Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Readings of the Day

In John’s Gospel, Christ transforms a moment of terror and isolation, for the woman caught in adultery, to show her his true nature.  In his actions and words, God reveals who he really is to her, and he reveals who she is to herself.   Perhaps this woman had been the target of the pride and utility of men in the past.  Her self-image, in relation to God, was likely one of isolation and shame.  Jesus is not only protecting and forgiving her.  He is obliterating the lies that she has been told about herself and about God.  He replaces these lies with love, forgiveness, protection, and freedom.  “Neither do I condemn you, go, and sin no more.”

It is hard to imagine this woman did not believe she was about to die.  Within this hurricane of threats and shame, Jesus turns the moment on its head.  He is calm and all at once in control of the chaos, as he beckons the Pharisees for “the one without sin to cast the first stone.”  He remains still, behind the woman, in the line of fire.  “The Pharisees brought a woman …and made her stand in the middle.”  Where once, the representatives of God stood looking at her in violent accusation and doubtlessly, in their own lust, using her as a prop object for a trap, Jesus treats her like a beloved daughter. 

He gives all his attention to the woman after the accusers disperse, and his words to her are marked not only by their love and forgiveness, but also lightness.  “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  These are rhetorical questions.  They certainly seem to skewer the importance of the Pharisees, and to highlight the power that had just been used to defend her.  I imagine he laughed as he spoke them.

This exchange allows her to see God as he truly is.  It allows her to see herself as he sees her.  This liberation from a warped understanding of God is just as powerful an outcome as her protection from a violent death by stoning.  It is a liberation that God desires to bring to us all.  As sinners, we believe we deserve punishment. A world where God is like the Pharisees can be easier to believe than God’s mercy, which carries an invitation to vulnerability, and to accept that we are first, loved.

The Pharisees are also clearly undone by Jesus’ reaction.  John leaves out the details of the writing in the dirt, or the expression on Jesus’ face.  But the conniving mob is dispersed, with a shockingly concise counterargument from a man they were moments ago trying to trap in a lose/lose situation.   Jesus invites even the self-appointed executioners to conversion.  Some interpretations imagine Jesus writing out the sins of the accusers in the dirt.  But what if he were offering a similar liberation to the Pharisees?  What if his desire was their conversion to new sight as well?

Dirt is also the medium of Jesus’ healing of the blind man to new sight.  It’s interesting that it is a medium of this interaction too.  Jesus is offering both the Pharisees and the woman a new “seeing” of God.  He reveals the truth through the dirt.  This Lent, we can try to let God heal our own blindness in our dirt.  He is always in the dirt with us.  He wants us to see him as he is, not as an accuser.  Lent can be an invitation to surrender our old sight, our old belief in a Pharisee God, to open our eyes to a God desperately in love with us, physically with us, always present, breathing and shining through all his creation.   If we let him, God will undo the things within us that keep us from him.  He can show us to ourselves as he sees us.  In accepting this outrageous love, we are transformed.

Patrick Walsh co-manages Martha’s Choice Marketplace with Eli Wenger. Martha's is a choice model food pantry of Catholic Social Services, Archdiocese of Philadelphia. At Martha's, thousands of households and hundreds of volunteers build life giving community through access to healthy food.

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