Bishop Anthony B. Taylor delivered this homily March 17.
The Scribes and Pharisees were good people. In fact, objectively speaking, they were the most moral and devout people of Jesus’ time. Jesus himself was a Pharisee. We forget this because Jesus eventually runs afoul of the religious leaders and the Gospels focus on his conflicts with them.
The Pharisees did have a few blind spots and naturally talked a better line than they lived; the same is true for us, it’s just the human condition. But as a group they sincerely tried to live according to the law that God had given them through Moses, one provision of which called for the execution of blasphemers, murderers and adulterers.
In the Gospels Jesus rejects the application of the death penalty for these crimes and thereby acquires the reputation of being an anarchist and lawbreaker. One day he himself will be executed for blasphemy between two murderers. In today’s Gospel he rescues a woman about to be executed for adultery. Elsewhere Jesus insists that he has not come to abolish the law but rather to unlock its inner meaning and thus change the way it was applied. The law against adultery was not abolished, but Jesus opens our eyes to the fact that since we’re all sinners, there is no one alive sufficiently faultless to carry out the death sentence prescribed in the law.
No one is faultless except him, and as we learn later, the Blessed Mother, who intercedes for sinners. And Jesus, being faultless, grants the adulterous woman clemency. He came to save sinners, not to condemn us, and so he sends her on her way with the warning not to sin anymore.
When Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground, what was he doing? He was writing a new law, the law of forgiveness and compassion. When he says, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,” he’s saying that we sinners have to recuse ourselves from judging any case involving the sin of another.
He doesn’t say, “Let the one among you who is without this sin,” the sin of adultery, but rather any sin. Nor does he say, “Let the one among you who is without grave sin,” because again he means any sin, including even sins that are only in our heart. Anyone who even looks lustfully at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
You and I are — for the most part — good people, but like the Pharisees, we do talk a better line than we live. But we do sincerely try to live according to the teachings of Jesus except, sad to say, his teaching that we should not judge others.
If Jesus came to save sinners, who are we to condemn them? And I’m not just talking about the death penalty, about which Jesus’ teaching is unmistakable. People don’t have to commit any great crime to merit our condemnation. We judge peoples’ motives without having all the facts. We gossip — cast verbal stones — against people whose foibles and sins are no worse than our own, trying to make ourselves look good at their expense.
The sins of those Scribes and Pharisees may have been less spectacular than that of the adulteress, but that doesn’t give them the right to condemn her. And anyway, all that Jesus is interested in is forgiveness, setting her free from punishment for that sin and setting the others free from their condemning attitude.
Jesus died to redeem everyone — including us — set us free from our sins and our sinful attitudes, but that forgiveness — so freely offered — must be accepted in a spirit of repentance.
