Fr. Alan's homily for The Fifth Sunday of Lent March 25th 2007
The woman brought to Jesus has committed adultery. She has offended both against her husband and the whole village. Something in that society has been upset and someone must pay. She is guilty: she must die.
It's possible to see in this a classic case of The Scapegoat. To make a scapegoat is to identify a victim and expel that victim from the community. Then the rest of the community can rid itself of the scandal and return to normal. The victim is guilty and everyone else is assumed innocent. It is this assumption of innocence that Jesus subverts: If anyone is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.
Violence directed by all against a single victim seems to be a fundamental characteristic of human behaviour. But it exposes an equally fundamental flaw in human nature, which is our tendency to maintain our total innocence in the face of the victim we have identified as guilty.
For us at the present it is terrorism that is perceived as the threat, something that is making society uneasy. Indeed there is good reason to think this. Yet Christian believers should always be questioning our human need for victims.
Some years ago, during the IRA bombing campaign in London, the Daily Telegraph asserted that young Irishmen should not be surprised if they were picked up by the police and questioned. These days the scapegoats appear more in the guise of young men of Middle Eastern, North African or Pakistani descent.
If anyone is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. Clearly, that is not to condone violence. We rightly identify terrorism as a menace for all of us. Yet that does not mean that we should make scapegoats. For in the complex interrelationship that is global human life we none of us can claim innocence. I am no terrorist. I am less sure that I am not complicit in some of the causes of terrorism.
To claim total innocence is to deny original sin and unmask ourselves as guilty. Saint John's first letter has this: If we say we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
The woman is guilty of adultery. Yet Jesus will not allow the victim ritual to take place. That sort of human sacrifice is no longer to be made, since those who intend to offer it are exposed as equally guilty.
Instead, Jesus gives the woman a challenge. Jesus mandates a response to forgiveness, a response that we would describe as a "firm purpose of amendment." He says: Go and sin no more. Let that be heard as if addressed to all of us. That is the Christian counsel.
Christians do not need to chase after victims, or to condone the making of scapegoats. This is because one full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice has brought about the forgiveness of sins, and also unmasked the violence of the innocent. We offer the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, the innocent Lamb freely offering his life, the blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins.
Close