Lenten daily Reflection 2021-03-22
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A reading from the Gospel of John 8.1-11
While Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
This passage is one of the first I remember hearing in church as a young child, sitting in a pew and it made a deep and fearful impression on me as imagined the angry mob ready to stone the lone woman. The crowd is raging and out of control, goading Jesus to order the woman’s death, as mandated by the Law of Moses. Deep in concentration as he writes on the ground, Teacher Jesus is pulled away from his mission by the rants of the crowd and their calls for him to address their taunts and cries for vengeance. Jesus knows what they’re doing and skillfully bases his response, not on the letter of the law, but rather on the second great commandment-- to love others as we love ourselves. He disperses the crowd by challenging them to throw stones at the woman only if they themselves are sinless. And, of course, they’re not. When they disband, he tells the woman to sin no more but wastes no time in returning to his mission to teach and resumes writing on the ground.
In our world we are all too familiar with lynch mobs, out-of- control crowds claiming righteous causes and easy access to public shaming. We witness the piling on of accusations, the perpetrating of scandals both real and imagined and myriad attempts to rile up the crowd around hateful and divisive causes. Our public square is now the whole world, with social media making the destruction of peoples’ lives easy and clickable. Political motives and financial gains most often motivate people to grandstand, condemn and co-opt causes that are often self-serving and destructive to both the planet and the people most in need of good intentions. Like Jesus, we are called to turn away from all these facile judgments and unholy distractions and get back to our essential work of loving God and taking care of our neighbors.
Raised in a family for whom criticism and judgments were as natural as Friday night fish suppers, I’ve worked hard for many years to leave those habits behind. Instead, I have been taught by my children, my friends, my work and the books that I cherish to show me what kindness means, in imagining others’ lives and re-imagining my own. John’s words, “Whoever’s sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, whoever’s sins you retain, they have been retained” are inscribed on my heart and in my mind, causing me to rethink the meaning of forgiveness in living a life filled with grace. Those words made it possible for me to strengthen my ability to make a life with less judgment and more charity. And to get back to the essential work this lent in following Jesus in paths of prayer, love and caring for our neighbors.