Homily for Lent V 2010

Homily for Fifth Sunday in Lent 21 March 2010

This Gospel we have just heard is one of the most moving of all the stories of Jesus, and yet it may surprise you to know that for at least three hundred years it was not officially in the Gospels at all, and it exists in none of the most ancient manuscripts. This is not to say that it didn’t exist, but it had an existence of its own, in a sort of free-fall; it was well known but was outside the official Scriptures of the Church. We know that Christians were aware of this story because already in the early 2nd century a Bishop, Papias, who was the first person to start researching into the background of the gospels and letters that would eventually come to be recognised as what we now call the New Testament, writes that, as well as the four Gospels, there is “another story of a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord” and there are references to it in the writings of Syrian Christians in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. It was really only thanks to St Ambrose and St Augustine that this wonderful story of Our Lord’s forbearance and gentleness was finally inserted by St Jerome into St John’s Gospel, where we find it today. Perhaps it seemed a good place to add it, because only a few verses later on in this same chapter John reports Jesus as saying (in verse 15) “You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one” and later (in verse 46) Jesus challenges the Pharisees by asking them “Which of you convicts me of sin?”
Why were those first Christians so uneasy about this story that they hesitated to include it in the Gospels? Well, I think it was paradoxically for the very same reason that we like it so much: it showed Our Lord being very lenient with someone accused of serious sexual sin. In the first centuries of the Church (a fact often overlooked by those who say we must go back to the ways of the primitive Church, by the way) it was regarded as extremely serious for believers to fall back into the ways of sin and there were many harsh and often public penances involved before such a person could hope to be accepted again into the Christian community. But as time progressed and the sacrament of Confession became better understood and more widely and frequently practised, a more compassionate approach took hold in the Church, an approach that took into account our human nature and all its weaknesses, an approach that understood that Our Lord was, in his unconditional love, always ready to give us a second chance- a second, a third, a hundredth chance. And so in the fullness of time this beautiful story came into its own.
Let us look at our Gospel reading a bit more closely. What is the motivation of the accusers who have dragged this unfortunate woman before Our Lord? First of all, it takes two to tango, doesn’t it, so where is the man who had slept with her? Moses in fact didn’t just say the woman involved had to be stoned, but the man too – he has, typically I hear you say, got off scot free, the accusers don’t seem to be bothered about him. They have caught the woman, and that is enough- but do they really care about justice being done? So often behind all the bluster of outraged so-called good and upright citizens when they are complaining loudly about the misdeeds of their neighbours, and demanding that something must be done, lies a whole mixture of dubious motives. Here they are really only interested in baiting Jesus- what will he say? Will they be able to use whatever he comes out with as ammunition against him with the authorities? But Jesus is silent, he just sits there doodling in the sand. The Fathers of the ancient Church compared this to that verse in Isaiah where God delays his judgement of Israel, saying “For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself…” (Is 42:14) and some imagined that he was writing down the sins or perhaps the names of the accusers, because the prophet Jeremiah says “those who turn away from thee shall be written in the earth”. (Jer 17:13) The eagerly expected condemnation does not come, and famously Our Lord- perhaps with a half-smile on his lips, who knows?- suggests that if there is anyone there who has never done anything wrong, then perhaps they should be the one to cast the first stone, and so the crowd in some embarrassment we can imagine and possibly with a certain reluctance begins to melt away.
And now comes what is for me the most important point in the story- “Jesus was left alone with the woman, who remained standing there”. St Augustine loved this bit, he says “now there were only two: the wretched woman and the merciful one- misera et misericordia” That is what we have to bear in mind: when it will really matter, when we come to the end of our life, there will only be two people- me and Jesus. All the people who fill my life won’t be there any more, my loved ones won’t be around, and neither will be all the people who clutter up my life with their criticisms, their disapproval, their gossiping about me, their opinions about me, right or wrong! There will only be me and Jesus, no one else – the miserable sinner meeting the personification of the Divine Mercy. And that is the encounter we should be preparing for, especially in these last days of Lent that we now enter on, when we have so many opportunities for devotion and for the sacraments. How we hope and pray that we will find Our Lord in this loving mood of gentleness, that he will just be silent in front of all our misdoings, the goings on of our youth and all the sexual nonsense that so easily comes to the forefront of our minds and so easily sidetracks us and clouds our vision- that finally he will soothe our anguish –for we will be only too keenly aware of what we have got up to, we won’t need a crowd of accusers, our conscience will be doing a grand job on its own – he will look up at us and please God we will hear those words of all-comprehending mercy “Neither do I condemn you”. He will say those words, we hope, because he will look into our hearts and see what it was that was our true motivation in life, however obscured from time to time it may have been. Our present Holy Father in a book on death he wrote twenty years ago which I hope to share with you some insights from on Good Friday, says that the only question worth asking of ourselves will be, what did I give people? When I spoke to them, in my dealings with them, what did I give them? The answer that Pope Benedict thinks is the only answer, is Hope. Not condemnation, but hope. The Gospels show us Our Lord at work, doing precisely that- giving people hope, in whatever situation they might be, and most clearly of all, he gives hope in his response to the woman in today’s reading. Let us be people who offer each other as well as the sign of peace at this Mass, a thousand signs of hope in our daily converse with each other, hope, not condemnation, but hope. And dear Jesus, when the day comes when we stand together you and I alone may each one of us hear you say “Neither do I condemn you” as you look up and rest your loving gaze upon us your wayward friends. Say to us “Neither do I condemn you!” Amen.