IS
43:16-21
PHIL
3:8-14
JOHN 8:1-11
I keep
hearing a word in prayer the past few weeks: It’s a funny word. It's
a powerful word. It's a word we are talking about a lot in this Jubilee
Year.
The
word is Misericordia and it comes from two Latin words: MISERIA or misery, pity
and poor. And COR or heart, mind and soul.
When
put together, misery, pity, poor, heart, mind and soul, we get the origin of a
word we know all too well: MERCY.
Wordsmiths
will also use the word tenderheartedness.
Misericordia.
We are witnessing mercy in action this weekend in the Gospel
message with Jesus the teacher. And he’s teaching by example, not by words.
The scribes and Pharisees are trying to draw Jesus into a trap.
The scene is the Temple area in Jerusalem. The Jewish Temple was the house of
God, where the Holy of Holies dwelled. It was the center of religious life at
the time of Jesus.
Historically, all that’s left from the destruction of the Jewish
Temple is the “wailing wall” located near the Golden Dome of the Rock on the
Temple Mount, a place where the Muslim prophet Mohammed is said to have
ascended into heaven with the Angel Gabriel after praying with Abraham, Moses
and Jesus.
Jewish historians say this site was also the exact location
Abraham was set to sacrifice his son Isaac.
Needless to say, this site is special to three world religions
and a place where dangerous arguments have erupted into violence for two
millennia.
In
this exact spot, the scribes and Pharisees are trying to trip up Jesus. “If he
authorizes death, he violates Roman law, which did not allow the Jews to
administer capital punishment. If he advises mercy, he violates Mosaic law
(which required such a punishment for adultery).”
Jesus was in a sinister and dangerous pickle.
Pope Benedict wrote of this passage saying: “Jesus does
not enter into a theoretical discussion with his interlocutors on this section
of Mosaic Law. He is not concerned with winning an academic dispute about an
interpretation of Mosaic Law, but his goal is to save a soul and reveal that
salvation is only found in God's love.”
St. Augustine commenting on this passage, too,
saying: "The Lord, in his response, neither failed to respect the
law nor departed from His meekness."
His
answer was to bend over and begin to write in the sand and rock. What did he
write?
Father
Hersey preached a few years ago that maybe Jesus wrote the names of all those
who had relations with the woman, including some standing in the crowd
condemning her and other powerful Jewish leaders of the time.
Other
bible scholars say perhaps he was writing down a list of the sins committed by
those in the crowd.
What we
do know is Jesus turned the eyes of judgment away from the woman caught in
adultery and had them gaze intently at the sinners condemning her.
Rocks
were dropped, the scribes, Pharisees and others slink away and Jesus evades the
trap set before him.
Then, He
has one of his most beautifully pastoral conversations of the bible with a
human soul, a real person trapped in sin and public shame.
This is
what mercy looks like in the eyes of God. No one is denied the mercy of God. No
one.
Pope Saint John Paul the Second wrote of this powerful
scene: “How could we see
ourselves in this Gospel without feeling a surge of confidence? How could we not recognize it as ‘good news’
for the men and women of our day, who long to rediscover the true sense of
mercy and pardon? There is a need for Christian forgiveness, which instills
hope and trust without weakening the struggle against evil.”
I’m reminded of another struggle against evil and a powerful scene of judgment, mercy
and forgiveness in our modern world. How
many have read the book “Left to Tell” or seen the documentary “Diary of
Immaculèe?”
Roman Catholic Immaculèe Ilibagiza (ill-uh-bah-GEE-zuh)
grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by family and friends she cherished.
But in April of 1994, her native Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide
pitting family against family. The violence lasted three months and after the
machetes were put down nearly a million Rwandans lay slaughtered in the streets.
It stands as one of the most horrific scenes of brutal
slaughter in the late 20th Century.
Immaculèe and seven other women were sheltered by a local
pastor in a tiny, hidden bathroom, praying silently for three months.
In the end, most of Immaculèe’s family were murdered. In the book and documentary, we witness
Immaculèe’s journey back to Rwanda after the violence.
We hear a letter from her brother the night before his
execution: “Maybe our lives will be the price that must be paid for Rwanda’s
salvation… I am only certain about one thing: we will all meet again. There is no doubt in my mind.”
In one powerful scene, Immaculèe asks a photographer to
take a picture of her with a neighbor. That neighbor’s brother had murdered her
brother who wrote that letter.
The startled photographer didn’t know what to do, but
Immaculèe puts her arms around the man and says, “It’s OK. It’s OK.”
The photographer says he just about lost it in that
moment, choking back tears every time he retells the story.
When Immaculèe asked to see the imprisoned man who killed
her father, everyone expected her to be angry, but she only cried and looked in
the man’s eyes, touched his shoulder and said, “I only have sympathy for you. I
forgive you.
Immaculèe forgives in powerful and breathtaking ways. She
says she worked through the hate she had in her heart through the power of
prayer while terrified and trapped in that bathroom. No doubt she uttered thousands of Hail Marys
and Our Fathers.
Thoughts of revenge? She says, “That was useless. That was
only going to prolong the pain and hatred in this world.”
The message she most “want(s) to give is a message of
love.” She says, “I have seen the damage of hatred.”
Immaculèe hid in that bathroom for 91-days and said “they
never found me. But I found myself.”
Could we all learn to forgive like Immaculee or
Jesus? Can we all learn not to judge
people, judgment that in Immaculèe’s homeland led to unspeakable violence or in
Jesus’ time nearly turned into violence against a woman? Does the judgment we have for others lead to
violence toward them in our own hearts?
This is what Jesus is calling us to work on this Lent.
Catholic writer Henri Nouwen pens,
“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The
hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven
every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the
fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”
As Immaculèe prayed the Our Father in
that tiny bathroom in Rwanda, God helped her to experience the transformational
power of Jesus’ words “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us.”
As the prophet Isaiah wrote in
today’s reading, “Remember not the events of the past, the things long ago consider
not; see, I am doing something new!”
I pray we hear these powerful words
and work on the judgments in our own hearts and learn to
offer forgiveness to those who have harmed us.
Only in Jesus’
actions of forgiveness can we find His peace in our lives -- a peace
Immaculèe experienced in recent years and the woman caught in
adultery beautifully experienced two thousand years ago.
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