(Please read this passage before the homily.)
There are two women “caught in the act” in the gospel accounts. The mother of Jesus is found to be with child before she and Joseph had come to live together. She is saved by a message of an angel.
The other woman is the women in today’s gospel passage. What she is accused of doing would cause her and her accomplice to be stoned to death. This likely means that she was caught by becoming pregnant. It is also true that the Pharisees usually were not in favor of the death penalty in cases like this. There was an alternative way to adjudicate the situation, trial by bitter water and dust from the floor of the temple.
In recent years, archaeologists as discovered tiling on the Temple Mount that once may have graced the flooring of the Temple. It was on the floor of the Temple that this scene from the Gospel is played out. It is in the dust of the floor that Jesus gave his response. He stooped and pointed to the floor as if to say, “Why not use the ritual of the bitter waters and dust of the floor to resolve the issue?” More than likely it would have been hard to read words written on a dusty floor.
Perhaps, instead of a hostile question, the Pharisees had asked for a legal opinion and when Jesus had given his opinion, those had accused would have departed because Jesus would have answered their question.
We can read the passage and choose to read the passage as an argument or as a discussion. We can look for blame or we can look for understanding. We can return to our daily lives and make negative judgments about people and events or we can return to our daily lives intent on understanding others better. It is our choice. Perhaps being “caught in the act” is not the evil it seems to be.