Mark Twain once wrote a story with the descriptive title: “The Terrible Catastrophe.” Before he had finished he had worked all of his characters into such a predicament that whatever any one of them did they would all be destroyed!  Contemplating his creation at this juncture, Twain concluded the story by writing, “I have these characters in such a fix I cannot get them out.  Anyone who thinks he can is welcome to try!”

In our Scripture we find that Jesus’ enemies thought that they had Him in just such a fix.  They presented Him with a problem for which there seemed to be no way out.  Whichever way he turned, He would be in trouble.  The story begins with the scribes and the Pharisees bringing to Jesus a woman caught in the act of adultery.  Parenthetically, we might note that this is the…