Order includes:

• high-res image file formatted for print

• high-res image file formatted for web/projection

• A PDF of the artist's statement & scripture reference for the visual

• A visio divina Bible Study Guide for you to use this image in a group study session that incorporates the ancient Benedictine spiritual practice of "divine seeing."

Credit info:

When printing and sharing online, please always include the following credits:
Artist's name | A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org

From the artist:

I often wonder about the backstory of the woman from John 8:2-11. What were her circumstances? How did they “catch” her in the act of adultery? In flagrante delicto? Was it less graphic than that? Was she allowed to explain herself? Did she protest? If she was about to be stoned, what happened to the person with whom she was accused? Was this a loving relationship? Was it even consensual?

Whatever her story, the Pharisees bring her to Jesus expecting him to uphold the law’s punitive prescription. Jesus knows it’s a trap. If he concurs with the law, he initiates and must bear witness to an act of extreme brutality that would traumatize anyone who had to watch. If he counters the law, he’s a heretic and should probably be stoned himself. But he outsmarts them and turns their self- righteousness and rage back onto them.

In what should have been the end of her life’s story, this woman now finds herself standing. Whole. Alive. Freed to a new future. And through it all, Jesus is just drawing on the ground—like you do!

I wanted to show this woman standing in her wholeness, right after the crowds have dispersed and right before Jesus rises to meet her as an equal. She’s backlit in a way that suggests the sun has set, indicating the end of a saga. What will she do at the end of a nightmare with a new life ahead of her? What decisions do we face at the dawn of a second chance?

—Rev. T. Denise Anderson