Homily for 5th Sunday of Lent

Homily for the
5th Sunday of Lent

April 3, 2022
John 8: 1-11
St. Joseph, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin any more” (John 8: 11).      

(by Lucas Cranach the Elder)

In last week’s gospel (Luke 15:1-3), Jesus’ opponents complained, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them” (3:2).  Today’s gospel gives us further interaction between Jesus and his opponents and between Jesus and sinners.  This 1st episode in the 8th chapter of St. John is one of the most intriguing stories in the gospels.  All of us wonder at the elements that are omitted.  Where’s the man with whom this adultress was consorting?  What was Jesus writing on the ground?

Those are interesting questions, to be sure.  More important, however, is what is included in the story.

s for the missing parts:  We may suspect that this unfortunate woman was entrapped; that she was set up because the scribes and Pharisees really wanted to trap Jesus, and they were using her as bait.  That would be why they didn’t need to produce her partner in crime, who may have been in collusion with them.  This is only speculation; it’s not in the gospel.  What is evident, tho, is that the scribes and Pharisees have no intention of carrying out the Law of Moses in full, for that dictates in Deuteronomy ch. 22:  “If a man is discovered having relations with a woman who is married to another, both the man and the woman … shall die.  Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst” (22:22).  History and our common human experience repeatedly show us the depths to which we can sink when we don’t focus our lives on God, or when we sometimes lose our focus.  I mean here the scribes and Pharisees, not the woman they’ve dragged before Jesus.

As for Jesus’ scribbling in the dirt, barrels of ink have been consumed in writing about that.  I’ll spill a little more—HP toner, actually.  Perhaps Jesus was listing some sins of the accusers standing before him; if so, it didn’t serve to silence them, for they persisted in asking his judgment (8:7).  Perhaps he was writing the name of just one individual, the missing partner in sin.  Perhaps he was just doodling—stalling for time while he weighed his response, or making a pregnant pause to give the lynch mob—because that’s what stands before him—time to think about what they’re about.

It’s not only the woman who’s on trial here.  So is Jesus:  “they said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him” (8:6).  He seems to be in a position of having to violate the Law of Moses by overlooking this woman’s sin, or to approve the Law’s harshness by permitting its sentence to be carried out.  Since such an execution which would, technically, also violate the Roman government’s control over death sentences, that too would give them something to charge against Jesus.

Jesus will have no part in the role of judge here.  He’s been seated in the position of a teacher (8:2), and takes on a teaching role by turning the Law of Moses against the woman’s accusers.  The Law required that the witnesses to a capital crime be the 1st ones to carry it out, i.e., to cast the 1st stone (Deut 17:7).  So Jesus tells the mob, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the 1st to throw a stone at her” (8:7).

Don’t you and I love to find fault with our neighbors, co-workers, employers, maybe our parish priests or our children’s teachers or school administrators?  How often has Pope Francis condemned gossip, which too often amounts to character assassination.  We condemn everyone’s sins except our own.  So in this episode with the adultress, Jesus is telling us to examine our own consciences and be less concerned with the sins of others.

Jesus wrote on the ground.  No one can say with certainty what he wrote.  If it concerned anyone’s sins, what is certain is that his writing had no permanence.  It was in the dirt, easily scuffed out and forgotten—like our sins when we bring them before the compassion of Jesus.  So we’re not afraid to do that, to bring our sins big or small to Jesus in prayer and in the sacrament of Reconciliation—knowing that his mercy is more than enuf to reconcile us with God.

Finally, we note the dialog between Jesus and the unhappy woman left standing before him.  All thru this episode, Jesus has been seated, the position he’d taken while teaching the people (8:2) before the mob showed up.  Having bent down twice to write on the ground, now he straightens up to speak to the woman (8:10), still seated in the position of teacher but also of a judge.  He doesn’t condemn her, as he the sinless one might have, but pardons her—pardons her also with a command to turn away from sin.

We celebrate Jesus’ boundless mercy.  We have always to remember that he also orders us to keep from sin (as best we can in our imperfection)—not only from adultery but all the other violations of the commandments and all manner of sins against our neighbors as well as against God.  Jesus will always forgive what we do in our weakness.  He won’t forgive a heart hardened in sin, one that sees no need to repent or refuses to turn to God in sorrow.

So, brothers and sisters, we may make our own St. Paul’s words in our 2d reading:  “I have accepted the loss of all things”—whatever we take pride in, and our sins—“and I consider them so much rubbish”—Paul’s Greek word is stronger and could be rendered as “garbage” or, as the KJV and the Douay-Rheims Bible translate it, as “dung,” or as we might say, “poop” or “manure.”  Paul continues with his reason for putting “all things” aside as “so much rubbish”:  “that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own … but that which comes thru faith in Christ” (Phil 3:8-9).