Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Wednesday 5 March 2025.
Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery, by Guercino, 1621 (Source)
• First Reading: Isaiah 58: 1-12 (True fasting)
• Epistle: 2 Corinthians 5: 20 – 6: 10 (Be reconciled to God. Paul’s hardships)
• Gospel: John 8: 1-11 (The woman caught in adultery. ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.)
Have you noticed how much creativity goes into the advertising that is beamed at us? How the advertiser has only a few seconds of air time to press the right buttons in our emotions, fears and prejudices in order to open up our wallets and purses and to present our debit or credit cards?
And yes, the advertising agencies are very skilled at doing just that. They know whose money they want to access and then how to lure them into spending it. Just a little pressure here and a few subtle insinuations there and it is job done!
Somehow we seem to go along with it, and in doing so we endorse all the methods and assumptions that the advertisers make.
But it is all performance. The nature of the product or service are not really at issue here. It is all about that persuasion aimed at us.
Now look at the lesson from Isaiah.
Here God is criticizing the people for their performance of spirituality. And yes, it is all performance. The show may be persuasive enough but the reality of how they treat each other and how they abuse those least able to fend for themselves is something else.
No matter what attitudes the people strike, what causes they affect to support, what slogans or flags they want to wave about, it is the reality of their relationships with those closest to them and most dependent on them that matter.
And no, the Lord was not pleased.
But then look at the gospel and the woman taken in adultery and presented to Jesus for His opinion.
The relevant man is nowhere to be seen, but this is all a performance as well, because they want to trap Jesus into condemning the woman.
They are not really interested in the merits of the case. It is more that performance of self-righteous indignation and rage against this breach of the 7th commandment.
The rush to condemnation is overwhelming and the self-righteousness of the accusers is just so sweet. Surely it must be satisfied.
But there is something uncomfortably up to date in all this, as if we were not doing the same thing in our own age.
Accusation taken as proof of guilt and the accused person given no opportunity to make a defence.
We only have to allege ‘Child abuse’ and the moral trap door under the person accused opens and they disappear from sight.
And so Jesus took a longer view. The issue for Him was not whether this woman had committed adultery. Maybe she did – certainly His words of dismissal suggest that she had.
But purity in the sight of God covers all aspects of life and all relationships, transactions, loyalties and attitudes. There are no exceptions.
And yet the mystery of Jesus’ atonement is that He plumbed the depth of every dimension and aspect of human depravity. He took to Himself every nuance of degradation, from the most subtle to the most gross and nauseating.
For us the starting point is not our own perception or convenience. It is the total and utter purity of God, without any suggestion of compromise.
It is His agenda that matters and not our own. And here on Ash Wednesday we are being called to ask Him to speak into the depths of our lives and souls and to lead us into that place where His righteousness is indeed supreme, unchallenged and certainly uncompromised.
