LECTIONARY READINGS
First Reading: Isaiah 43:16-21
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 125(126)
Second Reading: Philippians 3:8-14
Gospel: John 8:1-11
Link to readings
If there is a common thread running through the readings this Sunday, I think it would consist in that each in some way reveals that the primary intent of God with respect to human beings is to set them free – to call them out of the various captivities in which they find themselves into what Paul called “the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom 8:21).
In the First Reading, Isa 43:6-21, the great prophet of Israel’s exile compares the liberation and homecoming that is soon to take place with the past deliverance from Egypt, which in effect constituted Israel as a nation. The wonders and glorious of the new “Exodus” will surpass the earlier liberation, with the desert ways turned into a smooth highway to facilitate Israel’s return.
In Christian perspective both the Exodus and the return from Exile prefigure the Paschal liberation that God will effect through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And the result, again, will be a people formed “to sing God’s praises”.
EYES ON THE PRIZE
In the Second Reading, Phil 3:8-14, Paul, the former Pharisee and zealot for the law, tells of how Christ “captured” him – a “capture” that, in fact, set him free. Within one of his favourite images, that of an athletic contest, Paul then describes where he now finds himself in the race: not back at the start, not yet arrived at the perfection of the finish, but still running, putting the past behind him, eyes upon the finishing post and prize that lies ahead.
How much aberration in Christian spirituality and practice could have been avoided had Paul’s sanely realistic assessment of present Christian life been adopted. We are not to live back in the guilt of past sin; nor should we require – either of ourselves or of others – a perfection that really belongs to the future. We are to see ourselves, as God sees us, as people “on the way”.
As is well known, the episode told in today’s Gospel, John 8:1-11, is something of a foreign body in the Fourth Gospel. It is missing in all the major manuscripts and its tone and content is redolent more of the Gospel of Luke than that of John. We can surely be grateful, however, that it found a home here in the scriptural canon.
For the scribes and Pharisees the main point is not to get the woman punished but to set a trap for Jesus. Would he defy the prescriptions of the law of Moses or would he, by condemning the woman, usurp the prerogative of the Roman occupying power who reserved the death penalty to themselves (18:31)?
Readers of the gospel have long – and fruitlessly – speculated on what it was that Jesus wrote on the ground. We do not know. Perhaps he was only doodling. What the writing does, however, is provide a space of time for the opposition to melt away. Jesus does not confront the law directly. He just points out that the only person who could have a right to condemn another is one who has never sinned. If the eldest leaves first, that is because he has had a longer space of life in which to accumulate sin.
BETTER WAY OF DEALING WITH SIN
This way the punitive legal prescription simply falls away. Jesus has a better way of dealing with sin than condemnation and punishment. He does not deny or condone sin (the episode does seem to presuppose that the woman is in fact guilty – though we might well ask about her male accomplice). But his concern is to rescue the woman from her terrible plight and set her free for a new life: “Go and sin no more”.
A subtle point about the episode is that Jesus never actually looks at the woman while she is the subject of accusation. His bending down and writing may be a ploy to avoid this. It is only when her accusers have melted away that, from this humble position, he pronounces judgment: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you. Neither do I condemn you”. He who is without sin (2 Cor 5:21), the only one actually credentialled to judge her from “on high” – actually goes down on the ground and looks up at her to restore her dignity and self-esteem.
The “orphaned” status of this story in the textual tradition probably reflects early Christian uneasiness with Jesus’ apparent leniency in a case of sexual misconduct. So much more prone is the religious instinct to condemn and punish rather than to rescue and set on the path to life. And often, of course, the most paralysing accusations are those that we inflict on ourselves. If Lent is about conversion of heart and deeper knowledge of God, nothing could be more helpful than meditation on this precious gem from the gospel tradition.