A Modern Day's Interpretation of John 8:1-11

It was the kind of night you hope to forget, but never seem to be able to. My palms were sweaty as I thought about what I was about to do. I knew that it wasn’t right, but I felt like it was my only option. What else could I do? It had to be done.

Just as I finally made up my mind that I was going to go through with it, the door began to shake fiercely from the pounding on the outside. The screams were just as loud, if not louder, and the pounding in my heart matched the pounding on the door beat for beat. I could tell it was a group of men, angry men. And they were looking for me.

“Come out now! We know you’re in there! We know what you are doing! Open this door, now!”

Paralyzed by fear in the middle of the living room, I didn’t know which way to turn. Was there someplace I could hide? Was there a way to escape out of another door? The sudden thud on the window confirmed the answer for me: there was no place to go. My heart sank as the deep thudding soon turned into a loud crash on the floor. A small piece of glass dug into my shin as the window-pane fell to the ground. If I wouldn’t agree to come to them, they were coming to me.

One by one they surrounded me, screamed in my face, spit at me, and called me every name in the book. One man, the one with the huge, hairy hands, grabbed my upper arm and squeezed it until I was sure he was going to snap it right off. Pulling me to follow in his direction, my body gave me no option to refuse. He was easily three times my own weight and my body quickly followed behind him. I wished my arm would have fallen off at that moment. At least then I could have tried to run away.

Once we got outside I was thrown into the back of their car and taken to a dingy cream colored building that had one leafless tree out front. Most of the letters had fallen off the side of the building, so I couldn’t make out the name. When we got inside it was painfully obvious: a jail. Pushed by the large, hairy handed man once more into a cell, I tripped on my dress and fell to the ground. That was when I first noticed the cut on my leg. I guess my mind was too focused on them getting into the house earlier to pay attention.

I waited in the tiny cell for what seemed like an eternity, cold and alone, until someone finally came to get me. Scruffy and slightly chubby, his breath the scent of yesterday’s garlic bread, he herded me down a long corridor and into a well-dressed room with a large ornate wood desk in the front the color of a Hershey’s bar. The room was filled with deep yells and insults, fingers all pointing at me. The angry mob all seemed to sit together, nobody by me. I’ve never wanted to disappear more than at that moment. I could feel my insides shrinking more and more with each accusation they made, and I hoped upon hope that they would eventually just make me so small I would disappear altogether.

What was worse is that I knew what they were saying was true. I had done everything they said I had. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend like it wasn’t going on. I hummed every song I had learned as a small child to try to tune them out. Humming soon turned to singing and singing soon turned to shouting as their voices carried past my own.

Suddenly I was the only voice in the room. I slowly opened my eyes, hoping that I would somehow find an empty room before me, back in my own bedroom, that it had all just been a horrible dream and I had finally woken up. Instead I found a man in a white floor-length robe standing before me. I was startled. What would he have to say?

His face wasn’t scrunched up like the other men’s though. His fists weren’t clenched. I couldn’t help but stare into his eyes. They seemed to smile at me instead of shooting looks of death my way. Maybe he will be nice to me, give me a chance to be someone new, a chance to be the person I want to be, but never seem to be able to stay. My glance was finally broken when one of the men in the crowd spoke up, providing every dirty detail of what I had done. I couldn’t believe his memory.

“Listen to what she has done,” roared a voice from the back of the crowd, “We ought to stone her to death for it.”

I knew that was the end of the soft eyes the man in the white robe would ever give me. I was glad he had turned the other way in order to look at the man telling him what I had done. I held my hands up to my ears to block out the harsh words I knew he would have to say about me. I just couldn’t bare the thought that my chance for him to see me differently was over so quickly.

He grabbed a sheet of paper off of the desk before him and bent over it furiously scribbling with a pen. I stretched to see what he was writing, but so did the rest of the crowd, so all I could see was blue ink filling the entire page. The silent faces of each of the men grew long as they clearly read whatever he was writing down. When he filled the front page, he stood back up straight and said, “Who hear is without fault? Let him be the first one to throw a stone her direction.” The men stood silent as they listened to his radical words. He took the sheet back before him, turned it over, and began writing again. When that side was also finished, he slid the paper back to the other side of the table. One by one the men left the circle. There was no one left in the room but me and the man in the white robe.

He set his pen on the table, turned to me, looking intently into my eyes with the same glistening look the screaming man had broken before, and gently asked me, “Who is going to point out your faults now?”

“There is no one left,” I stated, shocked as I looked around the empty room.

“And I also will not. Leave now and do not return to what you were doing before.”