Tempted to condemn
Lent 5: 28th March, 2004
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone... (Jn 8:7)
Lent is a time to take stock, spiritually. It is a time, to take the image of the refreshment of the soil around that fig tree that was not bearing any fruit, to actually start growing again. It is a time to be honest about our own particular and specific vulnerabilities. It is also a time to be thankful and not afraid. Yet still, it remains most definitely a time when Christians are encouraged and urged to take serious account of what is it that is most likely to throw us off spiritual course, as individuals and as a Christian community. From temptation to transformation. The Christian journey towards hope. The sometimes baffling, never easy, always 'asking more of us than we think we have' way we have, of trying to join together as followers of Jesus the Christ.
Today's gospel is a story that most of us would have heard many times. In the Mel Gibson film this is one of the flashbacks and the woman is identified with Mary Magdalene. There is a threatening crowd in the background and the woman's clothing is torn. A line is drawn in the sand and a couple of sentences of dialogue are exchanged. One person takes a large risk. Another is saved from certain death. Today's gospel is a very powerful statement and also a clear warning about the easy and self-righteous condemnation of others. The event was to add to the number of dangerous enemies that the Lord would soon be facing. But this was not to be the day. That is coming soon enough. This gospel provides us with some more answers to the question: what is this God like whom we see in Jesus of Nazareth. And the answer is, our God is a God who will do this.
In a season like Lent, we get the chance to accumulate some important information. Each week, we are offered something more. Each week, we are encouraged to fill in that extra piece of the jigsaw. Who then is this Jesus who we are about to follow on the Way of the Cross in Holy Week? Are we ourselves good enough or perceptive enough to be worthy to try to follow such a one? If we have lasted this long with that question, then today's gospel will have set us right. It is not where we have come from or who or what we are. It is more how we might be and who might be right there with us.
So this Lent and every Lent, each one of us is called to a renewed commitment. We have the opportunity to express and articulate that new sense of grace and life in the faith in the renewal of our baptismal vows on Holy Saturday evening, at the first mass of Easter. The process is one of grappling with hard issues, followed at the end by a joyful sense of renewed life.
So then, how and where have we travelled so far on our Lenten journey?
The Lord was baptised by John and then at once was tested in the wilderness. On Lent 1 we heard of the temptations he immediately faced just after the call and the vocation and the affirmation from God had been so clearly declared. All temptations are distractions and sidetracks, by definition. For the Lord, all of them were potentially poisonous; for him they were clever and real. For us too they were and are exactly the sorts of things that can so effectively sabotage a genuine attempt to try to understand what God is wanting, how God might be calling us out, to something better than what is.
The way it was set up, it was seen as a battle between God and the Devil: between that which is utterly good and that which is not. Deny God says the Devil and there are these very substantial fringe benefits awaiting you. Who amongst us has not desired the instant gratification of something material and basically pleasant? Which one of us has not fantasised about being more powerful than we now are? Who has not at least occasionally considered that God did not actually have to be taken seriously into account? Or that God could be effectively bargained with, to our own advantage? Yes, there were some temptations there for us today. A very attractive short term sell out stands alongside something much more important. An example loud and clear is set before us, as Jesus began his journey of ministry, and as we continue ours.
In Lent 2, the Transfiguration gospel left us in no doubt that God was with this Jesus whom we are called to follow. Peter and James and John who were witnesses to this glory did not really have the resources to deal with it. They certainly realised that they were part of something truly wonderful; they certainly knew that there was every sign of the power of the continuing presence of God. 'This is my beloved Son, listen to him'. They would remember this again at the resurrection. But at the time it was hard to see how this glory was in any way transferable. Or able to be discussed. They thought it was probably necessary to fence the experience in, or to stay close by to where it happened. But they did believe and know that God was in and with this Jesus. A disciple needs to know and believe that. Peter, James and John came down that mountain knowing that, and their experience was placed with care before us, as we travelled onwards.
In Lent 3, in the days after we ourselves were coming to terms with the horrors of the train bombings in Madrid and asking some hard questions, we had the Lord using the illustration of two recent tragedies of his own time – as it were, straight off the front page. The totally unexpected can happen. How are our lives with God? If we were a tree, how goes the produce? And the little parable at the end of the gospel on that day speaks of a gardener who is eager to dig the soil well around that non-producing fig tree that was under threat of being cut down; a spiritual gardener quite ready and willing to provide some good fertiliser. In other words, we are going to be offered every assistance, every help, and every encouragement. But there is some urgency. Because it is easy enough to slip into other responses. It is easy enough to put things off or to have other priorities. There is time enough later we might say. There are all the other routine things of life. And there are bombs and there are totally unexpected catastrophes that will have nothing to do with whether we are good, bad or indifferent. This part of the journey reminded us that we ourselves have a part to play in allowing the gifts, the fruit of the spirit that God has on offer, to be evident in our lives and in our living.
In Lent 4 last week, we had that wonderful parable of two sons and a loving father. It left us thinking, and challenged us to consider very hard. Who might we cast ourselves as in that little drama? We had a striking difference of attitude between those two young men. The one who came to his senses after making a complete mess of things, did not even have the chance to blurt out his well-considered words of how sorry he was. His father ran to him and embraced him and kissed him quiet. He was home. He was loved. He was welcome. The other brother who had not ever put a foot wrong was also home, loved and welcome. His anger and his bitterness many find easy to understand. The contrasts and the characterisations are sharp. How much there was in that parable to take on board. How central it is to hear the message that the mercy and the joy and the love that are the qualities of that father in the parable, are the mercy and the joy and the love that God has for each and all of us. So that food for our Lenten journey told us a lot about God and offered teaching about our reaction, when God perhaps surprisingly gets to work on others.
This Lenten sermon series has left us considering some major challenges for any person, any community trying to live and to grow in the life of faith. These are genuine stumbling blocks. Whatever language we might use to explain or understand how they come our way, there are temptations that are all too contemporary and real.
Is it then entirely a surprise that our gospel today on this final Sunday before Palm Sunday starts our Holy Week, is a gospel that puts the focus on the temptation to judgment and the condemnation of others? How contemporary is that temptation in the context of our own Church doing its best to tear itself apart over just such issues? So this last gospel text gives us something else to take with us into Holy Week and Easter. Compassion.
It is not difficult to find the text in Leviticus that declares that a woman taken in the act of adultery should be stoned to death; buried up to her neck in the earth and stones thrown at her head. It still happens, as we were all made aware in the case of the woman in Nigeria last year. But she too was spared.
But the woman is not really the central character in all this. There would have been an enormous crowd present – not only the crowd attracted by the fuss surrounding the arrest of the woman, but also the normal Temple attenders and those who had gathered to hear Jesus in his regular Temple teaching. The woman was dragged there, as a most useful way of trapping the Lord into a clear and very public breach of the teaching of the Law, something he could be brought before a court for. After all, he had the reputation for being soft on sinners. The central characters are those scribes and Pharisees ready with the rocks in their hands, so sure that they are right and so sure that the Scripture clearly backs their position. What a truly remarkable scene it is, that when confronted with the obvious fact that they themselves were not without fault, so who were they to condemn another; they actually did not go ahead.
'When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders'. (Jn 8: 9)
Today we have found out more about our God, in the actions of Jesus himself. No need for a parable here. His actions and his words speak for themselves. The message is clear. For the woman there is not condemnation. Condemnation would have meant death. Rather for her there is the chance of new life – 'Go your way, and from now on do not sin again'.
That is the final gospel scene we are left with in this Lenten journey, before next week we both wave our palms and hear first again the Passion gospel.
Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone... (Jn 8:7)
The Lord be with you.
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