Leadership: A word from Mennonite Church USA leaders

John 8:1-11 poses a question about stoning, but there aren’t any real stones in the story. It is easy to imagine that the scribes and Pharisees are clenching stones in their hands when they bring this unnamed woman to Jesus, but the text doesn’t tell us that. Neither does it tell us that, after Jesus’ response, they dropped their stones as they walked away.

Jesus’ adversaries aren’t interested in an actual stoning; they are not even really concerned for this unnamed woman, whom they drag before Jesus and into the public eye. They only want to use her as a prop in their debate about the Torah (John 8:6).

This is really a conflict story that poses a Torah-test for Jesus: a question of how to interpret and apply Scripture. Like other “Torah-tests” in the Gospels (cf. Mark 12, Matthew 21-22), Jesus’ critics pose a question that invites one of two polarizing answers, either of which would leave Jesus in a difficult position.

Here, Jesus’ interlocutors are asking him to interpret the Torah command concerning stoning (Deuteronomy 22:21-27). They aren’t really interested in the details of the case: They don’t bring both parties in the adulterous act or witnesses, as the Torah requires (Deuteronomy 17:2-7). They push Jesus to rush to judgment in hopes of charging him—not the woman.

The dilemma for Jesus is clear: If he upholds the Torah rule, he not only endorses the death penalty but offends the Roman governor, who claimed the right to judge in capital cases himself. If he criticizes the Torah sentence, he has set himself against Moses and invited criticism from his community.

Jesus does something he is described as doing nowhere else in the Gospels: he bends down and writes on the ground—leaving his breathless opponents and the trapped woman standing above him. The story doesn’t tell us what he writes, but that hasn’t stopped interpreters from speculating.

Jesus refuses to let his challengers control the situation; he has shifted the focus from the woman to himself—giving her space to breathe and perhaps reclaim her humanity in the face of those manipulating her.

He stands and speaks a short proverb, “Let the one without sin throw the first stone.”
Again, he bends down and continues writing on the ground.

Jesus has refused to answer the question the way his challengers posed it. He has deflected the call to pronounce a death sentence by inviting the questioners to examine their own hearts. The question-posers walk away, one by one.

When Jesus looks up again, he addresses the accused woman for the first time, not as a foil but as a human being. Jesus does not condemn the woman but points her toward a new beginning. He says, “Go and do not sin again.”

Jesus has addressed both the woman and her accusers in ways that challenge and extend mercy. His invitations to them sharpen the issue for us.

Our tendency in hearing this story may be to judge the scribes and Pharisees for manipulating the woman into the conflict and bringing this question to Jesus in the first place. But this is a judgment story where Jesus challenges our human claims to pass judgment, so we have to be careful. We may want to condemn these critics of Jesus. But in doing so, we discover that the proverb applies to us as well.

Jesus doesn’t speak a harsh or condemning word in this story. He doesn’t condemn the woman or his inquisitors. Jesus’ response is a patient but studied silence and a provocative proverb that subverts their own smugness—but also invites them to engage a broader perspective.

This image of Jesus kneeling on the ground seems very much the servant pose, reminiscent of the later scene in John 13, where Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. Here is Jesus—in the middle of a conflict—bending to write on the ground, a servant to his adversaries and to their victim, even as he speaks the truth in love.

What are the stones we need to scatter and drop from our hands and hearts? Where are the stony places in our hearts and in our congregational life that need to be melted and restored as healthy arteries, as channels of healing and hope? Indeed John 8 is a call not to gather stones, but to scatter them in the ocean-depth of God’s mercy and divine compassion.

This story reminds us that we participate in God’s grace when we deal graciously with each other—even in the midst of conflict. We follow the pattern of grace embodied in Jesus. As Colossians puts it, “If anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving one another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (3:13).

Patricia Shelly is moderator-elect of Mennonite Church USA and professor of Bible and religion at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan.