We continue to
celebrate the Jubilee Year of Mercy, and this gospel passage, I’m sure you’ll
agree, is the perfect example, a kind of a poster child, if you will, of
Christ’s mercy.
Let’s put ourselves
in this Gospel scene – it’s early morning, the sun is shining, we’ve here in
the temple area to listen to this Jesus fellow preach, and all of a sudden
there’s this hubbub, a commotion, as this crowd of scribes and Pharisees and
their followers rush in, practically dragging this woman, perhaps half-dressed,
whom they have caught in the very act of adultery.
We know the scribes
and Pharisees have been complaining that this Jesus was welcoming tax
collectors and sinners and eating with them.
Maybe, just maybe, this woman had been one of those sinners that Jesus
was hanging out with.
Now here are these
angry scribes and Pharisees, eager to catch Jesus, eager to find something to
hold against him, so they go out and find this woman and forcibly bring her to
Jesus.
Now – before we get
too far into “scribes and Pharisees = bad, adulterous women = good” we should
recall this. This woman was guilty as
sin. Guilty of sin - caught in the very
act. No question about her guilt. And not just any sin, a serious sin. Commandment no. 6 here. The scriptures make clear – the punishment
for this sin is death, by stoning.
According to the law, she was caught red-handed and about to get what
she deserved.
And the scribes and
Pharisees? People serious about their
faith, serious about following the law.
Even justified in their desire for “justice under the law.”
But their motive
wasn’t justice. Their motive was to
eliminate this threat, Jesus, this threat to their way of thinking, their way
of believing.
So that sets the
stage. Sets the creative tension, so to
speak. What’s Jesus going to do? All fall silent, watching as He writes on the
ground. Who knows what He was writing,
it matters not. Maybe He was just taking
His time, thinking.
What am I gonna say,
how am I going to save this woman from certain death? Should I stand and yell and call them
hypocrites, a brood of vipers? No –
hypocrites they may be but I love them.
We know what He
does. He simply challenges them. Let the one without sin be the first. And one by one they drop their rocks and walk
away. Including you and me.
But we continue to
watch from afar. It’s just the two of
them now. “No one condemns you, neither
do I. Now go and sin no more.”
What are we to make
of this beautiful Gospel scene?
First, what amazing
tenderness, amazing gentleness Jesus brings to this situation. That’s the word that kept coming to me over
and over this week as I thought about and prayed with this Gospel – gentleness. Oh yes, mercy and love also, but gentleness,
tenderness, compassion. Here He is, the
eternal Son of God, born without sin, surrounded by sin. Hers - sins of the flesh. Theirs - sins of pride, envy, anger. And Jesus transforms the entire situation
with His love, mercy, tenderness, gentleness.
This scene brought
to mind the beautiful vision we heard from the Book of the prophet Ezekiel at
Mass this past Tuesday. How a trickle of
water flows out of the altar and out of the temple, first becoming a small
stream that one can walk through up to the knee, becoming larger, up to the
waste, then becoming a river that you’d have to swim across, flowing out and
freshening the barren desert, finally emptying into the sea, where the cool,
clean river water freshens the salt water of the ocean.
That’s what Jesus
is doing here. Surrounded by a desert of
sin, He brings life-giving water.
Surrounded by the salt water of sin, He freshens and transforms the
situation. Indeed, we can be confident
that He transforms lives, her life. For
what person, imprisoned in their sin and doomed to death, who encounters Jesus,
who calls Himself the life-giving water of salvation, goes back to the
same-old, same-old life.
No one! Forgiven and set free and told to go and sin no
more, we can only imagine that this woman’s encounter with Jesus Christ was
completely life-changing, that she was a new person, a “new creation” as we
heard from St. Paul last week, as someone who counts their former life apart
from Christ as so much rubbish as we hear from St. Paul this week.
So what do we take
away from these readings, from this Gospel?
Two things, I think –
The first is
this. We are all this woman. And we
are all these scribes and Pharisees. We
are all sinners, caught up in our sin, maybe so blinded by sin that we don’t
even realize our sin. We all deserve,
under the law, to die. Hopelessly
trapped. Trapped, apart from a
life-changing encounter with Christ Jesus.
We have seven days
until Holy Week to encounter Him and let Him transform our lives, to put aside
forever all that keeps us from Him, all that is rubbish in our lives. And Holy Week to follow Jesus along the way
of His passion, to ask Him to show us in a new, more powerful way, the amazing
love He has for each of us, that He showed us by pouring out His blood on the
cross, for me, for you.
A very real way to
encounter Jesus, to experience the same mercy, that same gentleness, is (if we
haven’t already done so this Lent) to go to confession, the Sacrament of
Reconciliation. There we hear in the
words of absolution the same message the woman heard from the Lord Himself – “if
no one condemns you, neither do I condemn you.
Now go and do not sin any more.”
Second, just as
Jesus freshened the brackish water of his Gospel scene with His love, mercy and
gentleness, so you and I are called to take that same love, mercy and
gentleness that flows from this altar right here, out there. In every scene of our lives, in our families,
in our schools, workplaces, the supermarket, on the highways – you and I are
called to bring healing and mercy and especially gentleness and love to freshen
the desert of this culture we find all around us.
I heard it said
this week – there are two types of Christians.
The first sees faith as a relationship with a loving God, encountered in
the face of His eternal Son, Jesus Christ.
A person whose entire life is centered on that relationship alone, who’s
been “taken possession of” by Jesus Christ in every facet of their lives. The second sees faith primarily as a set of
rules to be followed to live a good life.
Sisters and
brothers, rules are important. Jesus
said “if you love Me you will keep my commandments,” and He told this woman “go
and sin no more.”
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