March 21, 2010 (5th Lent)
Today’s Readings (text):
In the wisdom of people who have prayerfully studied scripture and developed the major lectionaries of our Christian churches, Isaiah 43 in the First Reading (or the Old Testament Lesson) has been paired with an episode in which Jesus came to the defense of a woman (for adultery in the Roman Catholic reading or for “wasting” perfume to make Jesus’ feet smell nice in the Revised Common Lectionary).
But the profound prophecy in Isaiah 43 (”Behold, I am about to do something new. Can’t you perceive it?”) necessarily begs the question: What’s so new about Jesus forgiving a sinner? Well, the answer is: Nothing, because we’re looking in the wrong place. We need to look at the other places in the gospel passages.
When Jesus came to the defense of (and didn’t condemn) the woman about to be stoned for adultery, he “bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger.” And then while all her accusers were walking away, he did the same, “Again he bent down and wrote on the ground,” scripture tells us.
Yes, he spoke, but speaking and teaching and forgiving were not new things for Jesus at this time. But when he wrote something with his finger (we are not told what he wrote), that was something new indeed. In fact, the only other instance of God actually writing in the entire canon of scripture—in all 73 or 66 books, depending on which version of the Bible you use—is when he wrote the tablets for Moses, handing down the law.
God first gave us the law (we don’t know what those original tablets said, either, since they were destroyed before Moses could read them for his people), and then he replaced the punishments that had been given for the law (maybe not on the original tablets, but through Moses) with forgiveness, bending down to write probably a new law in the sand.
Adultery was still against God’s law, in Jesus’ book, but a new covenant was written, “Nor do I condemn you. Now go, and don’t sin any more.” The way I see it, Jesus here “completed” the 10 Commandments. We don’t know what he wrote, but his actions speak volumes. We should not sin, but we shouldn’t condemn or stone people to death for committing adultery, either.
In the Revised Common Lectionary, we see something new as well: the first foreshadowing of Judas Iscariot’s betrayal in John’s gospel as he accuses Mary Magdalene of not giving money to the poor from the sale of the perfume. John even observes Judas’ hidden agenda in accusing Jesus.
But take a look at the Epistle as well, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. “For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things, and I consider them so much rubbish,” he writes. That is, whatever he had was lost—everything on Earth. It has been replaced with the promise of his resurrection in Christ, “not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ.”
I usually try to include more modern references in these reflections, but the fact is, the events described in the gospel passage, Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and their prophecy in the Old Testament lesson are three of my favorite passages of scripture. I suspect people who read these reflections have their favorite events as well. I’m a writer, and when Jesus used his actions in defending and not condemning a woman accused of adultery to become a writer himself, well, that did it for me.
There are a few notable exceptions, but typically, it is the written account of something that has the largest significance in our minds. One exception that comes to mind would be the 1937 crash of the Hindenburg. For that disaster, the spoken news account plays a more significant role in our historical memory. But for most other events in history, the written account outlasts and outweighs the spoken account.
As John says at the end of his gospel, Jesus did many, many things that could not be written down. Some of those things are part of our tradition, but what mostly survives in our churches is what people did get the chance to write down. Well, this is the one time that Jesus himself, God incarnate, wrote something down. That stands alone as his indication of the importance of forgiveness in God’s kingdom.
