Gospel
Reflection
Fifth Sunday of Lent
6 April 2025, Church Year C
John
8:1-11
He
Who Is Without Sin
By Fr.
Steven G. Oetjen
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Jesus looks
up at the crowd who wants to stone the woman caught in adultery,
and he says, “Let the one among you who is without sin be he
first to throw a stone at her.”
The word or
sin in the Bible (“hamartia” in Greek) comes from archery, and
it means “to miss.” When
we sin, we “miss the mark,” like the archer who has bad aim. Therefore, Anthony
Esolen cleverly observes, “Who then would be more fit to cast
the first stone at the sinful woman, than one whose aim has
always been true? But
we know that our aim is not true.
The people know it.
That is why they leave, quietly, one by one, from the
eldest to the least.”
Only the one
without sin has true aim. That
is why we sinners make poor judges of the heart. Our own sin blinds us,
so our vision of others is skewed as well. When we are frustrated
by the faults of others, it is remarkable how often the very
same kinds of faults, or similar ones, exist in our own hearts –
if only we would direct our attention there. Instead, we get
fixated on the faults of our neighbors in order to distract
ourselves from our own faults.\
Our Lord
taught us elsewhere, “Why do you see the speck that is in your
brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own
eye? Or, how can
you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck
that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that
is in your own eye? You
hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you
will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s
eye” (Lk 6:41-42). Similarly,
he tells us today, “Let the one among you who is without sin,”
or, we could say, with true aim, “be the first to throw a stone
at her.”
Before he
said this, and again after he said it, he stooped down and wrote
on the ground with his finger.
We do not know what he was writing exactly, but his
action is richly symbolic.
The eighth-century scholar Alcuin of York says that the
ground represents the human heart, which is like land that
yields a harvest – whether the fruit is good or bad, it grows
forth from the ground of the human heart all the same. And the finger,
because it is flexible and has joints, represents discretion. So, the Lord Jesus, by
writing with his finger on the ground, instructs us not to
condemn our neighbors immediately and rashly when we see faults
in them, but first to search our own hearts, examining them with
the finger of discretion.
When you
find yourself taking on the role of the scribes and Pharisees in
this passage, setting yourself up as a judge over others, then
hear Our Lord’s words as addressed to you. See Ou Lord’s finger
as writing in the ground of your heart, and direct your
attention there. You
are bothered by the fault of another. Could it be that you
are guilty of the very same thing?
Even if not the same thing, what faults are you guilty
of? Where have you
been unfaithful to the Lord Jesus?
How has the Lord already shown you mercy? Where do you still
need to repent and let him show you mercy?
Taking up
this practice, we will find that temptations to judge others
rashly can be flipped on their heads and turned into
opportunities to grow in humility.
Humility will in turn make us more merciful toward
others, Dietrich von Hildebrand writes, “Our possession of the
highest human virtue (which is humility) constitutes the
necessary foundation for our progress towards sharing the
specifically divine virtue of mercy … The virtue by which we
live hourly is precisely the one of which we ought to be most
mindful. And the
mercy of God is what we live by …
The way to attain the virtue of mercy lies in our
constant awareness of being encompassed by mercy: of the fact
that mercy is the air we children of God are breathing.”