Do things ever change? In St John's Gospel 8:1-11, the scribes and Pharisees bring along a woman to Jesus who was "caught" committing adultery. They were the leading people in society, the ones who shape the fashion of the day. And according to their book there was only one thing for this woman and that was death by stoning.
They had their minds made up, it was a closed case. But they wanted to see what Jesus would say. They were putting him to the test, trying to catch him out, attempting to get him to say or do something embarrassing for him. It's clear they were not interested in the individual woman, nor were they interested in any sort of discussion on the issue. But it all went sour for them, as he showed them up for what they were. It is worth noting how a woman is used as a catalyst to highlight some of the humbug of powerful and important men. Jesus will have none of it. He is not interested in stoning the woman; he is not interested in playing their mock games. Instead he turns their tricks around on themselves and suggests that those who are sinless throw the first stone. At least they have the good grace to read the situation and, to a man, they slink off and leave the women to the mercy and compassion of Jesus, who simply tells her to sin no more and get back to living. It certainly is a lovely account, contrasting the mercy of Jesus with the harshness and hypocrisy of the men who consider themselves the upholders of the law. Two thousand years later, with all our wisdom and sophistication, we are still "stoning" women and we are still being fooled by the "important men" who make it their business to shape and control our lives. And it is most difficult to break out of that terrible cycle. It is relatively easy to look back at history and see the evils and wrongs that were perpetrated. We scratch our heads and wonder how Hitler and Stalin got away with what they did. It is far more difficult to read the signs of our own times and to be able to discern right from wrong. It's much easier to go with the flow, to allow ourselves to be massaged and manipulated by those who control and shape society. It's comfortable to be of the same mind-set as the majority and the influential. If Christianity is to have any meaning for us it has to be about challenging us to discover the will of God, to make informed decisions that will help us be God-like in our everyday lives. That is not an easy road to take. But the compassion and mercy that Jesus shows the woman taken in adultery can be a shining light to us on how we should treat our fellow sisters and brothers.
Living the Christian message is all about how we behave towards our fellow human beings. It comes down to treating them with dignity and respect, ever conscious that we are all made in the image and likeness of God. If the gentlemen who were attempting to trick Jesus had at any stage treated the adulterous woman as a child of God, they would not have thought of stoning her, never mind using her as a vehicle to embarrass Jesus. The long list of sins and transgressions with which we concern ourselves pale into insignificance when it comes to mistreating our fellow human beings. The human being reigns supreme and any wrong-doing against another person, whether in the name of profit, principle, nationalism, ageism, sexism or whatever, is a terrible sin. Jesus, in forgiving the woman who commits adultery, is surely a beacon for us all. The Gospel story is also a warning to us not to allow ourselves to be seduced by the clever talk of the mighty and great. It is consoling to see how the wise words of Jesus, words that offer such hope to a poor hapless woman, demolish all the sophistication and erudition of the scribes and Pharisees. The world we inhabit is never short of the same scribes and Pharisees.