Letter on Sunday: learning from an adulterous woman

This Sunday’s readings are:
Isaiah 43:16-21, Philippians 3:8-14, and the Gospel of John 8:1-11.

Dear Reader,
We all know the story in today's reading from John's gospel, of the woman caught committing adultery, in which Jesus invites whoever is without the first sin to cast the first stone, thereby setting the condemned woman free.
The woman herself, though, often gets overlooked, as if she is just a conduit for a much bigger story: a teaching about being judgemental, and the stage being set for Jesus’s execution for behaviour like this.
It is, I believe, a mistake to overlook the woman in this way, for if we do, we won’t extract the full implications for our own lives that can come from a proper reflection on this scripture.
For one thing, we might never give any consideration to the kind of state the woman’s life must have been in. She would have known that the price for acts of adultery was death. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. This begs the question of why she did not avoid such acts, as most would if it meant the preservation of life and limb. Equally, the unmentioned man would, one would have thought, have declined to commit adultery with her knowing the consequences. It is likely that, behind this crime, lay feelings of marginalisation and alienation: the kind that leads one to care so little for themselves that they take extraordinary gambles, perhaps just to feel wanted or cared for, and another to take what they can with no thought to the consequences for the other party.
For most of us, marginalisation and alienation won’t lead to us being stoned to death, thankfully. Despite that, however, we should keep in mind just how easy it is for the sinful society in which we live to push us towards ever-greater isolation and loneliness.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow famously identified a ‘hierarchy of needs.’ He argues that our highest need is for ‘self-actualisation’ and self-transcendence, expressed in our ideal desires, whether they be the desire to build strong marriages, make strides in our profession, be good parents or to impact on causes or groups that matter to us. But these greatest and highest needs are only met where are ‘deficiency needs’ are met first: in other words, are most basic needs are the physical needs to sustain life, our need for safety, and our need for esteem, belonging and self-respect.
The society we live in, however, fails spectacularly to meet these most basic of needs. Maslow suggests that, where our need for belonging and esteem go unfulfilled, depression is a potential consequence. We have seen significant rises in rates of clinical depression, not to mention other forms of mental health issues such as eating disorders. Don’t forget drug and alcohol abuse too. It is a scandalous fact that, as a man under 50, the statistics show that the most likely cause of my death will be suicide. Meanwhile, romance and courtship have been supplanted by hideously impersonal apps where one is accepted or rejected purely on the basis of a photo. The anonymity has led to ever-greater sexual aggression. Meanwhile, concerns continue to grow about the dangers young people expose themselves too because they choose to ‘sext’ images of themselves: 1 in 10 secondary pupils have even sent explicit images of themselves to an adult outside of school. These unhappy teens will face the very real danger of becoming unhappy adults, saddled with student debts and told to shine where competition has never been greater for fewer and fewer prizes.
A world of constant connectivity allows us to measure our worth in terms of followers, views and likes. Even the minimal human interaction of a phone call at work appears to have been undermined by the email.
Finding any calm and quiet to reflect on our ideals has become increasingly difficult, drowned out by the demands of a way of life that, more and more, makes us unhappy, stressed and self-absorbed.

That is why this week I urge you to take a step back and make time to reflect on the choices you make and the patterns you may have been sucked in to, that are damaging to you. These don’t have to be leading you to the extremes of despair, driving your spouse away or leaving you utterly uncaring and unfeeling towards others. They can simply be the things that make you irritable, the things that make you give less time to your priorities than you should, and the things that make a more Christ-centred way of life seem overwhelming and burdensome. Pick one locale to focus on and consider how different choices would make it a less alienating and marginalising one for you and others. Consider, for example, how you might spend the time with your family if you worked late one less evening this week, or how you might make the office a more cheerful place for everyone.
Consider how simply showing others that they are cared for, gives them a greater sense of belonging and self-worth. It does not take much to pay your spouse a compliment, or to talk to the person who usually sits alone.

Going back to our readings, I believe that whoever designed the lectionary did a good job when they put this combination together. Think about how little the woman actually got off the hook: she did escape death, but she is commanded not to return to sinful ways. Despite this, she will undoubtedly face rejection and scorn from her community because of what she had done. She would undoubtedly have learned the hard way that forgiveness, whether we are the ones forgiving or needing to be forgiven, is a process that takes time and involves a bumpy, unpredictable road. When we make a big mistake, we often hope that forgiveness will mean things settling down to how they were before, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, forgiving just means letting go of our anger even if relationships are changed forever or friendships come to a natural conclusion. At other times, forgiveness is internal and we may not have the chance to express it to those we wish to forgive, but we have to commit ourselves to stopping brooding over the injury done to us. And forgiving ourselves can be the hardest of all.
The adulterous woman would, unless she had a very strong faith, probably have continued to feel angry with herself, given how her life would have changed following her adultery. When we can’t make everything right again, we can turn our anger in on ourselves for our fault in what has past. St Paul must have really struggled with that, knowing that he persecuted the church which he came to love. But his words in today’s reading from Philippians chapter 3 remind us that transforming ourselves to conform to Christ’s will takes time and is a goal we will always need to strive for. “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
We have a woman who, if we think about it, had to confront enormous challenges in the pursuit of forgiveness. We also have one of the greatest saints there ever was, reminding us that a Christian walk is one where we will always need to work hard and struggle. That is not intended to put us off: if it’s hard for the great man Paul, it must be impossible for us lesser mortals. Instead, it’s meant to remind us to seek God’s help constantly. One of the things I find helpful when I am struggling to forgive is to take it to prayer. I begin by reminding myself that prayer is the means by which we seek to unite our own will more closely with God’s, and where we seek greater understanding of what his will for us is. I pray freely at how angry I am, articulating the thoughts that come in to my head. Usually, for me, these centre on the idea that if I let it drop, the other person will have won, and boy that’s not good when you think you’re perfectly justified! But in the end, exploring a more Christian response rarely involves rolling over and taking anything just because we have to forgive. Instead, it helps us to gain perspective. If it is worth letting go, it should be let go. If there is something that needs confronting, it gives one the calmness to plan how to do it constructively.
I think this can equally apply to the self. Do not rush to make sweeping changes, as we often feel the need to during Lent and Easter. Instead, bring your own inadequacies, regrets and faults to prayer. Think first about what you may need to do, if anything, to move on. For Paul, it was re-channelling his passionate and zealous nature toward the preaching of the gospel, not the persecuting of the churches. But whether you need to re-direct your emotional energy to different pursuits, make more time for people or find a way to ease a regret, do make time to ponder your route to change.

May God bless you.