5th Sunday of Lent – Year C (March 21st 2010)

5^th Sunday of Lent – Year C (March 21^st) – Reflection by Fr Nick King SJ

Readings: Isaiah 43:16-21   Psalm 126:1-6   Philippians 3:8-14   John 8:1-11

Next Sunday we start that second, deeper phase of Lent, what we used to call Passiontide, when the Church invites us to look more on Christ and less on our own spiritual journey; for we have to be ready to follow him through the sombre last days that await him.

That is not to say, however, that next Sunday’s readings are all gloomy. In the first one, God, through his prophet, is looking to outline the plan for getting the exiles back from Babylon to Jerusalem. They are to be reminded of a previous Exodus, God being “the one who brought out chariots and horsemen and a mighty army – and they all lay down together, never to arise”. But that is as nothing to what God now proposes: “do not remember the former things…behold, I am doing a new thing”. And what is this “new thing”? “I shall make a way in the desert, and rivers in the wilderness”.  God’s intention is to make things right for Israel, “to give drink to my chosen people…that they might declare my praise”.

The psalm comes from a later time, when Israel looked fondly back to those days of the return from exile, “when YHWH brought back those who returned to Zion, we thought we were dreaming”. They look back nostalgically to that time of laughter and song, when “it was said among the Gentiles, ‘YHWH has done great things for them’.” However the return was not the end of their suffering, and so the psalmist begs, “Restore our fortunes, YHWH, like streams in the Negev [that driest of deserts]”, and tries to keep up the nation’s confidence with a reminder of how things can change between sowing (“in tears”) and reaping (“in exultation”).

In the second reading for next Sunday, Paul has been stressing how highly-qualified he had been, in religious terms, before he came to know Christ, and how little it all matters to him now. This must be our thought as we journey through this last part of Lent. So we can say with Paul, “I thought it all well lost for the over-arching value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost it all; and I think it dung” [not a word we should ordinarily expect in religious discourse] “in order to gain Christ”. Paul, you see, is head-over-heels in love with Jesus; and once you have that, everything else follows. The essential thing is “to know him and the power of his Resurrection”. That being the case, Paul can also unflinchingly contemplate “solidarity with his sufferings, being shaped to his death – if only I can somehow arrive at his Resurrection”. And that, of course, is our aim, in these last two weeks of Lent.

Now look, in the gospel reading, at that Jesus with whom Paul fell so besottedly in love. The story is a strange one, in that it does not belong in its present setting in John’s Gospel, and was not written by the fourth evangelist. But the voice and actions are unmistakably those of Jesus; and we must be grateful to whoever it was thought it so important to preserve the tale that they inserted it where we find it. The story is simple enough, though it has sinister overtones. Jesus is, as so often, “teaching the whole people”, when “scribes and Pharisees” appear. This nearly always means trouble, of course; and although the lady in question has done wrong, since she has been “caught in the act of adultery”, they actually have no interest in her, except as a bait to catch Jesus out. They quote Moses at him, that “women like this should be stoned”, in order to trap him through his notorious compassion for sinners. Jesus refuses at first to make any response; but when they insist, he simply says, “the sinless one among you should be the first to throw a stone at her”. Then he ignores them, as they shame-facedly melt away. Now, finally, Jesus speaks to the woman, the first time in the story that she has been addressed, or indeed considered as a human being. “Has no one condemned you?”, he asks, and when this is established, he utters the beautiful words, “Neither do I condemn you; go – and from now on, no more sinning”. This is a Lord to follow to the ends of the earth, never mind the end of Lent.