Fifth Sunday of Lent: “Doing Something New”

Lectionary Readings:

• Isaiah 43: 16-21. See, I am doing something new; opening a new way through the mighty waters.
• Philippians 3:8-14. I push on to what is ahead – to know the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings and to arrive at resurrection from the dead.
• John 8:1-11. Jesus forgives the adulterous woman. Everyone sins and all have need of forgiveness.

Thoughts for your consideration:  By Stephen Dunn, CP

I am thinking that today’s Liturgy is especially relevant for social justice advocates. It occurs as the liturgical year is carefully guiding us toward the events of Holy Week.  In other words, it is there to assist us in the impossible task of squarely facing the heart of darkness, a place where those dedicated to social justice attempt to walk bravely.

Our time may not be worse than other human epochs, but it surely feels replete with the darkness of war, torture, slavery and so many forms of economic and military oppression.  Perhaps it’s not intensity we feel, although a case might be made for that, but that we are sensitive to the “omnipresence”, the blanket of media attention, so inescapable in our time, relentlessly keeping the brutality of the dark side of life as our constant waking companion.

Media coverage of “honor killings” has transported their horror from far away places to our doorstep.  Not so long ago, we in North America would have read today’s Gospel in terms of a sexual disorder — severely, even excessively, punished. Today we know it to be one of patriarchy’s sickest sins, unaffected by presumed cultural sophistication, present even now in far too many places.  Thinking in that way makes the dilemma Jesus faced much more fundamental than juggling the niceties of moral law.  It has to do with deep human darkness.

Although the incident happens in the vicinity of the Temple, the Gospel account begins with the poignant reminder that Jesus had just returned from the Mount of Olives, the historical place, where he himself is soon to face the ultimate darkness of feeling rejection by the God he called Father.

In the first reading the prophet Isaiah wants his people to remember Yahweh’s ancient intervention to end the darkness of their slavery, by parting the seas, ensuring their escape. It put me in mind of a contemporary “parting of the seas” as described by Fr. Rick Frechette, the Passionist doctor-priest working in Haiti.  He describes, in his new book*, the day kidnappers took the whole Haiti airport road by storm.  Amid the chaos, he and his associates attempted to rescue friends who were deep inside the slum.  The crossfire was too intense, so he decided to wait. “Suddenly, a truck full of heavily armed men, all in black, drove up to the intersection from inside the slum … They shot heavy artillery into the air.  They were dressed like the special police force, but it was easy to see they were frauds.  How?  Because the special police eat well, and are strong from bodybuilding.  These men we so thin; their clothes were hanging off of them.  They were “chimeres” ) ghosts from the slums.  …  Raphael understood at once that they were clearing the way for us to in to get the wounded, which we did…and raced them to town, to the surgeons of Doctors Without Borders”.

“The Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” declares:  “See, I am doing something new!  Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

Fr. Rick has learned to be creatively respectful of the heart of goodness as he stands adamantly against the heart of darkness.  Like Paul, speaking to the Philippians in our second reading, he “continues his pursuit” of the heart of goodness “in hope”.  His hope allows him to be both courageously forthright with gang members and tenderly healing of traumatized children, body and soul.

Looking at the Gospel story that way, it seems to me that Jesus is similarly facing down darkness in search of a regeneration of heart:  his, first of all, since it must have seared him to come so close to this barbarity, but also those of the scribes and Pharisees and the terrified woman who was to be the victim of this patriarchal madness.  Scholars tell us that peasants of Jesus’ time would do as he did, “doodle on the ground” when they felt too distraught to engage people directly.  But he masterfully challenged everyone to look into their own hearts:  “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”. 

And that is why I think this liturgy is so apt for those committed to social justice.  The logic of adjudicating sins to lay blame is opaque to God’s ability to “part the waves” to find a path that reveres human dignity, it does not allow God to “make a new thing” among the people.  Its certitude or sense of rightness stifles hope, which is the lifeblood of the heart of goodness in the environment of darkness.  Fr. Rick is fond of saying “think with your heart”.  The results, in faith hope and charity, are as remarkable as “neither will I condemn you, go, and walk not in darkness”.