The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’
John 8:3-5 NIVUK
‘You have the right to remain silent. Anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.’
As an interpreter, I’ve heard these words (and interpreted them, I might add) many times.
And yet, I still remember the amusing scene in Shrek the Third when Shrek and Donkey are imprisoned, Donkey is banging on and on about how he hasn’t had his rights read to him, and Shrek responds, ‘Donkey! You have the right to be silent. What you lack is the capacity.’
You would be astonished at the number of people who ‘lack the capacity’: who are instructed by their lawyer to remain silent, but who incriminate themselves within minutes.
But there are sometimes when whatever you say will make no difference at all.
This woman is in such a situation.
She has been caught, quite literally, with her pants down.
Commentators tell us that the burden of proof for adultery in those days was very high. And quite rightly too. It was a capital offence. You could suffer a lot more than being gossiped about on websites or social media or in low rent celebrity magazines. No, you could be killed. The law was absolutely clear on that:
‘ “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife – with the wife of his neighbour – both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.
Leviticus 20:10 NIVUK
Commentators tell us that gossip, hearsay and innuendo were not enough. Adulterers had to be, not to put too fine a point on it, caught in the act.
Moreover, it had to be witnessed by at least two people:
On the testimony of two or three witnesses a person is to be put to death, but no-one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. The hands of the witnesses must be the first in putting that person to death, and then the hands of all the people. You must purge the evil from among you.
Deuteronomy 17:6-7
One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offence they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.
Deuteronomy 19:15
What’s more, the punishment for bearing false witnesses – what we would today call perjury – was very tough. It wasn’t a few days in a cell or a financial penalty. No, a false witness had to bear the exact same punishment that they had wished on the person they had falsely accused (Deuteronomy 19:16-21).
As an aside, what difference do you think it would make to our legal system if that rule was enacted?
So we have a situation where a capital crime is being alleged, the burden of evidence is high, there was a requirement for two witnesses at least and the penalty for perjury was steep.
What conclusion can we reach?
This woman is guilty. Absolutely guilty.
If this goes to trial - and as she is dragged from her bed of adultery (which the Greek implies she may have been), that is what she will imagine will happen – she is facing certain death.
And yet she is silent.
Silent, in this case, I believe, because there is no argument to be made.
Silent, because nothing she could say or do could change the situation.
Silent, because all is lost.
Silence, in the Bible, is a reaction that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways.
It us, of course, a reaction of awe and wonder (Psalm 46:10).
But there is a very real way in which silence is our response when there is nothing else to say – when we realise that the noise of any arguments we could come up with would be ineffective. It’s the reaction of someone who realises that they are very much inferior and God is very much superior.
Silence is a white flag waved by a defeated combatant.
Silence is surrender:
‘Pay attention, Job, and listen to me; be silent, and I will speak.
Job 33:31 NIVUK
Tremble and do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.
Psalms 4:4
The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.
Habakkuk 2:20
In the case of this stirring passage, this woman is silent because she is utterly surrendered to her fate. She has no arguments because she knows the evidence is overwhelming; she knows she is guilty.
And yes, I know that in her day women, like children, were mostly ‘seen and not heard’.
However, if you were being accused of a capital offence and you were being dragged around like this for a trial, but were completely innocent, would you not cry out?
This woman, although absolutely in the wrong, has something very important to teach us.
You see, we live in a culture where we cannot be wrong, for fear that we will be seen as weak and vulnerable or will be sued. We have created an atmosphere where people feel the need to be dishonest and not admit to wrongdoing because they are afraid of the consequences.
Christianity stands in stark contrast with that culture. The Bible teaches this about sin:
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
1 John 1:8-10 NIVUK
So when (and not if) the Lord confronts us with our sin, our excuses should very silent and our confession should be loud. We must admit to our sin and repent of it, not cover it up, or seek the ‘right to be forgotten’ or hire a lawyer to silence those who talk about it. We must own it. Deal with it. Confess it. Repent of it. And move on.
But there us another, just as challenging, side to this. These words are also written in the Bible:
Don’t you have a saying, “It’s still four months until harvest”? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.
John 4:35-36 NIVUK
But here’s the thing: Jesus didn’t speak these words while preaching in the Temple, or even in a synagogue. He was, in fact, in a Samaritan village. The Samaritans were hated. They were a mongrel people – mixed between the dirt poor Jews who had remained after the exile of the Northern Kingdom and the pagan peoples that the king of Assyria moved in to work the land. They were syncretistic: the Bible is clear that they worshipped both the One True God and whatever deity their pagan co-occupants brought with them (2 Kings 17:24-41).
The Jews wanted nothing to do with them.
Yet it was among these people that Jesus said the harvest was coming!
And it wasn’t an outlier. It’s actually a constant theme of the Gospel that the outcasts respond to the message of repentance and faith and the ‘in-crowd’ do not. As Luke explains:
(All the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus’ words, acknowledged that God’s way was right, because they had been baptised by John. But the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptised by John.)
Luke 7:29-30 NIVUK
Jesus embraces this:
Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are ill. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’
Luke 5:29-32 NIVUK
Ancient Israel isn’t like the United Kingdom. We pretty much have one harvest season – late summer-early autumn. Ancient Israel had two: root crops in the spring; fruit in the summer. If you wanted to harvest your root crops in the summer, you’d come back empty handed. Likewise if you wanted to harvest fruit in the spring.
Why am I saying this?
What if our churches are constantly unsuccessful in their ministries because we are trying to harvest in the wrong field?
What if we expend an enormous amount of time and effort and money convincing one group of people that they need to be saved, when there are thousands of others who don’t need to be told?
And who are they?
Sinners.
People whose lives are plainly going wrong.
People who feel like they are messing up constantly.
The poor.
The unemployed.
The destitute.
Those with addiction problems.
Those with serious morality issues.
Those caught up in the sex trade.
Jesus called them to repentance. And they responded.
The Pharisees and Sadducees – the ‘flawless’ religious elite – did not.
When we are confronted with our sin, it does us no good to deny it or run away from it or bury it. We must confess it and ask for forgiveness and repent of it.
But if we come across other people who, like this woman, are living a bad life and they know it, we should not run from them.
They could just be the harvest we should bring home.
Questions
1. Have you ever felt guilty over something wrong you’ve done? How did it feel? Did you argue or try to justify it or did you confess your sin and repent?
2. Why is it so difficult to repent?
3. Is it possible that in your ministry you could be ‘harvesting in the wrong field’? Are there people around you who are very conscious of their own sin?
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