help and to heal. When we are confronted with someone who has made a mistake, our first feeling ought to be, not, ‘I’ll have nothing more to do with someone who could act like that’, but, ‘What can I do to help? What can I do to undo the consequences of this mistake?’ Quite simply, we must always extend to others the same compassionate pity we would wish to be extended to ourselves if we were involved in a similar situation.
(3) It is very important that we should understand just how Jesus did treat this woman. It is easy to draw the wrong lesson altogether and to gain the impression that Jesus forgave lightly and easily, as if the sin did not matter. What he said was: ‘I am not going to condemn you just now; go, and sin no more.’ In effect, what he was doing was not to abandon judgment and say: ‘Don’t worry; it’s quite all right.’ What he did was, as it were, to defer sentence. He said: ‘I am not going to pass a final judgment now; go and prove that you can do better. You have sinned; go and sin no more and I’ll help you all the time. At the end of the day we will see how you have lived.’ Jesus’ attitude to the sinner involved a number of things.
(a) It involved the second chance. It is as if Jesus said to the woman: ‘I know you have made a mess of things; but life is not finished yet; I am giving you another chance, the chance to redeem yourself.’ Louisa Fletcher put it like this:
How I wish that there was some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
And all our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door,
And never put on again.
In Jesus, there is the gospel of the second chance. He was always intensely interested, not only in what a person had been, but also in what a person could be. He did not say that what they had done did not matter; broken laws and broken hearts always matter; but he was sure that everyone has a future as well as a past.
(b) It involved pity. The basic difference between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees was that they wished to condemn; he wished to forgive. If we read between the lines of this story, it is quite clear that they wished to stone this woman to death and were going to take pleasure in doing so. They knew the thrill of exercising the power to condemn; Jesus knew the thrill of exercising the power to forgive. Jesus regarded sinners with pity born of love; the scribes and Pharisees regarded them with disgust born of self-righteousness.
(c) It involved challenge. Jesus confronted this woman with the challenge of the sinless life. He did not say: ‘It’s all right; don’t worry; just go on as you are doing.’ He said: ‘It’s all wrong; go out and fight; change your life from top to bottom; go, and sin no more.’ Here was no easy forgiveness; here was a challenge which pointed a sinner to heights of goodness of which she had never dreamed. Jesus confronts the bad life with the challenge of the good.
(d) It involved belief in human nature. When we come to think of it, it is a staggering thing that Jesus should say to a woman of loose morals: ‘Go, and sin no more.’ The amazing, heart-uplifting thing about him was his belief in men and women. When he was confronted with someone who had gone wrong, he did not say: ‘You are a wretched and a hopeless creature.’ He said: ‘Go, and sin no more.’ He believed that with his help sinners have it in them to become saints. His method was not to blast men and women with the knowledge – which they already possessed – that they were miserable sinners, but to inspire them with the unglimpsed discovery that they were potential saints.
(e) It involved warning, clearly unspoken but implied. Here we are face to face with the eternal choice. Jesus confronted the woman with a choice that day – either to go back to her old ways or to reach out to the new way with him. This story is unfinished, for every life is unfinished until it stands before God.
(As we noted at the beginning, this story does not appear in all the ancient manuscripts. A discussion of the textual questions involved will be found at the end of this book.)
THE LIGHT THAT PEOPLE FAILED TO RECOGNIZE
John 8:12–20
So Jesus again continued to speak to them. ‘I am the light of the world,’ he said. ‘He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but he will have the light of life.’ So the Pharisees said to him: ‘You are bearing witness about yourself. Your witness is not true.’ Jesus answered: ‘Even if I do bear witness about myself, my witness is true, because I know where I came from and where I am going to. You do not know where I came from and where I am going to. You form your judgments on purely human grounds. I do not judge anyone. But if I do form a judgment, my judgment is true, because I am not alone in my judgment, but I and the Father who sent me join in such a judgment. It stands written in your law that the witness of two persons is to be accepted as true. It is I who witness about myself, and the Father who sent me also witnesses about me.’ They said to him: ‘Where is your Father?’ Jesus answered: ‘You know neither me nor my Father. If you had known me you would know my Father too.’ He spoke these words in the treasury while he was teaching in the Temple precincts; and no one laid violent hands upon him, because his hour had not yet come.
THE scene of this argument with the Jewish authorities was in the Temple treasury, which was in the Court of the Women. The first Temple court was the Court of the Gentiles; the second was the Court of the Women. It was so called because women might not pass beyond it unless they were actually about to offer a sacrifice on the altar which was in the Court of the Priests. Round the Court of the Women there was a colonnade or porch; and, in that porch, set against the wall, there were thirteen treasure chests into which people dropped their offerings. These were called the Trumpets because they were shaped like trumpets, narrow at the top and swelling out towards the foot.
The thirteen treasure chests all had their allotted offering. Into the first two were dropped the half-shekels which every Jew had to pay towards the upkeep of the Temple. Into the third and fourth were dropped sums which would purchase the two pigeons which a woman had to offer for her purification after the birth of a child (Leviticus 12:8). Into the fifth were put contributions towards the cost of the wood which was needed to keep the altar fire alight. Into the sixth were dropped contributions towards the cost of the incense which was used at the Temple services. Into the seventh went contributions towards the upkeep of the golden vessels which were used at these services. Sometimes a man or a family set apart a certain sum to make some trespass or thank-offering; into the remaining six trumpets people dropped any money that was left after such an offering had been made, or anything extra which they wished to offer.
Clearly the Temple treasury would be a busy place, with a constant flow of worshippers coming and going. There would be no better place to collect an audience of devout people and to teach them than the Temple treasury.
In this passage, Jesus makes the great claim: ‘I am the light of the world.’ It is very likely that the background against which he made it made that claim doubly vivid and impressive. The festival with which John connects these discourses is the Festival of Tabernacles or Booths (John 7:2). We have already seen (John 7:37) how that festival’s ceremonies lent drama to Jesus’ claim to give to people the living water. But there was another ceremony connected with this festival.
On the evening of its first day, there was a ceremony called the Illumination of the Temple. It took place in the Court of the Women. The court was surrounded with deep galleries, erected to hold the spectators. In the centre, four great candelabra were prepared. When the dark came, the four great candelabra were lit and, it was said, they sent such a blaze of light throughout Jerusalem that every courtyard was
