As is his custom, Jesus has spent the night alone with his beloved Father on the Mount of Olives.\u00a0 He starts the new day filled with the Spirit of God who sends him \u201cto proclaim liberty to captives \u2026 and to let the oppressed go free.\u201d<\/b>\u00a0 Soon he sees himself surrounded by a crowd that comes to the temple court to listen to him.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, a\u00a0 group of scribes and Pharisees intrudes, bringing \u201ca woman caught in adultery.\u201d<\/b>\u00a0 They are not concerned about the woman\u2019s terrible fate.\u00a0 They do not interrogate her about anything.\u00a0 She is already condemned.\u00a0 The accusers make it very clear: \u201cNow in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.\u00a0 So what do you say?\u201d<\/p>\n
It is a dramatic situation: the Pharisees are tense, the woman anguished, the people anxiously waiting.\u00a0 Surprisingly, Jesus keeps silent.\u00a0 He has before him a woman who is humiliated and condemned by everybody.\u00a0\u00a0 She will soon be executed.\u00a0 Is this God\u2019s last word about this daughter of his?<\/b><\/p>\n
Jesus, who is seated, bends down and begins to scribble a few lines on the ground.\u00a0 He is surely looking for light.\u00a0 The accusers ask him to answer in the name of the Law.\u00a0 He will answer them from his experience of God\u2019s mercy:<\/b> that woman and her accusers, all of them are in need of God\u2019s forgiveness.<\/p>\n
The accusers are only thinking of the woman\u2019s sin and of the Law\u2019s condemnation.\u00a0 Jesus will change the perspective.\u00a0 He will put the accusers before their own sin.<\/b>\u00a0 Before God, all have to recognize that they are sinners.\u00a0 Everyone needs forgiveness.<\/p>\n
Since they keep insisting all the more, Jesus straightens up and says to them: \u201cLet the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.\u201d <\/b>\u00a0Who are you to condemn this woman to death, forgetting your own sins and your need for God\u2019s forgiveness and mercy?<\/p>\n
The accusers \u201cwent away one by one.\u201d\u00a0 Jesus points towards a life of togetherness in which the death penalty cannot be the last word about a human being.\u00a0 He will solemnly say later: \u201cI did not come to condemn the world but to save the world.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
Jesus\u2019 dialogue with the woman sheds new light on his action.\u00a0 The accusers have left, but the woman has not moved.\u00a0 It seems she needs to hear a final world from Jesus.\u00a0 She does not feel freed yet.<\/b>\u00a0 Jesus says to her: \u201cNeither do I condemn you.\u00a0 Go, and from now on do not sin any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
He offers her forgiveness, and he invites her at the same time not to sin any more.\u00a0 God\u2019s forgiveness does not annul responsibility, but rather it demands repentance.\u00a0 Jesus knows that God takes \u201cno pleasure in the death of the wicked man, but rather in the wicked man\u2019s conversion, that he may live.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 Antonio Pagola<\/b><\/p>\n
March 17, 2013
\n5 Lent (C)
\nJohn 8:1-11<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"