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5th Sunday of Lent – 3 April 2022

Lent, as we know, is a time of examination, a time of review and evaluation.  It’s the time in the year, in preparation for the celebration of Easter, where we re-focus and regain our single-mindedness.  Many centuries ago, St. Benedict taught that such self-examination and review should be a characteristic not simply of a single liturgical season but indeed of our whole life.  

As we examine our life with renewed depth, and walk forward, our gaze is on the Christ ahead of us who invites us, who beckons us, who waits with arms open to receive us.  Our gaze must be firmly on him, full of invitation and full of possibility.  This is critical because if we take our gaze off him, then our self-examination can become a gaze simply on our self.  And to the extent that the gaze is simply on our self, on our own efforts rather than the invitation of the Lord who beckons us forward, then we can slide simply into a relentless type of self-criticism.  Today’s gospel, in which we hear the story of an accused woman brought before Jesus confronts this tendency in each of us.  

In this story the voice of accusation dominates.  The woman is accused.  Her accusers demand satisfaction.  The characters portray the destructive dynamic of accusation:  how it perpetuates shame, how it leads to despair, how it works toward the isolation of the person.  The voice of accusation shames; it isolates.  Strangely our own shame almost requires accusation; it instinctively looks for accusation.  It expects accusation for its validation.  That is why people who carry within them a great reservoir of shame, albeit unknown to themselves, project a great deal of accusation onto others.  Another’s silence for example is interpreted as accusation.  Another’s delay is interpreted as punishment, and so forth.  Shame needs accusation for its validation.

In this story the voice of accusation has taken the upper hand.  But Jesus refuses to enter it.  When the accusers bring the shamed woman before him, demanding that he too accuse her, he remains silent.  He simply plays in the sand.  We do not need, I believe, to interpret too much into what is written in the sand. He simply bends down and doodles, perhaps. Yet in so doing, he silences the voice of accusation.  He neutralizes it, disempowers it.  He does not accuse.  He does not collude to deepen the woman’s shame.  And therefore he creates a space for change to take place within her. But by not colluding with the voice of accusation, Jesus reveals to us something new of God.  In God, there is no accusation.  In God, there is no accusation.  This is something deeply confusing to our shame.  Our shame, as mentioned, instinctively, almost perversely, needs accusation for its validation.  It seeks out accusation.  It projects accusation.  And it all so often projects accusation onto ‘God’ who, trapped in the web of our shame, becomes the eternal accuser.

But Jesus breaks the cycle of shame by breaking the cycle of accusation.  In God, there is no accusation.

And so, through Jesus, the silence of God can no longer bear our projection of accusation.  The silence of God no longer presents itself as accusation.  Rather it offers itself as embrace, as acceptance, as a love stronger than our shame.

May that embrace, and not the interminable voice of self-accusation, be the truest impetus for our renewal this Lent and for us as a Church as we walk ahead, as we build and as we witness to the possibility given the embrace of Jesus for us, just as we are.

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