Jesus is Mercy itself:
A reflection on one of the sermons of St. Augustine
In 418 ad Augustine delivered a sermon on the Gospel of John. The Sunday reading was the story of the woman taken in Adultery in John 8. This sermon is known as Tractate 33.
N.B. Christ as the Kingly Lamb of God.
One of the Johannine features that is well reflected here by Augustine is John’s insistence that Jesus goes to his death as a royal progress. Jesus teaches in the Temple, “and he was not arrested because he did not deign to suffer” 1 . This insistence on the willing laying down of His life by Jesus is seen by scholars as an anti-Docetic device employed by John. They denied that the Passion was a real, imagining it instead as a staged drama in which the death is somehow avoided at the end. John’s Gospel is adamant that not only did Jesus suffer and die, but that he did so freely and willingly for the sins of many.
33, 3 The significance of the Mount of Olives.
• The fact that Jesus went to the mountain at night when he had finished the preaching in the Temple is interpreted by Augustine as theologically significant. The Olive tree gives us the oil of healing and the oil of kings, Chrism. The Fact that Jesus is the Christ, from khrisma meaning oiled or anointed one is taken by Augustine to be most apt. “He went up to the mountain, but to the mountain of Olives, to the fruitful mountain, the mountain of chrism. For where else was it apt for Christ to teach if not on the mountain of Olives, for the name Christ is derived from Chrism?” 2
• The wrestlers of the Greco Roman world used oil to make their bodies supple and to condition their muscles. The early Church used oil to seal the Christian against the evils of Satan. The spragis of Baptismal anointing was intended to seal the new initiate against the Evil One. Perhaps we also hear from Augustine that the chrism was intended as fortifying oil in the Christian wrestling with the Devil? Could this not be related to the tradition of the Sacrament of Confirmation or Chrismation strengthening the person as a soldier of Christ? “Now he has anointed us because he has made us (luctatores contra diabolum) wrestlers against the Devil.” 3
33,4.
• Observe how the gentleness of the Lord is tested by his enemies. Augustine explains that the Scribes and Pharisees attempt to exploit the very gentleness of Jesus so as to discredit him. They want him to choose between gentleness and justice. He summarizes the character of the Lord; “He brought Truth as a teacher, Gentleness as a deliverer, and Justice as a defender.” In their envy of the Lord, they attempt to put a stumbling block in his path to trap him. When, as they expect he will say that she should be pardoned, they will say that he sins against Moses and even against him who sent Moses. That will allow them to kill him as a blasphemer.
• 33,4,4 is a beautiful piece of rhetorical argumentation. Augustine asks how anybody could be stupid enough to even try this ruse with Christ. He embellishes the point with examples that drive home the hopelessness of their scheme of entrapment.
“For to whom was this to be done?
By Perversity to Righteousness,
By Falsehood to truth.
By a corrupt heart to an upright heart.
By stupidity to Wisdom. 4
When would they not prepare snares into which they would not first stick their own heads?” 5
Those who sought the destruction of Jesus by stealth were themselves confounded by their deceit. The ones who stretched out the net were caught in it themselves due to their unbelief. By this device, we know that Augustine will portray this incident as the Wisdom of God outwitting the trickery of the Evil One. The congregation then listens to the Gospel with heightened attentiveness to those elements that show forth the Wisdom of Christ.
33,5 Jesus as Lord of Justice.
• The main point of this section on the reply of Jesus is to stress that Jesus as Justice retains his justice while he acts with wisdom and gentleness. Augustine sees the Johannine irony of the ones who are demanding justice being thwarted by justice itself. The Lord Jesus demands that Justice be fulfilled in her case, but full justice. The demands of full justice are that all the guilty be punished. Since the accusers are among the guilty, then they must also accept the same punishment as they are demanding for her.
• Jesus answers the ones who would trap him. He retains his integrity as Truth, Justice and Wisdom. He remembers that he is also the mercy of God.
• Jesus did not condemn the woman because he had not come to destroy what he found, but to seek out the lost. This insight by Augustine comes from his own experience of being among the lost sheep. “See how his answer is filled with justice, filled with gentleness and truth.” The Lord had come to bring salvation not condemnation.
• “Let him who has no sin cast the first stone.” Augustine exclaims “O response of Wisdom herself. How this answer sent the accusers back to examine themselves.” They saw an adulteress, but they did not look within themselves. They, the breakers of the Law, wanted the Law fulfilled against her, but they would bring this about so as to slander Jesus.
• John 8;6 “He wrote upon the ground with his finger.” Augustine interprets this as Jesus trying to tell the accusers something. Perhaps the scribes and the Pharisees did understand later the connection between this strange action and the fact that the Law was written by the finger of God. The law was to be written on the heart. But the hearts of the Israelites were so hard that God had to write the Law on stone. Augustine interprets this action of the Lord to mean that the hearts of the accusers were set upon the rock-hard stone of the written law. These same lovers of the law had hearts so hard that God could not write his law upon their hearts with his finger. He had put it in stone for them.
• This section has been interpreted by many as Christ portraying the Father as the Divine legislator, the great Law maker.
• Augustine is speaking not just of the Scribes and Pharisees here but is also addressing his congregation. He tells us to go up into the tribunal of the mind and to consider there his own soul. Just as each of the accuser gazed upon his own soul and found himself a sinner, so too we shall have to reflect when we feel it appropriate to condemn others. “Let the woman who sins be punished, but not by sinners.” He accepts that the accusers were all accused by their own consciences. Augustine comments that they have no choice but “to pardon her or else accept the punishment of the Law along with her.” This is the true justice speaking to us. Then Augustine concludes this section by adding, “And when they were struck by this Justice as with a spear the size of a beam, they looked into themselves and found themselves guilty, and they walked away, all of them, one by one.”
33,6 Jesus as Lord of Gentleness.
• Section 6 really begins with 33,5,4 There was nobody left in the Temple precinct but the two, Pitiable Woman and Pity itself. Relicti sunt duo - Misera et Misericordia But the Lord’s gentleness, the very attribute that the accusers has sought to exploit him, was so effusive that he did not look up and enjoy their defeat. He stayed on the ground, writing with his finger. Augustine stresses the gentleness of Jesus.
• The woman has been rescued by Jesus as justice of God. Now she is alone with the only person who is entitled to punish her in Justice. He has not sinned and so he has the right to stone her. “But he who had repulsed the adversaries with the tongue of Justice, raised eyes of gentleness to her. Has no man condemned you? No one, Lord, she replied. Then neither will I condemn you. I, by whom you probably expected to be condemned, since you find no sin in me” 6
• Augustine the good pastor now asks rhetorically whether this means that Christ countenanced sins. Augustine answers that the Lord’s command to her is to “Go and sin no more.” Augustine comments that the Lord loved the sinner while he condemned the sin.
33,7
This wonderful section shows Augustine the pastor advising his people to repent and to trust in the Lord. He advises neither false confidence in the eternal patience of God, nor any despair that we are doomed by our weakness.
Augustine is involved in opposing Pelagius and his doctrine. This doctrine taught that man did not need Grace for his salvation. Pelagius believed that humans could, by act of the will, renounce all sins and live so well that they could earn their entry in to heaven.
Therefore, when we hear Augustine speak of the need for hope and the need to rely on the goodness of God, he is deliberately aiming at Pelagius whose teaching found no need for relying on mercy and goodness of God. Humans could act with such goodness and virtue that God, in justice, would have to allow them into heaven.
1 Tract 33,3 Et non tenebatur, quia nondum pati dignabatur.
2 Inde Jesus perexxit in montem, in montem aten oliveti, in montem fructuosem, in montem ungeunti, in montem chrismatis. Ubi enim decebat docere Christum, nisi in monte oliveti?Christi enim nomen a chrismate dictum est. Tr in Jo 33, 3,
3 Ideo autem nos unxit, quia luctatores contra diabolem fecit
4 Sed cui hoc. Peruersitas rectitudini, falsitas veritati, corruptum cor cordi recto, stulitia sapientiae.
5 Quando illi laqueosprepararent, in quos non prius ipsi caput inicerent?
6 Ille autem qui adversaries eius repulerat lingua justitiae, levans in eam oculos mansuetudinis interrogauit eam, Nemo te condemnauit? Respondit illi, Domine Nemo. Et ille, nec ego te condemnabo, a quo te forte damnari timuisti, quia in me peccatum non invenisti.”