It’s hard to know how to include the famous story of the woman caught in adultery. It’s certainly not part of the original Gospel of John: the earliest surviving manuscripts – from the second through fourth centuries – have no record of it. Quite a few manuscripts from the fifth century and later do have it (mostly they have it as John 7:53-8:11). But several manuscripts have it set off by asterisks to indicate their uncertainty about it; and a couple of manuscripts include it after John 21:24, another puts it after John 7:36, and one more puts it after Luke 21:38.

In the end, then, we are left not knowing where this particular piece of “scripture” came from. And yet it sounds so Jesus-like: could it be a piece of tradition from the followers of the Apostle John that reports an actual incident, which was handed down along with the gospel and eventually incorporated into the New Testament, with some uncertainty as to exactly where it was to be located? And if so, what lesson would it teach us?

It is a messy incident. The scribes and Pharisees brought this woman “caught in the very act” (John 8:3-4), but they didn’t bring the man; if she was caught in the very act, wasn’t he caught in the very act, too? They wanted Jesus to rule on her wickedness so that she could be stoned to death (8:5) – or to fail to do that, so that they could accuse him of not supporting the law (8:6). Jesus turned their trap around on them by proposing “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (8:7): one after another, they slipped away, and only Jesus and the woman were left (8:9). Jesus then told her that he would not condemn her, and said, “Go your way, and from now on do not sin again” (8:11).

This “condemn not, condone not” attitude is so hard for us to get. We can be quite good at shrugging off any moral lapse, not wanting to appear so judgmental as to criticize anyone’s behavior. On other days we are quite good at judging, as we gossip about people and condemn them for their bad behavior. Add these together and we manage to condone the sin while condemning the person: the exact opposite of what we see Jesus doing in this story.

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Help us, Lord. The one caught in sin is often us: and apart from your mercy we are utterly lost. The one caught in sin is often someone else: and though we have plenty of our own sins we are quick to step up to judge and condemn. Teach us to live in repentance for our own sins, and forgiveness for the sins of others.

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