3rd Passiontide 2020, Time of Suffering

Rembrandt

3rd Passiontide
John 8: 1-12

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but as soon as day dawned, he was already in the Temple court, where the people flocked to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees led in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand in the middle, and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now, what do you say?” They said this only as a trap, in order finally to have a reason for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write something into the earth with his finger. When they kept on pressing him with questions, he stood up and said to them, “Whoever among you is without sin, let him cast the first stone at her.” And again, he bent down and wrote into the earth.

Breugel

When they heard this, their conscience began to stir within them, and they went out, one after the other, beginning with the eldest. And only Jesus was left and the woman who stood in the middle. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one passed judgment on you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

Then Jesus declared, “Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.”

And Jesus began to speak to them again: “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness but have the light in which there is life.”

3^rd Passiontide
March 29, 2020
John 8: 1-12

If someone adds something to food or drink to thin it out or to poison it, we say that it has been adulterated. It has been watered down or made harmful.

Over millennia, humanity's soul has been adulterated. The forces of humankind's adversary have inserted the thorn of evil, the sting into our hearts. It is a wound.

Bradi Barth

Because of this wounding, we have become weak. We are both 'watered down,' not fully potent, and at the same time capable of harm.

Christ came to the earth to experience what it is like being a human being in a body of flesh. He knows in depth the underlying human condition of weakness. And its capacity for evil. Yet in His empathy and compassion, He does not judge us. Instead, He seeks to give us strength, to heal us, to raise us.

Given the current world situation, we may now feel contracted in grief. Now is our time of suffering. Yet, like the woman in the gospel reading, we must realize that collectively we have brought this on ourselves. We all have succumbed at some point to self-centered desires and lack of compassion. However innocently, we have all contributed to evil.

And yet, as always, Christ stands in our midst, offering strength and healing to our souls and spirits. He gives us the opportunity to move beyond the self-centered desires, the restless pleasure-seeking, the judgmental anger, and self-pity. We have been adulterated. He offers us the strength to change our ways, become our better selves. Keep going, He says. Separate yourselves no longer from a right relationship to Me, to others, to the world.

In the words of the poet, we may say to Him:

My heart is so small

Fra Angelico

it's almost invisible.
How can You place
such big sorrows in it?

Yet He answers:

"Look, … your eyes are even smaller,
yet they behold the world."*

Eventually, with Him, we will rise and expand.
 
* Rumi, in Whispers of the Beloved, by Maryam & Azima Melita Kolin

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