Wednesday • 12/7/2022 •
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; Isaiah 6:1–13; 2 Thessalonians 1:1–12; John 7:53–8:11
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Wednesday of the second week of Advent, as we begin a new year (Year 1) of the Daily Office Lectionary.
Relicta sunt duo, miseria et misericorda (“Two remain, misery and mercy”). In six Latin words, the fifth century bishop of Carthage, St. Augustine, offers the most elegant commentary imaginable on today’s gospel passage about the Woman Caught in Adultery.
Despite the fact that this story just may embody Jesus’s ministry better than any other, it is the least well attested of any event of his life. Why? Well, this particular story, as it appears in John’s gospel, interrupts the narrative flow of the book. And it is not written in John’s Greek—in neither his writing style nor his vocabulary. As a result, some modern scholars reject the story’s authenticity altogether. But the story stubbornly and persistently commends itself. The likelihood, I think, is that the story is authentic, but that it was written by someone other than John. It earned a place in Scripture because it pressed itself upon early believers as being true to who Jesus is and as having come from reliable sources. Augustine simply treats it as an established part of Jesus’s ministry. I suggest we do the same.
There is one manuscript family that places the story here, where the Daily Office also places it: right after Luke tells us that during Holy Week, Jesus was spending his nights on the Mount of Olives and then teaching at the temple during the day (Luke 21:37–38). As Jesus returns from the Mount of Olives on one of these mornings to resume his teaching ministry in the temple, he is intercepted by a posse of righteous people. In their custody is a woman who has been caught “dead to rights” in the act of adultery. They want to know whether Jesus is going to comply with Jewish law that demands condemnation and execution; or whether instead, he is going to be true to his own teachings about love, compassion, and forgiveness.
Jesus does not straightforwardly confront these enforcers with their hypocrisy. Contrary to the Law of Moses, they’ve only brought one of the guilty parties—the woman. It’s curious, isn’t it? He bends down and starts writing in the sand. What’s he doing? Gathering his thoughts? What’s he writing? Nobody knows. Maybe he’s writing out the Scripture, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10). Or maybe he’s just writing something like: “Adultery is horrible. But, hey, where’s the guy?!”
Members of this coterie of morality-sheriffs persist in their demands, and after a while Jesus stands up and simply says: “The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone” (John 8:7 The Message). He bends down again … and starts writing again. In The Gospel Road, the 1973 movie about Jesus’s life, Johnny Cash offers a wonderful suggestion: “Maybe he’s writing things like, ‘Liar’ … ‘Hypocrite’ … ‘Thief’ … ‘Rapist’ … ‘Murderer.’” Regardless, it’s enough to make the tattletales slink away, each of them, one by one. One of the reasons for thinking this story is true rather than fabricated is its understatement: somebody who is making up a fictitious Jesus might want to make him sound like their idea of the “real Jesus” by having him rail at the hypocrites. At the same time, the story’s pastoral sensibility sounds just like the Jesus we do know from the canonical gospels: Jesus, the discerner of hearts, gives each sinner—even these guys!—room to reflect, and space to repent.
The next words in the text are: “…and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him” (John 8:9). What a dramatic moment. And Augustine gets it just right: All that is left is the sinner’s need for mercy, and Mercy’s readiness to give it. Jesus asks the woman where her complainants are, and whether there is anyone left to accuse her. Her answer is simply, “Nobody, sir.” Then again, it’s not that simple. The word she uses for “sir” is kurie, which also means “Lord.”
Jesus’s answer also appears simple, but on reflection is not: “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again” (John 8:11). Jesus came neither to condemn sin nor to dismiss it—he came to absorb it and kill it. He has to tell some people to follow him so they can understand things better. However, our Lord trusts this one—delivered from the miseria of sin and condemnation—to work out how misericorda (Mercy) kills sin. So he can say to her very simply, “Go your way.”
Living in that same misericorda, — living in the One who is Mercy — may you be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+