Just as it takes two to tango, it I takes two to commit adultery (or does it?). Jesus’ teaching on adultery is so radical that it is rarely referred to, seldom spoken about and little understood. We shall come to this teaching in due course. What we encounter in today’s Gospel is much more than a teaching about adultery: we meet the Lord’s authority and mercy in action.
How strange, then, that only the woman should be hauled before Jesus. The suggestion is that it was a set up: she was framed, and then left to face the consequences. The law required the execution of both parties. Jesus was being walked into a trap. Sanction of the legal requirement would bring him into conflict with the Romans who did not allow the Jews to authorize the death sentence. Failure to condemn the woman would bring him into conflict with the Jewish religious leaders.
Seemingly backed into a corner, Jesus diffused the situation in two ways. First, he wrote in the sand — perhaps, as some of the Church fathers have suggested, he wrote down the sins of the woman’s accusers. Second, he invited those without sin to throw the first stone. No stones were thrown. Jesus was left alone with the poor woman, to whom he held out the hand of mercy and forgiveness; an amazing and powerful incident in Jesus’ life to be sure.
Now back to Jesus’ teaching on adultery: Jesus taught that adultery, like murder, is an easy sin to commit because we can commit it in our heart. To simply lust after a woman (or man for that matter) is to commit adultery: ‘But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.‘ (Matthew 5:28)