(Reflections from Sunday Morning’s Message)

They came early in the morning—religious men with holy words on their lips and hard stones in their hands. The scribes and Pharisees, the professional and the pious, arrived not for worship but for war. They brought with them a woman, trembling, shamed, caught “in the very act.”

They said the right things. They quoted the right verses. They stood in the right place—in the temple, of all places. But beneath the weight of their righteous robes, something dark and familiar stirred. Hypocrisy always knows how to dress itself for church.

“Master,” they began. That word should have fallen like music—Teacher, Rabbi—but it landed with the chill of manipulation. They didn’t come to learn. They came to trap. To use truth as a snare and Scripture as a weapon.

“Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.”

There is something cruel in the precision of that statement. No rumor, no speculation—just humiliation made public. Her sin was real, yes, but so was their delight in exposing it. They didn’t bring her to be forgiven. They brought her to be used.

And that’s what makes their sin the greater one.

“Now Moses in the law commanded us…”

Here it comes—the verse, the proof text, the moral high ground. The dangerous personalization of Scripture, when “the law” becomes “our law.” When divine truth becomes a prop for human pride. It is possible to quote the Bible and be miles from the heart of God.

“…that such should be stoned.”

Such. Not a name, not a soul, not a daughter of creation. Just a category. “Such people.”

That’s how judgment works—it dehumanizes before it condemns. Once we label someone as “such,” we no longer have to see their tears or hear their story. We can stand tall and throw our stones without guilt.

“But what sayest thou?”

And there it is—the corner they tried to paint Him into. If Jesus agreed with Moses, He’d violate Rome, for Jews could no longer execute judgment by stoning. If He sided with Rome, He’d deny the Law of God. And if He let her go, He’d seem to abandon morality altogether.

It was a perfect trap, until grace bent down.

They came quoting Scripture and clutching stones, but before the morning was over, only one voice would remain—the voice of mercy.

Because this story isn’t just about what they said; it’s about what He did next.
In the next reflection, we’ll look closer at that quiet, earthbound moment when Jesus stooped to write in the dirt—and what His silence still says to every heart that’s ever held a stone.