{"id":7426,"date":"2024-10-01T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T00:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=7426"},"modified":"2024-10-01T06:18:21","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T22:18:21","slug":"330-the-light-unmasks-false-identities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=7426","title":{"rendered":"332. The Light Unmasks False Identities"},"content":{"rendered":"

The woman caught in adultery<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

2\u00a0<\/sup>Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them.\u00a03\u00a0<\/sup>The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and, making her stand before all of them,\u00a04\u00a0<\/sup>they said to him, \u201cTeacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.\u00a05\u00a0<\/sup>Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?\u201d\u00a06\u00a0<\/sup>They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.\u00a07\u00a0<\/sup>When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, \u201cLet anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.\u201d\u00a08\u00a0<\/sup>And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.\u00a09\u00a0<\/sup>When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.\u00a010\u00a0<\/sup>Jesus straightened up and said to her, \u201cWoman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?\u201d\u00a011\u00a0<\/sup>She said, \u201cNo one, sir.\u201d And Jesus said, \u201cNeither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.\u201d<\/strong><\/span> [John 8:2-11<\/span>, NRSV<\/em>]<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cEarly in the morning<\/em>\u201d Jesus came again to the temple and the people sat down to listen to his teaching (John 8:1). When along came towards Jesus \u201cthe scribes and the Pharisees\u201d who must have been accompanied by a noisy and excited mob, they did so not to listen to him teach, but to give him trouble. They brought a severely humiliated woman whom they claimed to have caught \u201cin the very act of committing adultery<\/em>\u201d and placed her in the midst of men in that \u201cearly morning\u201d. John the artistic genius quietly alerts us to beware of the agenda-driven peeping-toms masquerading as holy religious men. Are there many of these \u201crighteous\u201d pretenders in our church today, busy finger-pointing while hiding their own sins?<\/span><\/p>\n

Then of course, the charge against the woman is adultery. But, isn\u2019t John already hinting at a possible foul play here? What adultery? Where is the man?<\/em> So John\u2019s Gospel deftly reveals that this thing called \u201cmale prejudice\u201d as an accepted norm was very real (and perhaps still is?). In any case, the charge and the way it was presented demonstrated an injustice against the woman that was as gross as it was blatant, coming as it did from religious leaders!<\/em> <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In the narrative, the drama of course was staged by this gang of religious elites in function of a sinister plot to trap Jesus. Armed with seemingly \u201cwater-tight\u201d evidence of a \u201cwoman caught in the very act of committing adultery\u201d, they confronted Jesus with a trap question: \u201cNow in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?\u201d Do you hear the two \u201cnow\u201d<\/em> and \u201cnow\u201d?<\/em>\u00a0 Imagine how cock-sure they were. But isn\u2019t that funny! Since Moses had already passed the law on what to do, why did they have to ask Jesus for an opinion? Their question was not so innocent or genuine after all.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a trap: if he allowed the stoning, he would be dragged before the occupying Roman authorities who alone had the power to issue death sentences; but if he disallowed stoning, they would charge him before the Sanhedrin for teaching against the Mosaic Law. Either way, Jesus would lose. He had had it, so they thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jesus saw the trap set by sinful religious leaders. John\u2019s Gospel, after all, offers us a revelatory text in which Jesus is the Light of the World who exposes human darkness.<\/span><\/p>\n