Wednesday,
March 8, 2023
Jesus returned to the Mount of
Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and
taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of
religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act
of adultery. They put her in front of
the crowd. “Teacher,” they
said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The
law of Moses says to stone her. What do
you say?” They were trying to
trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped
down and wrote in the dust with his finger.
They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All
right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then
he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they
slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left
in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus
stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” John 8:1-11
The Pharisees, judgmental, aristocratic, and obnoxious, a blight on any
religious professional’s public image, are always portrayed as the bad guys. They are the loathsome and outraged townsfolk
of any Grade-B Western movie, ready to hang the innocent. The focus on this account is usually the lack
of compassion the mob had for the woman, coupled with the forgiveness of
Jesus. Rightly so! Less in focus is the complexity of the
Pharisees’ committee work…looking for a way to trap Jesus into taking
sides. He didn’t, you know.
And, depending on which side you might favor:
A. She was a sinner, and she was about to
get what she deserved
B. Jesus always forgives…don’t be
a hater
C. What’s the big deal? Nobody’s perfect.
Well, there you go, taking sides.
There’s plenty of thought (from a bystander’s perspective) to go around. One I hadn’t considered before is the makeup
of a lynch mob. The mob may appear
to be an evil and colossal meteor hurtling towards crowd justice, rolling over
whatever has the misfortune to be in its’ pathway. But groups of people, no matter how large, or
in charge, are not monolithic in purpose or thought. The Pharisees were no exception. Among them dwelt as many different motives driving
their actions, as there were individuals.
Certainly (because Scripture says it plainly) there were those self-righteous
leaders, hell-bent on destroying Jesus’ work, or the woman they despised, acting
from an evil motive of preserving their power.
Some of them had little power, and were hoping to accrue some access to
the big show…gaining a stake in the power structure, by going
along with the majority. Undoubtedly
there were some who had their doubts…curious, but not necessarily committed to a
lynching. And there were those who were
secretly rooting for the underdog; Nicodemus may have been among that lot. And there were some, I’m certain, who were
just like some of us…confused, pushed by the crowd, just trying to not be
different.
For You Today
There are about 2,500 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper explore
some of these: Go, and Sin No More or Catch and Release or The
Woman Who Sinned
Title Image: via Pixabay.com Images without citation are in public
domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
