Book of Common Prayer

Jesus revealed

⁹ I, John, your brother and your partner in the suffering, the kingdom, and the patient endurance in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. ¹⁰ I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet. ¹¹ “Write down what you see in a book,” it said, “and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.”

¹² So I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. As I turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, ¹³ and in the middle of the lampstands “one like a son of man,” wearing a full-length robe and with a golden belt across his chest. ¹⁴ His head and his hair were white, white like wool, white like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, ¹⁵ his feet were like exquisite brass, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. ¹⁶ He was holding seven stars in his right hand, and a sharp two-edged sword was coming out of his mouth. The sight of him was like the sun when it shines with full power. ¹⁷ When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though I was dead.

He touched me with his right hand. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I am the first and the last ¹⁸ and the living one. I was dead, and look! I am alive forever and ever. I have the keys of death and Hades. ¹⁹ Now write what you see, both the things that already are, and also the things that are going to happen subsequently. ²⁰ The secret meaning of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand, by the way, and the seven golden lampstands, is this. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches themselves.

Adultery and hypocrisy

⁵³ They all went off home,

8 and Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ² In the morning he went back to the Temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.

³ The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught out in adultery. They stood her out in the middle.

⁴ “Teacher,” they said to him. “This woman was caught in the very act of adultery. ⁵ In the law, Moses commanded us to stone people like this. What do you say?”

⁶ They said this to test him, so that they could frame a charge against him.

Jesus squatted down and wrote with his finger on the ground. ⁷ When they went on pressing the question, he got up and said to them, “Whichever of you is without sin should throw the first stone at her.”

⁸ And once again he squatted down and wrote on the ground.

⁹ When they heard that, they went off one by one, beginning with the oldest. Jesus was left alone, with the woman still standing there.

¹⁰ Jesus looked up.

“Where are they, woman?” he asked. “Hasn’t anybody condemned you?”

¹¹ “Nobody, sir,” she replied.

“Well, then,” said Jesus, “I don’t condemn you either! Off you go—and from now on don’t sin again!”