Today is what may be referred to as the ides of March, if one is using the ancient Roman calendar. Ides means roughly “the middle of the month” depending on the full moon. In Act 1, scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the soothsayer says to Caesar, “Beware the ides of March.” The next day, on the Ides of March, Caesar is stabbed by sixty senators, the last one stabbing him is Brutus. Caesar says to Brutus, “Et tu, Brute?” Hopefully, no misfortune such as that will occur to any one of us today or ever.
In today’s Morning Prayer Gospel according to John, Jesus is again having a time with certain scribes and certain Pharisees. Just before this, Jesus was being put to the test by these scribes and Pharisees in an attempt to publicly humiliate and then possibly stone to death a woman said to be caught in adultery. (Of course, her man partner was not present to be publicly humiliated or stoned).
They kept asking Jesus what should be done. If he said “yes, stone her”, then he would show himself to be just like many of the scribes and Pharisees, showing no mercy. In addition, if he said “yes, stone her” it would be against Roman law because only the Roman authorities could give death sentences. Thus, he would have been handed over to Roman authorities at that moment.
If he said “let her go”, he would then have been portrayed as someone who didn’t care about the law of Moses, God’s law, and not who he says he is. Jesus’ answer (also a condemnation of the men) is ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ If anyone would have said that they had no sin, they would condemn themselves to be what they were condemning Jesus for, being on the level of God. The only one present that could have thrown a stone was Jesus. In today’s Morning Prayer passage, Jesus says: “I judge no one.” From my understanding of God’s love, God desires us to be reconciled to God and that can only happen by being reconciled to our neighbor through forgiveness, repentance, and being brought back into community that acknowledges God’s love for all of us.