On the third Sunday of Lent, our attention was called to the necessity of repentance. “Unless you repent”, says the Lord, “you will perish.” On the fourth Sunday, we were shown that repentance is possible because God is merciful and forgiving. This Sunday, we hear the words of the Lord “Go and sin no more.” Only those who have come to know the emptiness of sin can recognize in these words a command to be free.
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Guide to the Reading
1. John 8:1-11 is best studied by itself; afterwards, after one has isolated the themes that make up the story, one can relate these to the themes found in 7:1-8:59.
2. The story can be outlined as follows:
- Introduction: Jesus in the Temple area (vv. 1-2)
- Part I
- The Pharisees use a woman caught in adultery to test Jesus (vv. 3-6)
- Jesus’ response (vv. 7-8)
- Conclusion of the first part: the crowds disperse (v.9)
- Part II
- Jesus and the adulteress (vv. 10)
- Conclusion of the second part: Go and sin no more (v. 11)
3. Note the following:
(a) For the sentence of death to a woman caught in adultery: Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22.23-24. In Deuteronomy 17:7, the first stones were to be thrown by witnesses.
(b) What did Jesus write on the earth? It has been suggested that 8:6 is an allussion to Jeremiah 17:13.
A Review of the Readings
The Feast of the Tabernacles which has become the “literary” setting of the episode of the woman caught in adultery recalls the years in the desert where the Israelites lived in close association with Yahweh who has freed them from the slavery of Egypt and who takes care of them providing them with water from the Rock and manna from heaven. The first reading from Isaiah points us to a new exodus that God will realize for the sake of those who have been exiled in Babylon. The first exodus will be surpassed in this new exodus for even the desert itself will be brimming with life. The responsorial psalm celebrates the memory of the return of the exiles.
The woman caught in adultery whom the Pharisees use to entrap Jesus is freed by the Lord from a Law that malice has robbed of its true essence. Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees and their lynching mob by calling attention to their sins. The woman though sinful is not condemned by Jesus. Rather, he gives her a new lease on life by sending her off with the command “Go and sin no more.”
To know Jesus and the power of His new life — this is to Paul what every Christian should desire. In the second reading taken from the letter to the Philippians, we find a description of the Christian’s life of commitment to the Lord: it is a life defined by the hope of one day attaining the prize of one’s upward calling in Christ.
Suggestions for the Lesson
Jesus’ command to the woman caught in adultery — “Go and sin no more” — can be taken as a principle for the Christian life that is characterized by on-going conversion. This command taken with Paul’s words in Philippians 3:8-14 provide insights for an understanding of our baptismal commitment as a dynamic movement towards the fulfillment of what the apostle calls “our upward calling in Christ.” My life as a Christian should become my response to God’s call — personally addressed to me — in Christ. Within this context of a life-long response to the divine call, Paul’s words can also become my motto:
forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead,
I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus
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