LET HIM WHO IS WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE

 

                                                                                             REFLECTIONS ON THE GOSPEL ( John 8:1-11)

                                                                                              WHO MAY CAST THE STONE?

It is so fitting that we should hear this moving Gospel as Lent is about to give way to the mysteries of Jesus’ Passion.

It sets up a very basic question. Is sin something primarily to be punished? Or is it, on the contrary, a plight from which the sinner needs to be converted and set free?

The scribes and Pharisees are really just using the woman to set a trap for Jesus. If he refuses to see her punished, he is defying the Mosaic Law. If he judges that she be put to death, he will be usurping the prerogative of the Roman occupying power.

What Jesus wrote on the ground we do not know. But doing so put him right down there looking up at the woman from below, rather than judging her from on high. When eventually he speaks, it is simply to point out that the only person who could have a right to condemn another is one who has never sinned.

This way the punitive legal prescription simply falls away. If the eldest leaves first, that is because he has had a longer space of life in which to accumulate sin.

Jesus does not deny sin or condone it. But he has a better way of dealing with it than condemnation and punishment. His whole concern is to save the woman and set her on a path to a new life:’Go and sin no more’.

As we move from Lent into Passiontide, the scene invites us to make the woman’s experience of liberation our own.

Brendan Byrne, SJ

 

Cast the First Stone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k0RzhVJSxE

 

 

                 I've Got No Stone to Throw