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How grateful I am for this story from the Gospel of John! You are probably aware that in the best modern versions of the New Testament it is only a footnote, with the explanation that most ancient manuscripts do not include it. But whether they include it or not, I need that account - and so do you. For this passage, perhaps more than any other in the Scriptures, points to a phenomenon present in all of us - some failure, an area of rebellion, a place in life where we have blown it, where, in spite of what we know to be right and good, we choose the wrong and the sordid.

For the woman in John's gospel, adultery was her sin, and she was caught in the very act itself. There was no question about her guilt.

Your sin and mine will probably be entirely different. Maybe it's a biting tongue, the tendency in our conversations to bring injury to others. Perhaps it's an uncontrolled temper that dumps venom on others. Maybe it is an ego that needs constantly to be stroked, a level of self--centeredness that makes us insensitive to others and ready to use them for our own ends. Whatever the nature of our sin, each of us has some area in life where we have yielded to base motives. Knowing full--well what is right and where the high road leads, we have chosen instead to take the low. And whether we have been publicly exposed and our sins made known to others, like the woman in the story, it is known to God and to us. Before God and in our own eyes we stand condemned.

And if that were the last word, if that were the final chapter in life, our condition would be hopeless indeed. Life would be futile, and the only possible reaction would be despair. But the good news that comes in the story of the woman dragged by her accusers to Jesus, related there more profoundly, I think, than any other place in the Bible, is that for those who have made a mess of life there is another word, another chapter. For there is Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, confronting the adulterous woman, not with the condemnation she deserved, but with something totally unexpected - acceptance, pardon, forgiveness. And by that act Jesus reveals for all time two realities: God's response to our human failures, and what must be the response of the people of God to the failures and betrayals of others.

You see, in the end there are only two ways to respond to human wrongdoing. One way is condemnation, the way of judgment. It is the sentence, "Guilty! You must be punished!" Fundamentally, that is humankind's way, society's way - a way that most of us instinctively believe to be absolutely essential for human survival - at least when it involves the sins of others. Not only has society the right but also the obligation to protect itself. The only way we humans can live together in any meaningful sense is to have laws that we agree mutually to uphold, laws that define how far any person can go in the exercise of personal freedom. Our very existence in society demands that there be limits beyond which no person is permitted to go without being restrained. Repeated violations of those limits demand punishment.

All of us understand that, and we acknowledge such judgment to be imperative. It is the very cornerstone of civilization. From the moment an infant reaches for some forbidden object, is reprimanded, reaches again, and once more is reprimanded, a battle begins - one which continues throughout life. It is self--will against the world. And it is absolutely essential that no individual be allowed to win that battle. People cannot be allowed in the pursuit of their own desires to trample on others. Society has an obligation, when respect for others is not voluntary, to establish laws that protect the rights, property, and person of others. Such laws are an absolute necessity. Few would deny that for human beings to live together in any meaningful sense there must be laws.

And what of higher laws - moral principles and standards that are written into the fabric of the universe, commonly called God's laws? In spite of a moral relativism that abounds today, most people would acknowledge the existence of some moral principles that are true for all people everywhere. The Ten Commandments, for example: "Thou shalt not make any graven images; thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not covet ..." and so forth. Or the law of love: "You shall love the Lord your God ... and your neighbor as yourself." The law of giving: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." And the law of self--denial: "If anyone would save his life he must lose it...." Or the principle that the apostle Paul affirmed in the words, "Behold, your sins will find you out; whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap." Would any of us deny the reality of immutable moral imperatives that we violate only at our loss?

But while the majority of people today affirm their belief in timeless and changeless realities that we call divine laws, all of us know that those very laws get violated constantly in daily living, and seemingly at no cost to the violator. It is one of the troublesome facts of life, isn't it? All across society are people who pursue their own selfish ends, and nothing disastrous seems to happen to them. In fact, a strong case can be built to support the contention that it is the wicked, not the righteous, who prosper. All of us know persons who do unethical things, and not only get away with it, but also succeed, while those who seek to live by higher and nobler principles get the shaft.

The obvious conclusion is this: God needs our help! If people are to recognize the existence of a moral order, and if divine laws are to be upheld, then we humans have to establish policies that guarantee the punishment of violators. If God doesn't make it plain that divine laws must not be broken, then we humans must do it. It is imperative that we demonstrate that sin is always punished.

And so through the centuries, religious people have attempted to do just that. Among the Hebrews it became part of the law that a person who violated the commandment against adultery should be put to death. The method of death was not prescribed, except for a woman who was already betrothed: she and the man with whom she had the affair were to be taken outside the city gates and stoned. That was the law that came into focus when the Pharisees brought the woman who had been caught in adultery to Jesus with the question, "Should she be stoned?" It was an attempt to discredit Jesus by destroying his reputation of compassion which made him popular among the common people. The Pharisees knew what Jewish law demanded and so did Jesus. If he said, "Stone her," his compassion would be called into question. If he said, "No, extend her mercy, " he would put himself in opposition to biblical law, and so he could himself be condemned as a lawbreaker. For the Pharisees, at least, it was clear that human laws were necessary to protect God's laws.

Centuries later, still trying to understand why the unrighteous so often seem to prosper, and struggling for the very survival of the Church in a world where immortality was rampant and adultery was common practice, church leaders began to worry about that story in the Gospel of John which described Jesus' compassion for a woman caught in the act of adultery. Believing that its inclusion in the Gospel might seem to give license to adultery among Christians, they decided to eliminate the account altogether. Nothing really would be lost, they reasoned; in fact, the benefit would be that no longer could anyone find evidence within the Scripture itself that Jesus might have been soft on adultery.

Well, you ask, is that really what happened? Isn't that sheer speculation? Of course it is! But it is the speculation of so venerated a person as Saint Augustine, writing in the fourth century A.D., attempting to explain how a story known to the Church in the early second century, and quoted in a third century book where it was used as a warning against bishops becoming too strict, was later omitted from many New Testament manuscripts.

What is not speculation is that religious people through the centuries have somehow felt compelled to protect God's laws, in spite of repeated warnings that protecting them is not our task - a truth reiterated both in the Old Testament and in the New. Judgment is a divine, not a human, prerogative. "Judgment is mine. I will repay, says the Lord," is everywhere the biblical exhortation, one which Jesus affirmed in the words: "Judge not, that you be not judged."

Isn't it interesting how so many of us continue to worry about why the unrighteous prosper and to feel obligated to make it tough on sinners, when our Lord himself never felt such a compulsion? Of one thing he seemed never to be in doubt, namely, that the judgment of God is sure. Jesus had no illusions about the costliness of sin. He understood that there is always a price that must be paid for wrongdoing. Violation of God's laws inevitably involves suffering. To say that sin doesn't matter is like saying that cancer doesn't matter. Maybe on the surface everything seems normal, and a person with cancer may not only look but also feel healthy, yet underneath, inside, there are cells running wild and multiplying, and unless something happens to halt their spreading, it is only a matter of time before death will result. Jesus knew that sin is like that.

And so he was not worried about whether wrongdoing would be punished. The ultimate destruction of evil is sure. Our Lord knew that. No, what concerned him was always how people could be rescued from evil. How could they be saved not so much from its consequences but from its power? How could they be changed? How could healing come to the sinner? You see, the only hope that any of us who have ever chosen the low road and yielded to sin have is that we be forgiven and given another chance. So long as the word that comes to us is condemnation, we are in bondage. Our sentence is to continue in weakness and despair. But if there is one who responds to us in a different way, one who has every right to condemn, but who says instead, "I believe in you; I know you have made a mess of things, but your life isn't finished yet; I'll give you another chance" - if there is one who says that, then life can become new. Indeed, it is the only chance we have for new life - the only thing that has the power to change us. Forgiveness!

And wasn't that precisely what Jesus did for the woman in the long ago? "Neither do I condemn you," he said. "Go, and sin no more." Here, you see, is the second way of responding to human wrongdoing. God's way! Not condemnation, but forgiveness! Do you remember how the poet put it?

How I wish that there was some wonderful place

Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches

And all our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door,

And never put on again.


Well, there is such a place! And God unfailingly offers it to all who have made a shambles of life - a new chance. Indeed, it is offered to each of us this very day as we come to receive Holy Communion. A chance to be renewed! And because we are followers of Jesus Christ, it is what we must offer one another. It's God's way. Forgiveness!