Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent — Year C

In these middle weeks of Lent, we are presented with two stories about sinners, the consequences of their sin, and the redemptive mercy of God. While last week’s Prodigal Son story was a parable, a fabrication of the Lord’s imagination, which He used 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 consciences of both the sinner and the accusers. In doing so, He reveals both God’s forgiveness and the purpose of His mercy. This purpose was revealed by God through the Prophet Isaiah, as God said, “Remember not the events of the past; the things of long ago consider not. See: I am doing something new!” This notion will be echoed later as we heard Saint Paul speaking to the Philippians (to which we will return in a moment).

 

God the Father then describes that “something new”: it will be like a new Exodus, using images of the first Exodus to show that, as He drew the Hebrews out of their slavery in Egypt, He will now draw sinners — that’s you and me — away from our slavery to sin. His plan is to lead us through a new desert: the sometimes harsh experiences of life, but now 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 praise.” This means that the point of forgiveness is a new relationship with God, what Saint Paul describes as “God’s upward calling in Christ Jesus.”

 

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the young man had accused himself of sin. In our story today of “The Woman Caught Sinning,” however, others accuse her. She is put into a position she had not sought: not seeking forgiveness as the Prodigal Son had, 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 and vulnerable before God and Man.

 

This happens frequently enough in marriage and family life when we are confronted for our misdeeds and hurtful words, as our Loved Ones meet us with stones of truth at the ready. But in this story, Jesus teaches us by example how to realize what Saint Paul called “God’s upward calling.”

 

When the Pharisees put the question to Jesus about what should be done with this adulteress (keep in mind: they despised Jesus as much as they despised the woman) they couch their question in legal terms. In response to them, Jesus does not argue; Saint John tells us that Jesus, instead, writes on the ground. What did He write? We’re not told, but some Scripture scholars suggest that the Lord’s writing on the ground parallels God the Father’s writing on the tablets of stone, given to Moses.

 

By not responding to a legal question with a legal answer, Jesus raises the situation to the moral sphere, the basis 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 scene to bring forward the true object that He has in mind: to save one who was lost. As we hear elsewhere in the Gospel of John, the Son of God came into the world not to condemn the world, but to save it. Who, then are we to condemn one another… or to criticize, to judge, to gossip about, or to assume that we can read the heart of another person?

 

Saint Augustine said of this Gospel 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.”

 

We should look at the sins, faults and failings of others as though we were looking into a mirror. While some transgressions should be pointed out for the good of another person’s immortal soul, the truth must always be spoken with prudence and charity. 

 

One of Our Lord’s greatest sayings comes to us in this story as He says, “Let the one among you 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 his own life.

 

In this, Christ challenges us stone-throwers to personal insight and judgment, and to embrace justice that might not yet be mercy, but at least allows the time to drop the intended projectile, verbal or otherwise. With Isaiah, we can put down the stones and instead, attempt to “do something new.” And with Saint Paul, we can consider our accusations of others as “so much rubbish,” forgetting what lies behind and striving to what lies ahead: the hope of becoming more Christ-like.