Fifth Sunday of Lent Year C

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.

 R eligion is, by its very nature, conservative. We like our prayers, our gestures and rituals, our peculiar expressions; our interpretations, understandings, and memories the way they are. We can write our religion into rules and laws and continually remind ourselves of what we believe and how things are done. We can inscribe our doctrines on stone walls and paint it on lofty ceilings. We can preserve it in a catechism, memorize it, and teach it to our children. 

Should anyone ask us what we think, how we feel, or what we intend to do, we can answer them. We know; we've got it all worked out. Should anyone want to join us, we can show them how we do it. If they ask us why we do it this way, we can send them to the priest and he'll explain it. 

And then something happens; something unexpected, something unforeseen, something catastrophic, that was not supposed to happen, that could not happen because we always knew that God would not let it happen, even if he had warned us that it might happen. 

Something like the conquest and destruction of God's holy city Jerusalem; something like the razing of Solomon's temple, one of the wonders of the ancient world, and the deportation of Jews from their Promised Land to the faraway, pagan city of Babylon. None of that should have happened. But it did. 

Now what? What should we do? How should we feel? We always knew how to feel about our Sabbaths, holy days, and festivals. We knew the remorse of penitential days and the joy of the Passover. 

Should we just forget the past? It's over; it's done? We don't understand the present; the future we expected will never come. But what did we expect? We don't remember. We didn't expect anything except that things would never change. Our children would learn what our parents taught us.

Even the past doesn't mean what it used to mean. How do we explain everything to our children when nothing makes sense? How do we teach our children our religious history when they are speaking Babylonian and not Hebrew; and say that old Jewish stuff doesn't work for them! What doesn’t make sense is what we see all around us! It only makes sense if we stay in our rooms, turn out the lights, shut the windows, and remember the way things used to be. 

Isaiah comes to us today as he did to the Jews in Babylon, as John the Baptist came to Judea, as Jesus came to the Jews in Jerusalem, as Saint Paul came to the Jews in Rome, and says, 

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.

 

In this twenty-first century, with the unprecedented advances of technology – we call them advances although we have no idea where they’re advancing to, or what these technocrats intend to do with them…. With these so-called advances our old religion with its stories of Jesus, Mary, and the saints; with its rituals of marriage, baptism, confession, and the Mass; with its rosaries, sacramentals, and tombstones; with its doctrines of the Trinity, the Blessed Sacrament, the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth – our good old religion can’t tell us what might come next. If there is an end to the world, does that end mean the end of time, or the end-purpose of humankind which seems no closer to peace on earth, good will to men, than it was two thousand years ago? 

In today’s gospel, Jesus did something new. No one saw it coming. By foolishly playing in the dirt and making an unexpected suggestion, he confounded a street gang of law-abiding citizens. They probably went away laughing at themselves because no one could throw the first stone. 

Because it was so clever and so unexpected we might call it something new. It sprang forth and we perceived it but what did it mean?  

The prophet Daniel had prayed:

Lord, great and awesome God, you who keep your covenant and show mercy toward those who love you….
We have sinned, been wicked and done evil; we have rebelled and turned from your commandments and your laws….

Justice, O Lord, is on your side; we are shamefaced even to this day. (Daniel 9:4-7)

But here is Jesus, the righteous, holy, and entirely innocent Son of God who is standing with this shamefaced woman. He is standing not on God’s side, on the “right side of Justice,” but by her side, with her shame, helplessness, guilt, and fear. He is not even standing over her because, at least for a moment, he stooped down there in the dirt with her. If we believe that he is the Lord of Heaven and Earth, then it’s true that God has come down to be with her. And with us in our shame, remorse, and guilt. 

And by the way, the mob in Jerusalem who were ready to stone the woman came back on Good Friday, and demanded his crucifixion – because he stood with us in our sins and not with the righteousness of God. By defending this woman and making fools of her tormentors, he all but joined the crowd in their cries for his death! 

Had he said nothing and walked away from the crowd and the woman; he might have escaped. But he could not do that because he is our savior and, as Saint Paul said to Timothy, "he cannot deny himself." 

It was a simple incident. It was so small and insignificant that some scripture scholars say it should not even belong in the Gospel of Saint John. It’s too much like one of the silly stories out of the Gospel of Saint Thomas or the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. It’s a joke, like his changing water into wine at Cana. It’s no big deal. 

But God must stand with us as our world plunges toward wherever it's going. We cannot continue on this road to ecological annihilation, the migration of billions of people, and total war. We see the world's future and it's bleak, with neither hope nor good news. But God has promised something new and God knows we need something new.