Fifth Sunday of Lent – Cycle C

Reflecting on John 8:1-11

Wouldn’t you love to know what Jesus was writing in the sand while the Pharisees were trying to get him all worked up? I love that he was so detached from their hysteria, so utterly uninterested in the drama they were fomenting. If I were to guess, I’d vote for the very scripture from Isaiah 43 that is the first reading today. Remember not the events of the past; the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new! Do you not perceive it?

I’ll bet that’s what Jesus wanted to say to that poor woman: Try to forget this trauma and humiliation. These Pharisees are just using you to get at me. God is doing something new in your life! Do you not perceive it?

Those are timely words for us today, traumatized as we are by this terrible war, the photos of millions of desperate people fleeing from war zones around the world, and our own horrors of school shootings, grocery store shootings, and fires that wipe out a thousand residential homes. We pray to “remember not” every single dreadful thing.

We don’t know what happened next to that “woman caught in adultery.”  I’ll bet she never forgot the moment when she met the Mercy of God. We just have to feel so sad for the guy she was with. Had he somehow found a way to become invisible in the crowd, and then joined in getting the stones ready? Either way, his “privilege” as the man in this episode kept him from the only real privilege there is, which is a one-on-one encounter with Jesus. I hope he found his way to Jesus too.

How have you found peace in letting go of some of the events of the past?

Kathy McGovern ©2022

Lent - Cycle C