Hello, everyone! Well, after two hectic days spent with officers, locksmiths, and alarm system installers after our home was broken into and my car stolen yesterday, I felt like letting my brain escape into fiction-writing land :-). Here’s Part II of my rendering of the “Woman Caught in Adultery” account found in the eighth chapter of John. You can read Part I here! Hope you enjoy!
I Am Not Condemned- Part II
By Diana Anderson-Tyler
“…the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say? …” (John 8:3-5)
The warm radiance of the sun slowly dissolved into the gilded doors of the Shushan gate, but unlike Jehovah’s timeless orb, this gleaming façade welcomed me with the ferocious faces and bloodthirsty taunts of holy men and teachers of righteousness.
The conspirator at my side shoved me into the center of the fiery ring where the sound of jeering and the sensation of piercing stares penetrated through my every pore. Overcome by the unseen weight of my abasement, I fell to my knees and squeezed closed my tear-stung eyes.
“There she is! Yeshua, here is the adulteress!” shouted Matthias.
I slowly opened my eyes at the sound of my salvation… Yeshua…
They led the rabbi to their unjust court of law and pointed at me with hisses. A few rattled stones together in restless fists.
“Rabbi, surely you know the punishment for such wickedness according to the Law of Moses.” Matthias’s voice skipped melodiously over his words, as if to mask their murderous intent. The sound of stones intensified.
Silence filled the court. My accusers exchanged impatient glances, waiting for their prey to step into His trap. Instead, He stepped into the epicenter of my disgrace and knelt gently into it. I watched Him curiously as He began scribbling in the dust, not uttering a word.
Matthias grunted and kicked furiously at the dirt before charging towards us. Yeshua’s finger continued to record name after name, sin after sin of each man encircling us like vultures over rows of forgotten crosses. Blood rushed into my cheeks; my heart pounded. I knew His audacious act would warrant a sentence much worse than stoning.
“What do you say?!” Matthias shouted, inciting the crowd once again.
Yeshua rose and gestured toward the incriminating dust, which had inscribed upon it every sort of evil act and contemptible crime warned against by our patriarchs.
“Let any of you who is without sin be the first to throw his stone at her,” He said, speaking with the boldness of David and the wisdom of Solomon. He then returned to the ground beside me and continued to write.
Matthias drew nearer to the dust. Reading with terror the vilest of his sins, his jaw fell open, but no words could escape it. His eyes met Yeshua’s with a mystified flash of both vexation and transparent awe. He quickly turned away and stormed across the court, his flock of young followers trailing behind him, releasing their weapons like playthings onto the ground.
I watched as each man approached Yeshua’s chronicle of vices and corruption. And I watched as every one of them retreated like shadows peeling off the countryside in spring.
Finally, after the last of the guilty had fled from the sight of their convictions, Yeshua spoke softly…
“Gune, where are your accusers?”
Gune. He called me what I am: a married woman. But He did so not with indignation or hatred, but with an ineffable tone of sadness mingled with a father’s grave concern.
I rose to my feet and slowly turned to look in each direction.
“There is no one, my lord.” The words quivered as I stared in disbelief at the emptiness of my executioners’ snare.
“Neither do I condemn you. Go from this place, and leave your life of sin.”
In a moment in which I was to be lifeless and forsaken, I was at once resurrected and accepted. Never before had I received such love, not in the embrace of any man. Never before had I seen such light, not in the glow of any sunrise. And never before had I felt such freedom. I deserved death. We all did. We all stood guilty before the only Son of Man born sinless, the only Man sent forth from Heaven’s gates to die as sin.
Not long after that morning, my Salvation hung from a tree before the same brood of vipers, seething with more bloodlust than the day they dragged me from my bed. Upon that cross, He carried our every sorrow, bore our every sin. He felt our every pain and endured the wrath of evil man and Almighty God. He was forsaken by Jehovah, sacrificing Himself so that He could say to me and all those descended from Adam: Go and sin no more.
THE END
“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” (John 3:17)