Fifth Sunday of Lent – Cycle C

Reflecting on John 8: 1-11

Don’t miss the underlying theme of the three wondrous readings today. The Church has chosen them carefully. That poor woman dragged out for Jesus to condemn―the Pharisees knew she couldn’t be put to death, of course, but they wanted to get Jesus on record defying the scriptures that said she should be―surely thought there was no way out for her. She had the stone-bearing Pharisees ahead of her, and her difficult past behind her. And there, writing in the sand, was the Rabbi. She would soon understand that he, whose other name is MERCY, was the way out.

Wouldn’t you love to know what Jesus was writing? I suggest that he went straight to the scriptures and wrote the verse we hear today from Isaiah: 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?

Or maybe he wrote what his great apostle, St. Paul, would later say to the Philippians: Forget what lies behind; strain forward to what lies ahead.

Jesus had us in mind as he wrote, I’m sure of it. He begs us to remember God’s mercy in the past, and to remember not the injustices and losses and sorrows that may have us pinned to the ground, unable to move forward.

We don’t know what happened next to that “woman caught in adultery.” Did she spend the rest of her life bitterly remembering that humiliating experience? Or did she bravely step out into a new life, filled with grace as she remembered her encounter with Jesus?

God is always doing something new in your life. Do you not perceive it?

How are you open to the grace to “remember not the events of the past”?

Kathy McGovern ©2016

Lent - Cycle C