Homily 5th Lent APRIL 3, 2022
Our Gospel
opens with Jesus teaching in the Temple area.
Then a crowd of scribes and Pharisees arrives with a woman caught in the
very act of adultery. They demand to
know what Jesus says about this case.
Will he side with the Law of Moses and thereby incur the wrath of the
occupying Romans who reserved the death penalty to themselves, or will Jesus
obey the Roman occupiers and sell out the Law of God? Pretty dramatic.
Well first of
all we can tell right off that the crowd of Pharisees and scribes is NOT
primarily concerned with justice nor with God’s law. There are two obvious indications of
this. First, they bring only the
woman. Even in Jesus’ day the crime of
adultery required two
conspirators. The woman did not commit
this crime alone. So where is the guy?
The Jewish
law, both in the Book of Leviticus chapter 20 verse10 and in the Book of
Deuteronomy chapter 22 verse 22 prescribes the death penalty for BOTH
parties. Deuteronomy states: “If a man is
discovered lying with a woman who is married to another, they both shall die,
the man who was lying with the woman as well as the woman. Thus shall you purge the evil from Israel.” The Law calls for evenhanded justice. However, the crowd before Jesus seem
interested only in the woman.
Even more telling is that they drag
this woman to Jesus. They did not
take her to the authorities, to the priests or the judges for proper judgment,
but to Jesus. Jesus is not a civil
official. He has no civic rank or public
office. He is not a judge or
magistrate. But they come to Jesus
because they not only want to embarrass and degrade the woman (they “made her stand in the middle”) but
they also want to trap and embarrass Jesus as well. Jesus, that bleeding heart
liberal who is always welcoming sinners and eating with them.
TWO TWO TWO April
3, 2022
What is going on here? Well, in as much as the crime of rape is more
about violence and humiliation than it is about sex, this mob is, in effect, a
gang rape. That is why the guilty male
is not of interest to this group. And to
make their crime complete they want to humiliate Jesus as well. It is all about building up their own sense
of power by humiliating and violating others.
They are bullies.
But Jesus is difficult to trap. Jesus does not buy into their twisted logic,
driven by their twisted hearts and desires.
He pulls back from the whole twisted scene. Instead He bent down and began to doodle,
sketching in the dust.
Have you ever been in a long, boring
class, where the teacher drones on and on and on? And so you begin to draw little figures and
maps and designs in the margins of your notebook? That is what Jesus does. He doodles.
He is pulling himself mentally and emotionally out of the exchange with
the Pharisees and instead is killing time.
He refuses to be caught in the mentality of the mob.
Impatient, the scribes and Pharisees
press Jesus for an answer. “He straightened up and said to them, “Let
the one among you who is without sin be
the first to throw a stone at her.”
I don’t think Jesus is talking about
their past sins. I don’t think
Jesus was writing their sins in the dust.
I think Jesus is talking about right here and now. In effect Jesus is saying, “if your motives
in wanting to stone this woman are pure, if your concern really is the holiness
of God, if you are motivated by a sincere and holy concern for God’s law, if
what you are about is pure in the eyes of God, then throw a stone.”
THREE THREE THREE April
3, 2022
But if
you are now motivated by a desire to hurt, to dominate, to show your power over
a helpless person, to push your sufferings and your sexual urges on to another,
to unleash the beasts of lust and domination that rage in your own hearts onto
a helpless scapegoat, then this is sin.
Sin. It is NOT the Will of God.
Jesus forces them to confront the evil
of their own motivations.
The
passions of the elders cool first, and as they come to their senses, as they
realize what they really are involved in, they drop their stones and slink
away, one by one.
Finally Jesus is left alone with the
woman. Jesus condemns the sin, but not
the woman. “Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are
they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.
Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
The
lesson for us, I think, is to examine our motivations whenever we condemn or
blame another. Are we truly interested
in Justice? In God’s law? In respect for God’s Will? Or are we – subtly or not so subtly -
exulting in our own power, our own purity, our own rectitude? Are we pushing our darkness and sin on to another? //
On the 21st of this month the State of Texas is
scheduled to execute Carl Buntion, who just turned 82 this past week. He was convicted of the 1990 shooting death
of a 37 year old Houston police officer.
On the following week the State of Texas is scheduled to
execute Melissa Lucio, a 54 year old woman who was convicted of the 2007 abuse
and death of her two year old son.
FOUR FOUR FOUR April 3, 2022
These crimes are truly heinous and cry out to
heaven. But what is our motivation in
executing these criminals? Are we truly
without sin? Are we really concerned
with Justice and upholding God’s way? If
that is completely true then why are the great majority of those executed the poor,
minorities, the poorly educated?
“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.”
Jesus does
not condemn us. We should be likewise
reluctant to condemn.
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