Fifth Sunday of Lent

Dominica V in Quadragesima C
3 April 2022

 The Gospel passage of the woman caught in the very act of adultery is a curious passage.  Perhaps one of the most curious aspects that stands out to us is that odd response of Jesus to write with his finger in the dirt of the ground, something the passage tells us he does twice.  We don’t know with certainty what he was writing or doing.  We do know that something about that gesture eventually led the accusers to walk away one by one.

The scribes and Pharisees contrived a twofold trap for Jesus.  The Mosaic Law is clear: any serious offense against one of the Ten Commandments is punishable by death.  Adultery certainly fits that.  If Jesus says the adulterer should not be stoned then he can be charged with a crime against God’s Law.  And there is another trap.  If Jesus says the woman should be put to death, and all the more in such a public place like the Temple, he can be charged with violating Roman law.  The Roman empire had taken to itself the authority to judge crimes punishable by death.  In other words, the Jewish elders did not have a forum to adjudicate and to bring about death in the Roman empire.  Such cases had to go before the Roman authority.  We will see this reality later when the elders eventually do bring Jesus before Pilate (cf. John 18:31).  They need Pilate to condemn Jesus to death in order to bring about what they desire to do to Jesus on the false claims that he had violated the Mosaic Law and that he had tried to make himself king over Caesar.

 I wonder if we as believers accept with clarity and consistency that God hates sin.  I think that is a lesson we can take from this Gospel passage.  I say that because Jesus does not dismiss the seriousness of the woman’s sin nor condone it, just as he does not give a free pass to the sins of the scribes and Pharisees who surround the woman.  Now, I know our modern ears sort of recoil at the word “hate.”  But it is true: God hates sin.  It is abhorrent to Him and offensive.  We admit this all the time in the act of contrition at confession: “O God, I am sorry for my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend thee, my God…”  Sin does not have a place in God’s presence (cf. Rev. 21:27).  And serious sin – even just one serious sin – deserves condemnation and punishment.  There is no denying that is a clear truth throughout the Bible and therefore throughout Sacred Tradition in the Church’s teaching.  Do we as disciples of the Lord serve as a Christian leaven for our culture by giving voice to what is true and by confronting sin where it is celebrated in our society?  I fear we are far too quiet on that front.  The daily drumbeat of progressive agendas and perversions on display in our culture is what prompts me to consider that a valuable lesson for us in our time is that simple foundational truth that God hates sin.  And related to that, we also have to accept that punishment of sin pleases God.  Sin deserves punishment.  Thus, in the Gospel our Lord does not say that someone guilty of adultery should not be put to death.  No, quite the contrary, he indicates that stones could be thrown at the woman.  But our Lord’s response goes further to show that the punishment of sin should arise from a purity that matches his own.  A pure and just hatred for sin should be the force or the muscle that hurls the stones.  So, he says, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  And while God hates sin and is pleased by its punishment, He also does not desire the condemnation of a soul, the condemnation of a sinner.  And that is Good News.  It is a common human trap to focus exclusively on the teaching of mercy that God does not desire the sinner to die, while obscuring that sin deserves God’s justice, a fierce justice.  Our Lord is both justice and mercy in this passage.  He clearly supports the punishment of sin and, also very important, he tells the sinner to go and sin no more.  There is no free pass for sin here.  But he also does not desire the woman to die or to be condemned and so he will not support those who are impure by their own sins lining up to throw stones at her in a spectacle of false righteousness.

 Think of how modern ears hear and use this passage and many others that refer to God’s mercy.  A person is caught in a very grave sin and it should be severely punished.  But Jesus doesn’t seem to support that.  So modern secular ears go marching off dismissing the seriousness of sin.  Then comes the next step, to support sin as its own expression and identity that should be “tolerated.”  And then comes the next step that not even tacit tolerance is enough, but the rest of us must actively promote the sin or else we are guilty of hate and should be canceled.  This process plays out before us daily it seems, and in the most perverse and outrageous ways.  Everything these days it seems is “trans” this and “trans” that.  Just days ago, the misguided moral leadership of our President celebrated “Transgender Visibility Day” by having the nerve to equate that ideology with being made in God’s image and likeness.  We should be clear, a person is made in God’s image and likeness; an ideology with convenient political clout and elitist money is not.  I am also thinking ahead to what comes each June with so-called “Pride” month.  One glance at what goes on as standard practice for celebrating Pride month demonstrates that it is overt sexualization of a most perverse kind on public display.  These ideologies and so many others are being injected into every sector of life at increasing speed, into laws, into entertainment, even children’s entertainment, into our schools – and why these children’s places?  Because these ideologies are a belief system that needs to indoctrinate the next generation.  We could even call them their own type of religion with their own catechesis.  And, we aren’t immune here, for even our local leaders go along with the pressure and promote these ideologies, as Edmond’s Mayor did last year with his June Pride declaration.  Why are our Christian voices so silent in the face of these errors?  These destructive forces are right under our noses, in our school systems, in our public libraries, in our city councils.  Now I am highlighting only a couple of examples of sinful movements that are prominent, but there are many more that we could list.  We believers make a mistake by being silent in the face of such false morality.

 But if we follow the Lord as we say we do, then we must first confront and name sin in our own life, because we must hate sin as God does, confessing it immediately in the case of serious sin, and working hard to change and root out sin from our lives.  Because God hates sin.  If we follow the Lord as we say we do, then we, too, love souls and we seek to listen to, to befriend, and to instruct those in our sphere of influence who struggle and who are going astray.  And speaking the truth to them is an act of love.  Don’t let anyone tell you any differently.  But we do not condone sin.  If we follow the Lord as we say we do, then we are clear about calling sin “sin”.  We are clear that God hates sin.  And if we follow the Lord as we say we do, then like him, we do not dismiss sin or downplay it, or support it.  No, like the Lord, we clearly love the sinner while also having his or her long term, eternal good in mind by saying, “Go and from now on do not sin any more.”

 We are on a special journey this Lent to be renewed.  For those who are preparing for baptism, they are preparing to be healed and saved in the waters of rebirth so that they might rise from the waters and go to live new life in the Lord.  For the already baptized we, like the scribes and Pharisees in the Gospel, are confronting our own sinfulness and walking away, even running, to the confessional to be healed by the mercy of God who does not want us to die.  And we step forth from that sacrament healed in our baptismal dignity to enact with greater zeal a holiness of life.  No matter what our own burdens and sins may be and no matter how serious they may be, we take comfort in the compassion and mercy on display in the Gospel passage today.  We accept that sin offends God and that its punishment pleases Him.  But we also accept that He does not desire our death or condemnation.  Rather, He heals us and at the same time, with our eternal good in view, He commands us to go and to sin no more.  In the face of the burdens and sins that mark our past we should be moved by the image in today’s first reading that the Lord opens passages and ways in the sea and in the desert wasteland, in the most unlikely of places.  In our places too!  “I am doing something new!” says the Lord.  Do something new in my life, Lord!  Convinced that God hates sin and expect us to speak the truth, may we say with St. Paul, from the second reading, “I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”