Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 39:1 (Winter 2025)
Article: Where Are Your Accusers?
Author: Jill Richardson

PP 39:1 (Winter 2025) p. 23

Where Are Your Accusers?

Jill Richardson

A Sermon

Rev. Dr. Jill Richardson is a writer, speaker, pastor, author of five books, and contributor to three others. She cofounded a women’s advocacy group in her denomination and specializes in writing for a healthy church. She likes to travel, grow flowers, break into random musical numbers, and sit with a good cup of Earl Grey.

I grew up on cop and courtroom shows. I loved the drama of catching the bad guy or seeing a lawyer convince the jury, in commanding tones of injured justice, that the defendant was innocent. Who knew the smoking gun was there all along? Where did that surprise witness come from? And of course, there was always Columbo’s “just one more thing” that clinched the person’s guilt.

Having worked in a law office and served on a jury, I’m now aware that television doesn’t portray a courtroom quite accurately. We don’t depict justice as it really happens.

This is nothing new. Courtroom scenes have always been played in different ways, sometimes in ways far from just. So, it’s refreshing to look today at a trial of sorts that clearly veers toward injustice—but we get a plot twist that only Jesus can deliver. That twist has surprising relevance for the ways we listen to and believe women today.

We are in a sermon series on questions God asks us. Today’s story—and the question God asks in it—isn’t just a story about one person, or one trial. And it is especially relevant to today’s culture.

John 8:1–6 (NLT): Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.

“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”

They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.

Here’s the setting. A crowd. Jesus teaching them. And what happens? This group of men interrupts the teaching to deposit a woman in the middle of the crowd, maybe with little clothing, since the text says she was “caught in the act.” It’s wrong on so many levels.

Have you ever been embarrassed in front of a group? I remember my tenth-grade spelling bee. At some point, I looked across the room at my crush. He was looking at me! I looked back. I fli...