In the Gospel of John, the teachers of the
law and the Pharisees bring an adulteress to Jesus and try to trap him into committing
a religious faux pas. They give him a choice between rejecting the law of Moses
or contradicting himself and the message of compassion and forgiveness he has
been teaching. Jesus adroitly untangles himself from the situation by inviting
the one who has not sinned to throw the first stone. Exit “old fogies” like me
who know full well they are not sinless and gradually everyone else. Jesus is
left alone with the woman and a dialog ensues:
Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
John 8, 10-11
Generations of teachers of the law and
Pharisees to the present day have tried to mitigate the damage that the defeat
of their Judean predecessors in this encounter with Jesus inflicted on their
way of thinking. They have tried interpreting the “Go and leave your life of
sin.” (often translated as “Go and sin no more.”) as a way of pulling back the IOU. They could
not accept that God’s forgiveness was unconditional, completely free, and with no
strings attached. They, therefore, interpreted the “Go and leave your life of sin.”
as a condition for forgiveness to occur. Or so it seems to me.
I am not a theologian but, since the words
of Jesus are always words of life, could it be that what he really meant was, “Go
now, my unconditional love for you will always be with you to help you break
away from patterns of relating to yourself, to others, and to God that prevent you from living fully and freely.” Could Jesus’ words have been wings to
set her free rather than a leash to bring her back in case she did not live up
to her end of the bargain?
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