Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

In these later weeks of Lent we are presented with two stories about sinners, the consequences of their sins, and the redemptive mercy of God. While last week’s Prodigal Son was given in Parable form, a fabrication of the Lord’s imagination to teach about God’s mercy, this week we are presented with the real thing: a woman exposed in her sinfulness.

The Lord uses this real-life episode as a teaching moment, appealing to the conscience of both the sinner and the accusers. In doing so, He reveals both God’s mercy, and the purpose of His mercy. This purpose was originally revealed by God through the Prophet Isaiah, as God says, “Remember not the events of the past; the things of long ago consider not. See: I am doing something new!”

God the Father then describes that “something new”: it will be like a new Exodus. Using images from the first Exodus to show that, as He drew the Hebrews out of their slavery in Egypt, He will now draw sinners — that is — you and me away from slavery to sin.

His plan is to lead us through a new desert: the sometimes harsh experiences of life, but with water to drink along the way in the form of the Grace of the Sacraments. This new Exodus will lead us away from sin to the new “Promised Land” of holiness, where, as God promises, “The people whom I formed for myself might announce my praises.”

This means that the point of forgiveness is a new and graced relationship with God, what Saint Paul describes as “God’s upward calling in Christ Jesus.” In the story of “The Prodigal Son,” the young man had accused himself of sin. In the story of “The Woman Caught in Adultery,” however, it is others who accuse her.

She is put into a position she had not sought: not seeking forgiveness as the Prodigal Son had done, but thrust into this predicament by the circumstances of her life. There occurred here an immediacy in which she could prepare no defense. There she stood: sinful before God and the people.

This happens frequently enough in marriage and family life when we’re confronted for our misdeeds or hurtful words, and our Loved Ones meet us with stones of truth at the ready.

But in this story, Jesus teaches by example how to realize what Saint Paul calls “God’s upward calling.” “Upward?” This means to life on a higher plane, where mercy outshines judging and accusing others, and treats them with the kind of mercy with which God cares for us.

Then, when the Pharisees put the question to Jesus about what should be done with the adulteress… (Note here: they despise Jesus as much as they despise the woman.)… they couch their question in legal terms.

In response to them, Saint John tells us that He leaves them in silence as He writes on the ground. What did He write? We’re not told, but one Scripture Scholar suggests that the Lord’s writing on the ground parallels God the Father’s writing the Commandments on tablets of stone, giving them to Moses.

By not responding to a legal question with a legal answer, Jesus raises the situation to the moral sphere, the basis of, and justification for, all laws. And, while He does not deny or negate the fact — nor the seriousness — of the woman’s sin, He uses this public-but-now-private scene to bring forward the true object that He has in mind: to save that which was lost.

As we hear elsewhere in the Gospel of Saint John, (3:16) the Son of God came into the world not to condemn the world, but to save us. Who, then, are we to condemn one another?

+ to criticize

+ to judge

+ to gossip about

+ to assume that we can read the heart of another?

Saint Augustine said of this moment: “How can sinners keep the Law by punishing this woman? Let each of them look inside himself and enter the tribunal of his own heart and conscience. There he will discover that he, too, is a sinner. Let this woman be punished, but not by sinners. Let the Law be applied, but not by its transgressors.”

This means that we should look at the sins, the faults, or the failings of others as though we were looking in a mirror. While some transgressions should be pointed out for the good of another person’s eternal soul, the truth must always be spoken with Prudence and Charity.

One of the Lord’s greatest remarks comes to us in this story, as He says, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.” Here He reverses the psychological notion of “projection,” in which one projects his own sins and failings onto others, rather than address these realities in one’s own life.

In this, Our Lord challenges us stone-throwers to personal insight and judgment, and to embrace justice on our way to mercy, which can slow down our rush to judgment, allowing time to set aside the verbal projectiles.

Along with the Prophet Isaiah, we can drop the stones and, instead, “do something new.” And with Saint Paul, we can consider our accusations of others as “so much rubbish…” forgetting what lies behind, and striving toward what lies ahead: the hope of becoming more Christ-like.