Homily for Lent 5
April 6, 2025
A Debt Paid
We just read the powerful story of the mercy of Jesus,
who did not condemn but pardoned the woman caught in adultery. But it begs the
question: why did God command adultery to be punishable by death? This law is
in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament. Some have said that God
in the Old Testament was a God of unflinching justice, doling out punishment to
evildoers, while the God of the New Testament was a gentle, merciful, and
loving God. But that’s actually a heresy called Marcionism (Marcion said there
were two different Gods, one for the OT and one for the NT). God is quite kind
and merciful in the Old Testament, and Jesus can be strict with those who
refuse to repent!
So, how do we explain such a severe punishment for this
sin? There are three explanations for it. First, as the great Catholic writer
Flannery O’Connor once said, “to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the
almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures.” The Israelites were
spiritually blind and deaf. Surrounded by the pagan nations for hundreds of
years, they had become numb to their immoral ways - including polygamy and
loose morals surrounding marriage. So God needed to “shout” to get their
attention: hey, adultery is not acceptable!
Second, God often uses the physical
to reflect the spiritual. Thus, Israel’s slavery in Egypt is a symbol of
slavery to sin…crossing the Red Sea into the freedom of the Promised Land is
symbolic of baptism, which “drowns” sin and opens the Promised Land of Heaven
to us…and the like. So in this case, adultery being punishable by physical death
is a symbol that lust is spiritually deadly, without repentance and Confession.
But third, and most importantly,
adultery is punishable by death because all sin is punishable by death -
Jesus’ death on the Cross. It says in Scripture that “the wages of sin is
death” - if sin means turning our back on God Who is the source of Life, what
have we chosen? Death. But Christ could precisely say to that adulterous woman,
“I do not condemn you,” knowing that He would be condemned for the sin
Himself in a few short weeks, upon the Cross.
Isn’t
this the meaning behind Jesus’ enigmatic action of writing in the dust? What He
wrote is anyone’s guess, but some ancient writers conjectured that Jesus was
writing the sins of all present in the sand – sins that would be as easy to
wipe away as simply as brushing one’s hand against the dust. Once the penalty
was paid upon the Cross, all forgiveness could be unleashed, and sins could be
wiped away.
There
was an old Tide laundry detergent commercial that illustrated this well. A
middle-aged mother had borrowed her teenage daughter’s fashionable shirt,
without the daughter’s permission. But while enjoying the night out, the mom
spilled something on it. She knew her daughter would be furious – so she had to
get the stain out to reconcile the relationship. Tide to the rescue! The shirt
returned clean, the relationship restored.
This adulterous
woman’s sin was a scarlet letter upon her, preventing her from being one with
God or her fellow believers. Our sin is a blot which also destroys
relationships, because our sin shows that we are disobedient and have used God’s
gifts of life, health, possessions, and free will very wrongly. Mercy to the
rescue! We put our souls in the wash (the Confessional) and come out clean, the
relationship restored – because the cleansing detergent is the Precious Blood
of Jesus Christ.
And then
we live like the redeemed we are. Another example: imagine you are teaching a
young person how to build a fire with flint and steel. They need two things:
the tools, and the instruction. Instruction without tools would be futile;
tools without instruction would be frustrating and doomed to failure. The Cross
is the tool – without it, salvation would not happen. And the instruction is
what Jesus ends the Gospel with: “Go, and sin no more.” We can’t “go” or “sin no
more” without the grace won for us on the Cross, but the Cross is of no avail
unless we are willing to go and sin no more. Christ wins the forgiveness, and
then teaches us how to live like the forgiven.
Back in
the early 1900s in Paris, two 13-year-old boys were being forced to make their
weekly Confession, but this time they wanted to have some fun. They invited
their Jewish friend Aaron to play a prank on the priest – he was to make up
ridiculous sins in a mock Confession. Aaron readily agreed, and went in to the
priest, confessing bizarre and outrageous sins. The priest listened patiently,
then said, “I will offer you Absolution, but first you must do something. Go up
to the life-sized cross in the church and declare three times, You did all
this for me, and I don’t even care. Then come back.”
The
imperious boy marched to the front of the Church, where he said to the crucifix
with arrogance, “You did all this for me, and I don’t care!” Then a second
time, a little less sure: “You did all this for me…and I don’t care?” Finally a
third time he declared, “You did all this…for me.” And he broke down in tears,
returned to the priest, and asked for baptism. He was baptized and eventually
became the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, who died
in 2008.
Adultery
was punishable by death because this is the cost of all sin: the death of Jesus
Christ upon the Cross. But the stain of sin has been wiped away for those who
believe and confess, allowing us a right relationship with the Living God.
