Words on the Word
5. Sunday of Lent
Isaiah 43.16-21: No need to recall the past.
Philippians 3.8-14: Nothing can outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ.
John 8.1-11: Neither do I condemn you.
Throughout Lent the Church draws us into a process of remembering. We embark on our Lenten campaign by being told, ‘Remember that you are dust!’ The penances we assume are acknowledgement of sins committed, which we seek to repair; we face intentionally aspects of our lives which normally, for decency’s sake, we keep out of sight. The liturgy for Lent is structured on the story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. We let ourselves be read into it, finding there parameters for our own existence, our own breaking out of servitude, as if this ancient account were personal remembrance. The Paschal Vigil places our celebration of Easter within a narrative reaching back to the creation of the world and forward to the end of time.
Christians, like Jews, are formed to be specialists in remembrance; again and again, through Church history, genuine renewal has come about when the Church, or some community within the Church, remembers afresh a part of the patrimony most people had forgotten.
How on earth, then, are we to understand the exhortation of the prophet Isaiah when he says: ‘No need to recall the past, no need to think about what was done before.’ Is he serious?
Well, yes; but he subverts his own statement in as much as he introduces it, precisely, by recalling that paradigm of divine redemption: the opening of the Red Sea and the perishing of Pharaoh’s army. Isaiah’s concern is not with a cancellation of the past; he wants to ensure that our religious outlook is not only retrospective, to keep us, as Paul would say, ‘straining ahead for what is still to come’.
‘See’, says the Lord through his prophet, ‘I am doing a new deed; can you not see it?’ Often we fail to recognise manifestations of providence in our lives, and in the world at large, for sheer lack of attention or imagination. We expect God to act predictably; we plan in detail the course of action we expect him to take. We look for indications of his intervention in familiar places. The trouble is that this is not, given his track record, where he is likely to make himself known. We stand at the highways with flags, expecting a cortege of parading angels. The Lord, meanwhile, says: ‘I am making a road in the wilderness, paths in the wilds.’ Will we go and find him there? Or will it, now as in Isaiah’s day, be the jackals and ostriches that give God’s glorious presence praise while we, imprisoned in our limited notions, sigh sadly: ‘Where is God? Why is nothing happening?’
The Gospel story of Christ’s encounter with the adulteress plays out in the temple, the symbolic opposite of the wilderness. Yet it is an example of God’s acting off beat, taking people, explicitly religious people, into uncharted territory. It is striking that Jesus walks into this scene from the Mount of Olives, where he has been praying in the night, ‘before daybreak’, preparing the ground, as it were, for the spiritual battle that, on that same site, would cause him, not long afterwards, to sweat blood. What we are witnessing in his exchange with the Pharisees and Scribes is not merely a subtle dispute between theologians; it is the enactment of a cruciform work of redemption.
In juridical terms the case he faces seems banal. A delict committed has been committed and duly proven; the Law attributes a penalty; that penalty is about to be enacted. The powers that be do not ask Jesus: ‘Should we or should we not?’ They ask, ‘Do you approve of what we know we are entitled to perform?’ They wish to know if he submits to the Law. Is he for or against us, this fellow; an orderer or a trouble-maker?
Oh, how we love situations like these, when we’re confident we’re on the side of right! How we love to invoke high principles in aid of our self-righteousness! High principles are indispensable for the construction of a just society, of course; but they do not on their own guarantee justice. They call for just execution. Even sublime standards can be instrumentalised, and infested, by human wickedness or spite.
Recently I saw a canvas portraying this scene by Lucas Cranach, the sixteenth-century court painter to the Electors of Saxony. 
Christ is flanked by a man who looks up at him with eager, even joyful expectation, his left hand holding an upturned hat full of sharp stones. He holds one such ready for deployment in his right, unbothered by the least qualm of conscience. Vengefulness is written on his features as a deformity that makes him appear at once ugly, menacing, and ludicrous.
Alas, such an expression is one we recognise, both from what we see on the news and, troublingly, from what we occasionally see in our hearts when we consider them in truth. This is where Christ’s words convict us.
Sin is not purged by sinning, peace not restored by violence, virtue not fostered by vice. If we wish to see God’s new deed, and let ourselves be renewed into the bargain, we must withdraw into the wilderness, leave our securities behind, open ourselves up to judgement, let go of perverted passion, be reconciled to God and men in order thus to recognise, and to collaborate with, God’s purpose of salvation. We shall see then that things, and people, can be transformed if God is allowed to act freely in them.
Where grace is present, yesterday’s trespass, fall, or betrayal does not define today’s potential. The old can be made new, the lion can lie down in peace alongside the lamb. Such change is beyond merely human agency, though. It presupposes a will to be saved, and a concerted hope for others to be saved.
This is the message the Church gives us on this last Sunday before we enter upon the solemn celebration of our Lord’s sacred Passion.