Reflection for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

What must it have been like to witness this act of Jesus that we just heard proclaimed in the Gospel?  I wonder why this this story of the woman caught in adultery is only recorded in John’s gospel. One would think that something as dramatic as this experience must have been to all involved that it would have been recorded by more of the Gospel writers.  

What did Jesus write on the ground that day? I’m sure we have heard all types of conjectures…that he listed the sins of the scribes and Pharisees who had brought the woman to Jesus. Was it the sins of those who had gathered to be part of the stoning of the woman or those just in the crowd to see what Jesus would do to her? Maybe Jesus wrote the names of the scribes and Pharisees in the dust, or could it have been the woman’s name? Maybe Jesus just wrote random designs on that dusty ground, giving those in the crowd time to reflect on their own sins, to squirm and to wonder what to do now? After all, John records that Jesus bent down to write on the ground only after he told them,

“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Since this experience made such a big impression on those gathered, don’t you think they would have remembered and talked about what Jesus wrote on the ground that day?  

But that was not to be, so let us, too, not get sidetracked by this conjecturing and forget the real heart of the experience…the experience that stuck with the John the Evangelist those long years, significant enough for him to include it in his gospel. His was that overwhelming experience of Jesus’s forgiveness of this nameless woman witnessing the opportunity she had for a second chance, especially when to those who presented her to Jesus judged her as undeserving to live, one who should be stoned to death.

What can we take away from this story for ourselves? It seems that what Lent can be for each of us is a time to pause and reflect on our own sinfulness as the time must have been for those in the crowd gathered to stone the woman caught in adultery. This is a special forty days provided by the Church to stop and watch Jesus write in the dust…the dust of the ashes we were marked with on Ash Wednesday…and a time to listen to what Jesus tells each of us individually, just as he told the woman…

”I do not condemn you. Go and sin no more.” 

Imagine the weight that was lifted from this nameless woman when she was given back her life, given another chance. She now had a new day and a new life before her. She experienced what the prophet Hosea tells all of us–we are no longer “Not-My-People.” “We are God’s people” now.  Ours is to be that awesome love of knowing our God who betroths us to him forever “with justice and judgement, with loyalty and compassion, with fidelity.” 

May each of us hold on to this overwhelming experience of God’s forgiveness and love. May we each live well this chance we, like the woman, are given to begin anew this day, this Lent, and every day of our lives.