The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. His sceptre shows the force of temporal power. The attribute to awe and majesty wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings, but mercy is above this sceptred sway. It is enthroned in the hearts of kings. It is an attribute to God himself, and earthly power doth then show likest God’s when mercy seasons justice.[1]
You may remember from your youth, when we were expected to become acquainted with the works of Shakespeare, this famous poem in praise of mercy from the trial scene of The Merchant of Venice. The irony of the play is that while Portia exhorts Shylock to show mercy, the anti-Semitism underpinning the premise of the play is itself neither just nor merciful. Nevertheless in this instance what Shakespeare says is true. Mercy is inherent to God’s nature. Israel was frequently told that their God was both a God who created and enforced laws (that is, a God of justice) and a God who forgave transgressions (that is, a God of mercy). Indeed God’s self-description to Moses was, “A God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty…”[2]
God’s mercy has never been cheap grace. Human behaviour has consequences. This was the message of Israel’s prophets towards the end of the Davidic monarchy. The prophets observed how members of the elite class were favouring those rich enough to bribe them while abandoning the very poor – the widows, the orphans, and aliens – to their poverty, rather than championing their cause and ensuring their survival. The prophets warned that this was not acceptable to God and that there would be consequences. “Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them,”[3] writes Isaiah. In other words, the elite class was not showing mercy towards those who needed it most, and consequently, weren’t themselves shown mercy when they needed it most. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy,”[4] said Jesus to his disciples. When Babylon expanded its empire to include Judah, not only was the nation conquered and made subservient to the Babylonians and their successors, but the entire Jewish ruling class was enslaved and exiled to Babylon, thus joining the ranks of the poor. Prophets like Isaiah considered their suffering an appropriate punishment for their corruption and indifference towards the impoverished.
God is a God of peace not of war so God wasn’t responsible for the Babylonian lust for the land of Israel. However, God did not intervene on behalf of the Jews as the chief priests had expected as long as they were fervent in their worship. Then as now, the rituals of worship aren’t an adequate substitute for compassionate action. As James, the brother of Jesus said, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”[5] It has nothing to do with what sacrifices you make, how many songs you sing, and what prayers you recite, but it involves striving to live according to the teachings of Jesus to be merciful just as God in heaven is merciful.[6]
As Shakespeare said, mercy is a blessing not only for the recipient of the mercy but for the giver. Mercy restores broken relationships, including our damaged relationship with God. God was never indifferent to the plight of the Israelites (and undoubtedly God was not indifferent to the plight of other people as well). Therefore the prophets could be confident that the Jews’ apparent estrangement from God would not last forever. They might feel like a widow who has been denied justice, yet they had God’s assurance that “for a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion, I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love, I will have compassion on you, says the LORD, your Redeemer.”[7] This is a promise not just to Israel, but to all people who have been called into a worshipful relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and yet feel that God is oblivious to their personal circumstances.
Mercy can take many forms, from provisioning those in need of sustenance, as we do through the food we funnel through Burnside Primary and the City Mission to those financially struggling, to forgiving those who have caused us considerable pain. Our community is blessed with many merciful people, but society as a whole tends to be judgmental. I find particularly distressing the media’s tendency to ask the victims of crime, as they emerge from the courtroom where sentencing has just occurred, whether they are happy with the punishment the court has imposed upon the guilty. Often the traumatised victims say the penalty isn’t sufficiently harsh, and having had their angry words broadcast to the nation during their time of grief, they don’t get an opportunity to publically rescind them at a later date should their desire for revenge dissipate. Condemnation rather than clemency tends to be celebrated. As it is today, so it was in the time of Jesus.
The story of the adulterous woman brought before Jesus is a case in point. She is a pawn in what could be a deadly game for her. The apparent antagonism between Jesus and the Scribes and Pharisees arose from the prevailing belief that one’s status was enhanced if one could downgrade the status of another by, for example, demonstrating that your adherence to the Mosaic Law was stricter than that of your opponent. So Jesus was constantly questioned about his interpretation of the rules that governed daily life for the Jews, by Pharisees who were honoured for their meticulous observance of the commands included in the Torah that weren’t specific to the priesthood.
Almost all scholars, even conservative ones like Donald Carson, acknowledge that today’s gospel reading was not written by the author of the fourth gospel. This story does not appear in any of the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John, and in the manuscripts where it first appears it moves around a bit, being found in three different locations besides the one where it ended up. The story also appears in a manuscript of the Gospel of Luke. Perhaps this story was remembered and treasured by the oral tradition, and having not been picked up by any of the canonical gospellers, was interpolated into their works by later scribes. The floating nature of the text is probably why it is not among the Johannine texts in the lectionary.
Jewish legal procedures are disregarded in this story. The most glaring departure from due process is that the sin the woman is accused of requires a partner, so why is she alone accused? This is a patriarchal society, of course, and what was considered scandalous behaviour for a woman tended to be tolerated by a man. In cases where the penalty for the crime was stoning, a minimum of two eyewitnesses were required. The validity of their testimony that the woman had been, as the Scribes and Pharisees report, caught in the act of adultery is what would be examined during her trial. They would be questioned, not her. So, not only was the male adulterer missing but so, it appears, were the woman’s accusers. At least they are not mentioned during the telling of the story. Of course, their presence wasn’t needed as this is not a trial. The woman should have been brought before members of the Sanhedrin, not to the rabbi from Galilee. Rather this is a game of one-upmanship – a game that Jesus refuses to play.
Jesus ignores his antagonists by refusing to answer their question as to whether or not the woman should be stoned according to the Law of Moses. He even refuses to look directly at them, but rather looks down at the ground where he writes something in the dust. They are shamed into having to repeat their question several times, until at last Jesus responds by saying, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Then he continues to write. This is the only indication in Scripture that Jesus was literate. What he wrote we don’t know, but Micah 6:8 comes to mind, “What does the LORD require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” One by one the woman’s tormentors depart, starting from the oldest and wisest, until finally she is left alone with Jesus, who tells her that like the departed men, he also does not condemn her. He advises her not to sin again (meaning not to continue her adulterous relationship). It is a threat to her life.
We have all been recipients of mercy, and in all likelihood, we will need mercy again in the future,
and we know “judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”[8]
[1] William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
[2][2] Exodus 34:6-7
[3] Isaiah 1:23
[4] Matthew 5:7
[5] James 1:27
[6] Luke 6:36
[7] Isaiah 54:7-8
[8] James 2:13