You probably don’t realize it but we, as a parish community, are in the midst of one of those good news/bad news scenarios. The bad news is that the parish this year has no catechumens or candidates entering the Church at Easter Vigil. Truly a sadness and a loss. The good news is that because we don’t have any catechumens, we dispense with the scrutinies and their readings for the last three weeks of Lent. What this means is that rather than proclaiming the account of the rising of Lazarus from John’s Gospel, we are proclaiming today from John’s account of the stoning of the adulterous woman.
As you may have noticed, the readings for the past couple of weeks have focused on forgiveness and reconciliation. And, today’s readings are no different.
But first, I’d like to put the Gospel reading into the context of that time. We have the Mosaic Law consisting of the Ten Commandments and 613 Laws known as the Mitzvot. These Laws touched on every facet of life. The penalties for breaking any one of these Laws varied. Violating twenty-three of the Laws merited the death penalty including breaking the Sabbath, adultery, cursing a parent, kidnapping and so on.
I am sure you have heard the Old Testament phrase “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. It is used by some today to justify capital punishment when in fact it was part of the Israelites’ reciprocal justice system attempting to curtail the extremes of a legal system, such as the loss of a hand for stealing bread. Then, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount turns everything up side down with his teaching about retaliation and loving our enemies.
Jesus is offering a new way– teaching God’s compassion for his people. No matter how many times the Israelites abandoned their God, no matter how many times they became “stiff-necked” and refused to do his will, God is always there to call them back. This has been my experience, and maybe yours, as well. God never gives up on us.
In the whole of the New Testament we see God, in the person of Jesus, calling his sinful people to be converted, to put their whole trust in the message he brings and to follow his way of truth and life.
In today’s Gospel passage, there are two kinds of sinners. First, there is the woman who was caught in the act of adultery, a serious matter. But, a death sentence?
In this story, the Scribes and Pharisees are also sinners. Not in their own eyes, of course, but in the eyes of Jesus they are totally lacking in the compassion that God displays and which he expects his followers to have: “Be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful.” The Pharisees and the Scribes are proud and arrogant, they give themselves the prerogative to sit in judgment of others. They have no idea how to love, how to forgive – only how to keep the Law. They are thus far from God. They do not love the people that God loves.
The woman in this story is not just an isolated sinner. She represents all of us. She represents every person who has sinned. She represents you and me. And the Scribes and Pharisees, who were sinners too, also represent you and me. We sin in both ways: when we hurt others by indulging our desires at their expense and when we hurt others by setting ourselves up as superior and better than they are.
If we had been there that day, what would we have done? Would we have condemned the guilty woman too? Even during the past week, how many people have we condemned in our hearts or with our words? How many people have we ourselves passed judgment on? How do you feel about the death penalty? Knowing full well our Catholic teaching and that our Bishops have, since the 1970s, condemned the death penalty, where to you stand? Pope Francis recently urged the end of the death penalty worldwide. Where do you stand?
And, there is another element in the story. The woman has been dragged before Jesus as a pawn in a game. The game is one of entrapment. The Pharisees and Scribes hope to condemn him by his own words. If he agrees with Moses, he belies his own teaching and behavior with sinners; if he rejects the Law of Moses, he can be denounced as no man of God.
We know the story well! Unlike the Pharisees and Scribes, upholders of the Law, Jesus refuses to condemn the woman. Rather he gives her an opportunity to repent, to convert and change her ways. It is important for us to remember Jesus came not to condemn but to save, to rehabilitate, to give new and enduring life. Jesus always leaves a door open—if he didn’t, trust me, I wouldn’t be here with you today!
If God acted like the Pharisees, how many times would each of us be condemned or ruined? But, no matter how many times one sins, no matter how serious the sin, even if the whole of society condemns the sin and expresses horror, God calls us to start over again, to change our way of seeing life and other people. How often does he do this? Once or twice? No, but seventy times seven times! In other words, always and forever.
In today’s story, Jesus saw a lonely, frightened woman, manipulated by cruel, self-righteous men for their own sinister ends. He saw the potential for change and he accepted her totally.
This was also the experience of Paul in the second reading, also once a zealous Pharisee. Paul knew that God had forgiven his sin, the sin of persecuting the disciples of Jesus. He realizes that it is not a question of becoming a morally perfect person by his own efforts. For him to have a close relationship with Jesus is the most precious thing in life.
The corporal and spiritual works of mercy, which we focus on this Year of Mercy, offer us the opportunity to experience a conversion Paul is speaking of– “I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” We will never be perfect, and yet we are called to strive always to be merciful like the father.
With St Patrick’s Day just around the corner, I would like to conclude with a quotation attributed to St. Patrick, “The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelieving heart, so that I should recall my sins”
Now is the time to recall our sins. Now is the time to seek the mercy of God. Now is the time to share that mercy with others.
There is a great deal of happiness and peace in our lives if, on the one hand, we can really grasp the attitude of God to the sinner, and if, on the other, we can make that attitude our own in our relationship with others.