At the time of Jesus, public sins were difficult cases to resolve. Sin and the sinner were identified and there was no way of distinguishing the song from the singer. Today's Gospel is one case in point where Jesus is presented with an adulterous woman and given no option but to be an accomplice with them in what they figured as faithfulness to the law of Moses. But Jesus opts out, and at a risk.
Today's three readings really highlight basic misconceptions which we continue to perpetuate in our way of understanding how God deals with us and with our sinfulness. The way we live our religion, we take it as normal that God's hands are tied by what is written. Many a time, rather than putting ourselves in God's judgment, we do just the opposite: we go all the way accusing, prosecuting and judging and then expect God to submit to our mindset. We constantly fail to grasp the big truth that God is always and remains greater than His own laws and our mindsets.
Isaiah in the first reading affirms there is "no need to recall the past, no need to think about what was done before". In the gospel, the 'guardians of religion' are politely rebuked by Jesus. Of course, Jesus is not condoning sin. But the way he deals with the adulterous woman put before him under judgment shows that his attitude is one of zero tolerance with whoever seeks to safeguard order at the expense of the person.
Religion can enslave just as much as it is meant to be liberating. Religion is never an end in itself. It is always a means whereby we can come to God. Otherwise it can only be a blockage. Paul insists in the second reading on distinguishing between the perfection that comes from the law and the perfection that comes through faith in Christ.
What Jesus in today's story condemns in the Scribes and the Pharisees is precisely their firm conviction that faith in God is observance of the law, no more no less. For them, for all intents and purposes, the law suffices.
Jesus indicates another way. He shows how we can be observant of the law and yet distant from God in the depths of our hearts. This generates a false religiosity and perpetuates gross misconceptions about God and what really nurtures a true relationship between the believer and his/her God.
While reading today's gospel account, the adulterous woman can easily be substituted with so many others towards whom, even within the confines of our Christian communities, we constantly point fingers. The Scribes and the Pharisees held on to an exclusive religion. Jesus brought about the end of this religion.
The Church exists precisely to provide hospitalisation to whoever is wounded, estranged, and sinful. When this does not happen, or when the opposite happens so that a Christian community is not a community of healing, then we should really be on the alert in our minds and hearts. That would be the clear sign of an inward looking community held together by order and discipline rather than by the Spirit of the risen Lord.
Jesus always had serious problems of communication with those who believed themselves righteous and automatically looked down on others in judgment. In Jesus's time it was normal business to stone an adulterous woman. And that was horrible. What is yet more horrible is that, even in today's civilised culture, and at times in the name of religion and through fine-tuned ways and means, we still witness character assassinations and the systematic destruction of people leaving them no possibility whatever of healing or a fresh start.