the story of such mercy towards an adulteress would cause the faithful to take the grave sin of adultery too lightly. So, in an ironic twist, certain church hierarchs constitute the judgmental crowd, judging even our Lord by finding him too forgiving.

Of course, the whole point of this episode is to demonstrate how deep and wide is God’s mercy given us in Christ. After asking the woman where her accusers were and if there was no one left to condemn her, hearing her negative reply, "No one sir," Jesus says these words: "Neither do I condemn you." Since we are in Saint John's Gospel, let's call to mind something from this book's most famous passage: "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn* the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:17).

Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565

After refusing to condemn her, Jesus says to her- "Go, and from now on do not sin any more" (John 8:11). I think this brings us to the relevant or homiletic point, which is made in our reading from Saint Paul's Letter to the Philippians:

forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus
(Phil 3:13b-14)

In forgetting what lies behind, we must never forget God's mercy. What Paul notes earlier in the passage about himself also applies to us, as it does to the woman caught in adultery: "not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ"(Phil 3:9).

You see, in one way or another, you and I are the woman caught in adultery. This is clearly shown by Jesus' words to the crowd of men who were so eager to stone her death: "Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7). Jesus cannot be referring here to what we might call "venial" sins. He can no doubt be referring to sins, violations of the Law, that also might warrant death. Standing before what they had to recognize as a kind of divine judgment, these men, heeding their consciences, could do nothing but drop their stones and walk away.

Like the woman they humiliated, these men, "beginning with the elders," had been somewhat humiliated, not by Jesus, but by their hypocrisy. It's difficult to imagine that did not walk away with some awareness, vague as it may have been, that they, too, were recipients of Divine Mercy: a withholding of judgment, a call to repent.

This alone is enough to show that the handing on of this story is divinely inspired and so is "scriptural."