Fifth Sunday of Lent

Lectionary: 36


Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
In the desert I make a way,
in the wasteland, rivers.


Today's gospel shines with the beauty of God in Jesus. It is a brilliant picture of his mercy, especially because his courageous word and deed are set against the sinister intentions of his enemies. Although historians tell us women were no longer stoned for adultery at the time of Jesus, we can well imagine the mob erupting in a killing frenzy had Jesus not intervened. We know, a few months later, they did kill Saint Stephen in just that fashion.

Jesus has saved this woman with a gesture and a word, which were so powerful the violent crowd could only retreat in confusion. There are very few men or women who can command such authority. Mark Twain, in his novel Huckleberry Finn, described such a mob's retreat before a judge who dared them to hang him. Cardinal Pacelli once faced down an anti-clerical mob in Rome. Several years later he took the name Pope Pius XII.

But Jesus did not even stand before the mob. He squatted down to the ground and began to play in the dirt. When he finally stood up he invited them to have at it, "Let he who has not sinned throw the first stone!" No one dared to make such a claim before a jury of his peers.

But Jesus' action is also profoundly confusing. Should we not condemn the woman? Hasn't she committed a heinous crime against the family, the civil order and God's law? She had almost certainly sinned against her father, husband or brother who claimed authority over her. In those day and in that part of the world, all women belonged to men who were responsible for their behavior. The case of a woman caught in the very act of adultery could not be dismissed out of hand. And yet Jesus sent her away,

"Neither do I condemn you.Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”

Did he suppose that she would not sin again? Oddly, he did not invite her to "repent and turn away from sin." Nor did he say, "come follow me" although many other women were following him.

In this story, Jesus seems to upend the whole moral order. He seems to have forgotten his duty to give us a new order, if he is dissolving the old. But, in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, we remember he said, 

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place."

If we are to understand his action, and answer for ourselves, "What would Jesus do?" we have to enter through the narrow gate that he offers us. We have to go through him.

In the same Gospel of Saint John, he has told us in chapter 3, 17: 

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

Christians too, have been sent into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through our virtue. Our first reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah tells us,

Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
In the desert I make a way,
in the wasteland, rivers.

As we enter this "Passiontide" and prepare for Holy Week, we must enter a "cloud of unknowing." We must be confused and uncertain about everything as we approach Calvary and the mysteries of the Triduum. We do not know how to judge people. We do not know what our policies or attitudes should be. We must wait and watch for something altogether new and unexpected to appear. We must enter that cloud that enveloped Moses and Elijah on Mount Tabor, that cloud through which the Hebrews passed on their way to freedom. (I Cor 1:10)