Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent
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March 30, 2020In today’s Gospel, they bring a woman caught in adultery to Jesus and set it up to try to trick or trap Jesus. They thought they had the perfect way, because either way He answered would be wrong. If He answered that she should be stoned for her adultery, then He was not living up to the compassion He preached, He was being a hypocrite. If He said not to stone her, then He was going against the laws of Moses and the laws that were set down for fornication in the Old Testament.
The last laugh in a sense in on them, Jesus says both. He says, yes go ahead stone her as the law commands, He ensures the seriousness of the sin, yet He says only those who have kept the law perfectly, to do the stoning. He was also showing that all the laws are important to keep and observe.
As a Side note, according to the custom, the one to cast the first stone was supposed to be a witness of the crime. So, who saw the crime of adultery? Maybe some people, but where is the Man?! Adultery takes two people.
When he challenged them this way, He was saying that they were right in upholding the law, but the law must be upheld in all purity and righteousness. The law must be upheld in perfection, by those living the law to the fullest, living the law to perfection. If the law is upheld by one not living if fully, then it is being judged unfairly, the one judging is therefore the hypocrite. Jesus is perfection, Jesus is the Law in a person, the Law become Flesh.
By Him pointing this out, they had no grounds to go any further, they had no argument as they were all guilty of some sins, and this is possibly what Jesus wrote in the ground, the sins they were guilty of. As He shows them their sinfulness in the midst of them bringing this woman to Him, He welcomes her without condemnation.
Jesus says I do not condemn you. He is showing that He is Her Savior, not to condemn, but to save.
He accepts us and bestows on us His Love and Compassion and wants to bring us home with Him for all eternity. The Pharisees and Scribes did not move towards Him, they moved away from Him, first by failing to love and trying to trap Him, then when their sins were made aware to them, they left, instead of looking to Him for that love and acceptance and compassion.
As they rejected His love, she sought it. She gained a relationship with Jesus that they did not. When we come to Him, He is there for us, always! He just wants us to come to Him. We must always seek His love and compassion, moving always towards Him in our sinfulness, as she did in her sinfulness, and unlike the scribes and Pharisees, bring others to Jesus for the same relationship.
