Fifth Sunday of Lent: More Impossible Mercy
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage
More Impossible Mercy – Fifth Sunday of Lent Year C -: John 8:1-11
We could call today’s readings on the woman caught in adultery chapter two of the prodigal son; just more impossible Mercy. “Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” (John 8:11)
Many of us may secretly believe that this story of the woman caught in adultery and forgiven by Jesus, sends out the wrong message, a blank cheque, a ‘get out of jail free’ card. You can live as you please, be involved in all sorts of immorality, and yet Jesus comes along, wipes the slate clean, and tells you to go away; you’re not condemned for breaking God’s law, you’re forgiven. Where is the justice in that, where is the repentance, where is the penance, the restitution, and the payback.
This apparently creates the danger of misguiding people into thinking that they can live as they like, and yet still be forgiven by God, as though Mercy trumps justice. This appears to open our doors, especially our church doors, to the ‘disordered’ lives of fornicators, adulterers, masturbaters, slanderers, liers, abortionists, and gays; unthinkable; shocking; not acceptable, a moral evil! Yet when we face killing and war, another standard must be applied; how else are we to justify war and self-preservation of the ‘innocent’.
The Pharisees missed the point, many Bible scholars, theologians, and churches have missed the point. “… who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God.” (Mark 10:27)
Sin has a history that develops over time. Prior to the exile of the Hebrews, sin was seen as a weight, a burden that bears down upon us. The oppressive grasp of fractured relationships is an experience that most of us will easily identify with. The Babylonian exile resulted in sin language being adapted to the language of commerce requiring repayment to be made. Medieval scholarship went along with this idea and sin becomes the ‘great affront’ to God’s dignity and goodness requiring repayment of this frightful debt.
The Pharisees and Scribes set the woman in the centre; guilty and subject to the code of justice. A lonely figure made into a spectacle by these religious men. How often do the powerful seek to distract from their own guilt by pointing the finger at the vulnerable; especially on the subject of sex. ‘This woman was taken in adultery, in the very act!’ God’s law said that if a man and a woman committed adultery, both of them were to undergo justice. Yet here the woman is alone; their justice that they prided themselves in was partial, it was inconsistent; always the way with Law and legalism.
Jesus writes on the ground. What does Jesus write that affects these men in such deep way? I do not believe that the listing of their sins would have elicited the shame and guilt that we see in these devious conspirators. In terms of the law, in any case, their sinfulness in no way inhibited their right and their obligation to carry out the sentence of the law.
Perhaps there is another explanation. The convenient appearance of this woman caught in the very act of adultery would require a co-conspirator to close the snare of enticement and entrapment. Perhaps one of their own inner ‘gentleman’s circle’. Imagine for a moment the effect of Jesus writing the name of their co-conspirator for all to see. Perhaps next to this name, a little quote from Leviticus: ‘You shall not lie or speak falsely to one another. You shall not swear falsely by my name, thus profaning the name of your God. I am the LORD.’ This would be a real threat to the conspirators, facing the same punishment that they would have enacted on this accused ‘woman caught in adultery’.
Our Lenten journey into the desert calls on each one of us to examine our motives, attitudes, and actions; to fall in love once more with Jesus who continues to come to us, to call us, and to walk with us.
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