THE CLEMENCY OF JESUS

In the early church, especially in Syria, a touching story circulated about Jesus and a woman. Some of the scholars whose task it was to copy the four gospel records thought it should be included in those records. But where? It was placed where it is now found, in John 8, for it is in that context that Jesus says, “I judge no one” (verse 15), and the scribes saw that the story illustrated that principle of non-judgment. It should give all of us modern disciples pause to realize that even Jesus was reluctant to sit in judgment against his fellows. I judge no one. It should cause us to think twice before climbing into the judgment seat. It underscores a basic in the teaching of Jesus, “Judge not, that you be not judged.”

So one can understand why a scholar would have selected that particular context to place this story of Jesus and the sinful woman, but we are to realize that it was not an original part of John’s gospel record. If you find it reduced to small type in your Bible, or relegated to a footnote, you will understand why. In fact some scholars saw the story as part of Jesus’ last days when the Pharisees were seeking to destroy him through some trumped up charge, and so they placed it in Lk. 21, where Jesus is teaching in the temple.

But this in no way imposes upon the authenticity of the story. It only shows us how there were many, many stories of what Jesus said and did, and that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had to be selective in what they included. It is possible that they did not know about this particular story, though it continued to live in the oral tradition of the church. John says something of the problem they had in selecting from the immense resources available to them. “There are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn. 21:25).

We can be thankful that this blessed little story was preserved, first by word of mouth and finally made a part of Scripture. We can believe that the Holy Spirit saw to it that this episode on the grace of God was not lost to the church. It not only teaches us of the depths of God’s grace but also of the clemency of Jesus. Clemency means forbearance or leniency or mercy toward an offender or an enemy. Jesus was lenient rather than rigid, forbearing rather than judgmental, clement rather than condemnatory. It has given rise to beautiful names, for boy and girl alike, Clement and Clementine. It was, however, Pope Clement who was not all that clement in that it was he who excommunicated Henry VIII, which set the stage for the rise of the Church of England.

The Pharisees brought the woman to Jesus, not because of any benevolent feelings towards her, but “that they might have some charge to bring against him.” They were hopeful of ensnaring him on the horns of a dilemma, for if he set the woman free he would be ignoring the demands of the law of Moses as set forth in Lev. 20:10. If he ruled that she should be stoned, he would be usurping the Roman law, which did not allow the Jews to exercise the death penalty. It forms a perfect dilemma, a syllogism, which I have dealt with many times in logic class. It goes this way:

If he frees the woman, he will violate Moses’ law and thus come under judgment of the Jewish court.

If he condemns the woman to die, he will violate the Roman law and thus come under judgment of the Roman court.

He must either free the woman or condemn the woman.

Therefore, he must come under judgment, either of the Jewish court or the Roman court.

Dilemmas are tricky and ensnaring and there is hardly a way of escape. We learn in logic class that, if possible, one might “slip through the horns” of the dilemma. In this dilemma the horns are He must either free the woman or condemn the woman. Jesus slipped through the horns, gloriously, by neither freeing the woman or condemning her. He saw another alternative. He turned their logic against themselves by forcing them to face the reality of their own sins: Let him who is without sin throw the first stone. They were now impaled on the horns of their own dilemma. If one of them dared to throw a stone, he would thus claim to be without sin and thus condemned of God; if he did not throw a stone, he had to withdraw his charge against the woman and thus be self-condemned. Rather than to linger with the dilemma that now impaled them, they disappeared from the scene, one by one, beginning with the eldest and wisest.

A unique feature of this story is that it is the only known instance of Jesus ever writing anything. Having caught the woman in the act of adultery, they brought her to Jesus, telling him that Moses commanded that such a one be stoned, and asking, “What do you say about her?” What Moses really said was that “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.” One wonders why the man, and not only the woman, was not arrested and brought to judgment.

There has been interesting speculation on what Jesus wrote in the sand. Some think it was mere doodling, while he was considering the situation. The best guess is that since the Pharisees were putting him in the place of a Roman judge, he played the part, writing down the sentence, as was the case in Roman courts, before it was read publicly. The way he read the sentence may have implied the woman’s guilt, but they found it difficult to execute the sentence: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. Moses had ruled that the first stones should be thrown by those who witnessed the misdeed.

According to the story, Jesus bent to the ground and wrote not once but twice. Some think that the second time he wrote he marked out a sentence against them, exposing their sins by naming them in the sand. In any event, it was at this point that the Pharisees departed.

It may have been with a touch of humor that Jesus conducted court from that point on, and we can imagine that he got some satisfaction out of the way the hypocrites hightailed it. Jesus and the woman were now alone. “Where are they?,” he asked, knowing full well where they were. “Has no one condemned you?,” he said, as if to suggest that there is no way for a court to condemn the accused if there are no accusers. “Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more,” he told her. While intolerant of the sin, he was forbearing toward the sinner.

One can imagine the impact this must have had upon the woman. If she was asked about this experience with the controversial young rabbi, she no doubt would have described him as a most unusual man. It might well have been the only time ever that she was in the presence of a young man alone who wanted her without wanting her body.

The clemency and magnanimity of Jesus are a great lesson for the church today. We are often cast in the role of judge of those who are guilty of such sins. It is rather easy to be self-righteous and judgmental. Jesus shows us how we can disapprove of the sin and yet be magnanimous in our treatment of the sinner.

The clemency of Jesus should cause us to be more lenient in the way we treat the divorced. There is presently a controversy raging in Churches of Christ over the way the divorced are being treated, with some coming down hard, as if there is no hope for the divorced, while others are calling for moderation.

One does not have to alter the story very much to see how it would apply to those preachers and elders who refuse to admit the divorced into the kingdom of God, unless, that is, they satisfy the accusers in their impossible demands (such as separating from their present mate, thus breaking up still another home). “Lord, this woman has been married before, and so has this man, and now they are married to each other and yet they seek membership in the church. We say they must repent, which means to quit ‘living in adultery.’ What do you say?”

It would be in character for Jesus to hand them a stone, and say, “Let the one who was all that righteous when he came into the church cast the first stone.”

The heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus receives sinful humanity, all of sinful humanity that will come to him. This includes the divorced as well as the dispossessed and the discouraged. It is dangerous business for the church to stand in the way. We can always find some law, some Scripture that will condemn, just as the Pharisees could. We are slow to learn that we are more like Christ when we are compassionate and lenient than when we are exacting and demanding.

Someone has observed that Jesus was easy to please but hard to satisfy. That is what comes across in this story. Jesus was pleased to accept the woman as she was, without condemning her. But he was not satisfied with her life. Go and sin no more, he urged. And we never completely satisfy the demand of heaven, weak as we are, but still God in his grace is pleased to accept us as his children.

The church must be like that. Always pleased to be a haven for all sinners, but never satisfied with the spiritual progress of its children.—the Editor