for March 30
Monday in the Fifth Week of Lent

In grad school, I had a scripture professor who wouldn’t let his students take notes in his class unless we wrote directly on the text that we were studying. So the fourth gospel in my tattered student bible is covered with my tiniest handwriting, except for the passage that we read today. Above John 8:1-11 I wrote only two words: later insertion.

That’s because the story of the woman caught in adultery doesn’t appear in many ancient manuscripts of the fourth gospel. Some scholars argue that this nonetheless represents an ‘authentic incident’ in Jesus’ ministry. Others regard it as a sort of hiccup in the section of the fourth gospel which contains accounts of the growing conflict between Jesus and religious leaders of his day, conflict arising from the miraculous signs that drew people to Jesus.

You can guess what my professor thought.

I’m sometimes tempted to skip over this passage too, but for different reasons. Surely this poor woman wasn’t committing adultery alone! Where is the guy in this story? And why aren’t the scribes and Pharisees using both of them as pawns in their efforts to trap Jesus into contradicting Moses?

Yet here this gospel is. Last year, in the C cycle of readings, we heard it proclaimed on the Fifth Sunday in Lent. It seems as if this story of Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees and the woman caught in adultery somehow demands our attention, beyond simple titillation. There’s something here we just can’t omit.

It’s not that this story follows in the pattern of the last three Sundays, which have all been drawn from the fourth gospel: a Samaritan woman at a well (Jn 4:1-41), a man born blind who receives his sight (Jn 9:1-41) and the raising of Lazarus (Jn 11:1-44). All three of these stories are longer, more complex dramas and all three climax in an encounter in which Jesus reveals himself (“I who speak to you am he;” “I am a the resurrection and the life”) and elicits a firm profession of belief.

Not so much in this gospel.

First of all, Jesus says very little, and what he wrote on the ground is unrecorded. To the scribes and Pharisees who are fishing for a reason to condemn him, Jesus says only ‘Let the one who is without sin among you throw the first stone at her.’ This is not self-revelation; it’s a challenge to self-examination. ‘They went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest,’ not because they recognized who Jesus is, but because they recognized who they themselves were.

With his antagonists offstage, Jesus turns to the unnamed woman, but doesn’t really say who he is. Instead, Jesus begins by showing mercy. He does not condemn her. Though he recognizes her sin, he requires no profession of faith or even repentance before sending the woman on her way.

The Samaritan woman, the man born blind, and Lazarus’s sisters Martha and Mary exemplify a central dynamic of the fourth gospel. In each, the protagonists recognize and respond to Jesus as the revelation of God. These stories are told so that we might do the same: recognize and believe in Jesus. The woman caught in adultery (and in the scribes and Pharisees’ in conflict with Jesus) seems to be a slight variation on this pattern, drawing our attention to a crucial point.

Which is perhaps why this gospel persists in the cycle of readings even as scholars argue about it. In her brief encounter with Jesus, this woman gives no sign of recognizing who he is; she makes no profession of faith. And yet, she experiences the unfathomable depths of God’s mercy.

God’s mercy is without price, without prerequisite, without limit. The gospel today reminds us that we too–whether our sins are like the scribes and Pharisees or like the woman they bring before Jesus–we too have received just such mercy.

And the story is told to invite us to do the same. Can we show a similar mercy, extending it even to people who are getting on our nerves in close quarters, people we disagree with, people who do not live as we think they should?

At the climax of today’s story of an unnamed woman’s unexpected encounter with Jesus is the mercy of God. That’s a not a later insertion; it’s where our relationship with God begins. And reflecting God’s mercy is not to be omitted from an authentic life of faith.
–BJ Brown

Today’s reading can be found at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.