Guilty of Being Unfaithful

(15th Sunday after Pentecost) (John 8:3-11)

The final reading from the Gospel today is the account of the woman taken in adultery. She is brought before our Lord by the scribes and the Pharisees, who are as much interested in trying to destroy our Lord’s credibility as with the transgression of the woman who had sinned. If the Lord said that she should be executed according to the Law of Moses, they could accuse Him of being hard-hearted, and so drive a wedge between Him and the people who were drawn by His loving nature. If, on the other hand, He somehow excused her sin, they could accuse Him of rejecting the Law of Moses, and so claim He was an enemy of God. The Lord knew the trap they laid for Him, of course, and He goes to the heart of the matter: He says, “Let those who are without sin cast the first stone.” Of course, everyone was aware of their own sins, and how much they deserved to be punished for the same; and so they did not stone the woman, but departed. When He asked her who had condemned her, she replied, “No one”; and our Lord said, “Neither do I accuse you. Go, and sin no more.”

Every time we sin, we are not only guilty of our sin but, in a way, we, too, are guilty of adultery – spiritual adultery, if you will. Think about it. Adultery is the act of being unfaithful in the marriage relationship, in which husband and wife become one – and to be with another is an insult and an injury to that state of oneness. Now consider this: Aren’t we called to relationship with the Lord? Aren’t we meant to be one with Him? Yet every time we seek our own way, every time we seek pleasure or comfort or anything else from the world, we are being unfaithful to the One Who has called us to be His, having already made Himself ours by His Incarnation and by His Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. We are guilty of being unfaithful; and so we deserve to die.

Yet where are those who would condemn us? Our conscience tells us that we have sinned; and may God protect us against so deadening ourselves to our conscience that we no longer care about our sins, and the pangs of our conscience as a result. So we accuse ourselves; and the only other accuser who matters is Satan, the enemy of our salvation. He will accuse us of our sins at the time of judgment; and accuses us to ourselves now, to make us ashamed and unworthy, so that we might hide from God, as did Adam and Eve in Paradise, after they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. By these accusations, he tries to make us fear to enter the presence of God, and to drive us into despondency and despair.

At such times, we need to remember that our Lord does not, and will not, accuse or condemn us. It is His great desire to forgive us, that we might be restored to relationship with Him. If we confess our sins, and repent, He forgives us; and He strengthens us in the amendment of our lives, so that we can pursue His instruction to go and sin no more – knowing as He does, of course, that we will, in all probability, sin again. When we do, again, we have hope, and so repent and confess, and so go on with Him in the journey through life.

Our venerable mother Theodora was an adulteress, having done so because of a fortune-teller. She repented of her sin, cut her hair, put on men’s clothing, and entered a monastery under the name of “Theodore.” While there, she was falsely accused by a harlot of having had relations with her, and fathering a child. Driven out of the monastery, she lived in the desert for seven years, raising the harlot’s child as her own. The abbot then received her back, and she lived in the monastery for another two years, before departing this life. It was only then that the monks learned her secret; and when her husband learned, he, too, became a monk, living in the cell that had been hers. Among other things, we are meant to see that amendment of life is possible, by God’s grace, and by our living in an Orthodox manner: by confession, by repentance, and by an ascetic life: praying, fasting, giving, struggling, and, above all, living a life of love – not love as the world defines it, which was the doorway into her sin – but with the love that our Lord showed to the woman taken in adultery: forgiving and patient.

Brothers and sisters, we have been unfaithful, we have departed from our Lord in our sins. Let us return to Him, and repent, and seek His mercy and help, that, as was our venerable mother Theodora, we, too, may be transformed, and leave the world behind, to the glory of God, and the salvation of our souls.