Forgiveness
“Let anyone among you who is without sin, be the first to throw a stone at her.”
There is in all persons, a certain knowledge of good and evil; such and such things they say are good, and such and such things are evil. But perhaps no two persons fix exactly the same standard either of good or of evil. What people do, is to fix such a standard of good as they can come up to themselves, and such a standard of evil that will just exclude themselves and include others. For instance, I am quite comfortable driving at 20km/h over the speed limit but consider it the crime of the century when someone on the QEW is doing 20k under the limit ahead of me. I often congratulate myself for not having done the evil of holding up traffic and compare myself with someone else who has committed that sin which I manage to avoid. Now all this proves that people do not judge themselves by one regular fixed standard of right and wrong but just take what suits them and condemns others. The closest I actually came to a near death experience was expressing an opinion on “women drivers” with my wife in the car!
Now the scribes and Pharisees, mentioned in today’s gospel, were greatly shocked when they found this wretched woman taken in such open sin, and very indignant against her. They saw Jesus’ teaching in the temple, and they were also out to get him. They sense an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone – so to speak. They drag her into the temple and force her to stand in front of the crowd in order to catch Jesus in an act of heresy so they can kill him. It’s shocking because first of all these so-called religious leaders are planning to kill someone, and second, they are going to kill someone right there in the holy sanctuary. They announce that they caught this woman in the act of adultery but notice that the man who would have also committed adultery was not brought forward. That’s because women were not considered fully human by these sexist, patriarchal men. Women were blamed by men for the problems of men, and the only solution was the death penalty, in the name of God, right there in the house of God.
Now all this proves that people do not judge themselves by one regular fixed standard of right and wrong but just take that which suits them and condemn others. I notice this even in my work in the prison system. There is a ranking in terms of crime and sex offenders are considered the lowest and most often must serve their sentence in protective custody. People should realize that it is not by comparing ourselves with others that we should judge, but by comparing ourselves with God.
It is in that way we will find that we are all sinners – we are all guilty. We will not be so focused on finding someone that is worse than ourselves, but we might be anxious to know whether it is possible that God – before whom we know we stand condemned, can pardon or forgive us.
God’s ways are so far from our ways. If we only heard that God was just, then there would be no hope for any of us. But he is “a just God and Savior.” He has condemned and He has the power to execute. The only question that remains is: Can He Pardon? To the woman in the gospel, everything rested on his word. To us, everything rests on His Word. What would He say? What would He do? “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
If any of us desire to have God’s full and free pardon, it must be our plan to stand first as the guilty sinner. To be alone with Jesus – consciously condemned. To have no one else to trust; no one else to compare ourselves to. Not to make resolutions of amendment, not to try to get better first, before you come to Him… But to make your very guilt the reason of being alone with Him.
And the Lord gave her no conditional discharge. He did not say “Neither will I condemn you, if you will not sin anymore. No – He gives her full and complete forgiveness first. It is that forgiveness that will enable her to avoid sin in the future.
The truth is we are all sinners and so we are all loved and forgiven but that means we are not allowed to hurt anyone, kill anyone, execute prisoners, abort unborn children, or engage in unjust war. Like Jesus we are called to be people of nonviolence.
Today we see clearly the image of God, a God who does not condemn. Instead of condemning us, God has mercy on us. Instead of seeking revenge against us God has compassion on us. Instead of hating us, God loves us infinitely and defends us. Our faith calls us to also forgive and show mercy and compassion to everyone. We have been let off the hook, so we have to let everyone else off the hook.
I would challenge each of us to reflect on who we want to throw stones at – who we want to condemn – how we might follow Jesus on the way of compassionate, non-violent love – the way of the cross.
May the Eucharist that we will soon receive give us the strength to be merciful to others.
–Dcn. Terry Murphy