The woman caught in adultery. Remember that story? The central focus of the gospel of the woman caught in adultery has always been the woman. While it is understood that the Pharisees and the Scribes were out to trap Jesus; but why did they use the woman and not the man as a trap. Society then and now always seems to place the woman on the guilty scene. She is to blame for the crime. Take a look! “Teacher, this woman has been caught in an act of adultery”.
Does it take only a woman to commit an adulterous act? Where was the man with whom the woman was caught? Is this not injustice, that two people are caught in an act and only one is brought to stand justice or condemnation? What does this story tells us about other crimes in our society? Adultery in Jesus time was a big time societal crime. And the criminal was punishable by death – stoning.
In our times we have similar societal crimes: child and spousal abuses, abortion, drug dealings, robbery, gossips, fraud, cheating, etc. There are criminals who have been prosecuted, rightly so. Not to be on the blind defense of the criminal, one side of the equation is missing. But have we ever genuinely question the root cause of the crimes of our criminals? Are we doing anything to identify and stop once and for all the source and cause of the crimes? We certainly pay so much attention to the criminal and the crime but loose track of the source. Who is on trial?
There is the story of the man who noticed a floating dead body in the river. He pulled it out. Then saw another, and yet another floating. Tired of pulling out dead bodies, he decided to go up stream to find out the source and cause. What happened next! There were no more dead bodies floating down stream.
Jesus challenged each of the woman's accusers to cast the first stone so long as she or he was sinless, then bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger. When he got up the woman’s accusers were all gone. It is not clear what Jesus wrote. St Jerome suggested that Jesus was writing the hidden sins of the woman’s accusers. We as individuals and as a collective society have accused and condemned some one, a nation or an ethnic group while our hidden sins are being written down by Christ. Shall we go away like the woman’s accusers with our hidden sins, or are we ready to get rid of them.
Making the distinction between the sin and the sinner is a first step.
Who is on trial?
