5th SUNDAY OF LENT (C) 21 March 2010

依撒意亞先知書 43:16-21 聖保祿宗徒致斐理伯人書 3:8-14 聖若望福音 8:1-11

By the time we get to this fifth Sunday of Lent the liturgy is beginning to focus more on Jesus, and is preparing us for Palm Sunday next week and then for Holy Week. Already in today’s gospel we note the growing tension between Jesus and the religious leaders. They ask him a question in order to try to catch him out. What is shown up in the end is that they miss the whole point of his message. So today we need to sharpen our focus on Jesus and the gospel he preached.

Let’s also remember how we began Lent. When ashes were distributed on Ash Wednesday the words that were spoken were, “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel”. I wonder how we heard those words and interpreted them. It is easy to focus on sin and repentance – and we should do that. But the more important focus is on fidelity to the gospel. In other words Lent is a time to grow stronger in our belief in Jesus and the gospel he preached. Let me illustrate this from today’s gospel.

The scribes and the Pharisees bring a woman to Jesus. It is obvious that she is a sinner. They have only one thing in mind, namely to punish her to the full extent of the Law. In other words, they are focused on her sin, and they have made a judgement about her. Jesus, of course, knows the Law and respects the Law. He knew as well as they did that adulterers were to be punished by stoning. But the gospel account also suggests that he sees her a bit differently than do the scribes and Pharisees. This becomes clear when he asks those who have no sin to cast the first stone. We can see what is going on in his mind. It is as though he is thinking: if they want to focus on the sin then let’s focus on the sin. If you want to label someone as a sinner, then let’s apply the labels to everyone who is a sinner. Once they hear it put this way they quickly realise that none of them is without sin. One by one they leave the scene. Now that Jesus has got rid of the labels he can speak to the woman. He doesn’t address her as a sinner who should be stoned, but as a sinner who can repent. He tells her to go and sin no more.

Here is the big difference between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees. The gospel of Jesus is bigger than the Law. It reminds me of a saying in the Old Testament, where God says, “I desire not the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live”. The solution of the scribes and Pharisees was death, but the offer of Jesus was for a new life. The way of the scribes and Pharisees kept people locked in their destructive way of life. The way of Jesus offered people a way out of that lifestyle that imprisoned them.

This is the importance of the invitation at the beginning of Lent to turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel. Sin in this case brings death. It is being locked in ways of acting, customs and habits that ultimately take away our freedom. Focusing on sin as the scribes and Pharisees did means that we focus on actions and behaviour, and we focus on ourselves. In the scriptures sin is ultimately a preoccupation with oneself. That is why they can try to deal with it simply by applying the Law. If this is the way we deal with things then conversion ends up being something we do all by ourselves. It is up to us! But if it is all up to us we will fall far short of the sort of conversion that Lent invites us to.

However, if we focus on fidelity to the gospel we are not preoccupied with ourselves and our sin, but rather we meet a person. And that person is Jesus. In today’s gospel the scribes and Pharisees did not meet a person, but were only concerned with a sin. Jesus met a woman who was looking for a new start, looking for life. In her case turning away from sin was not something she could achieve on her own. Conversion and new life are only possible because of what God offers people. They come as God’s gift. Jesus offered her a new way of living. We are not told what she did – whether she accepted this gift or not. She remained totally free. The point of the gospel story is that new life was offered to her freely from Jesus. Being faithful to the gospel makes everything new; it gives us true freedom.

I’m sure that none of us thinks of ourselves as a notorious sinner. So what has our Lent been about? I believe that it is about growing in fidelity to the gospel. This means that as we come to know Jesus a little better and open our hearts to the gift that he offers us we grow in freedom and in the way of life that we were given at our baptism. However, as the next couple of weeks will remind us there is no promise that life won’t have its challenges and difficulties, and that we won’t have to keep professing our faith in difficult circumstances. Jesus has shown us the way. At this stage in Lent we are being invited to walk with him through his Passion and death so that we can rejoice with him in a new, risen life that comes at Easter.

Fr. Gerard Kelly