We are celebrating the Year of Mercy and especially in our Station Masses we are drawing attention to this most important aspect of our faith. Actually it is hard to overestimate the importance of the virtue of mercy for any Christian believer and it is right that Pope Francis has drawn our attention to this vital matter by declaring a Year of Mercy.
The Gospel this Sunday gives us a very good example of how Christ himself showed mercy. Here we have the account of the woman caught in adultery. It is an interesting story and there are several different themes running through it. Perhaps the most obvious is the hypocrisy shown by the scribes and Pharisees who brought this woman to Jesus.
We can certainly question their motives because it is not entirely clear whether they really intend to punish the woman or are using her sin as an oblique way of attacking Jesus. Of course, by dragging the woman in front of Jesus and parading her deeds before the crowds gathered there only adds to her misery and this shows that they are not at all interested in her rehabilitation. She has merely become a pawn in the greater game of trying to outsmart Jesus.
We could also go into the question of where her companion in adultery is lurking. If she had been caught in the act then there was surely a man who was equally guilty but he is nowhere to be seen. He seemingly gets off scot-free.
Modern day feminists might make much of this and point out how victimised women were in those days. While this is certainly true and really quite deplorable it is not actually the point of the story. Or at least it is part of the story insofar as Jesus tends to defend the most powerless in society and so comes to the aid of this particular woman who is certainly being victimised. The scribes and Pharisees want to stone the woman because they say this is what the Law of Moses demands. But we know from other sources that the Romans had removed the authority to sentence anyone to death from the Jewish courts. So what we have here is clearly a trick. According to them, if Jesus adheres to the Law of Moses then he can be denounced to the Romans but if he rejects the Law of Moses this will undermine his credibility with observant Jews.
We know that the scribes and Pharisees have tried this trick on other occasions for example by asking Jesus whether it was legitimate to pay taxes to the Romans or not. Jesus is well aware what the Pharisees are doing and he bends down to draw on the ground. This is an act of indifference, perhaps even an insult to these local worthies who expect to be taken seriously; and we can imagine that they were affronted by Jesus doodling in the dirt. It is as if Jesus is tired of their little games and simply refuses to debate with them.
This drawing in the dust has a dramatic twist to it when Jesus stands up and looks them in the eye and says those famous words, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ Jesus does not actually specify sexual sin, even though the woman’s sin is of this type, but one can imagine that this is how the Pharisees and the scribes interpreted his words. Suddenly they are reluctant and one by one withdraw from the scene. This leaves the two alone: Jesus and the woman. He says, ‘Has no one condemned you? Then neither do I condemn you, go away and don’t sin anymore.’
We see here a beautiful distinction between the recognition of the sin and the condemnation of the sinner. Jesus clearly acknowledges that the woman has sinned; there is no brushing under the carpet here. But he does not condemn nor punish her. He merely tells her not to sin any more. We could speculate that the woman’s embarrassment was already sufficient punishment but this is not stated in the text. I think that Jesus is simply satisfied that the woman knows that she has sinned, that she has contravened the Law of God and that this acknowledgement is sufficient. You will notice that Jesus does not ask her if is she is sorry, nor does he expect her to show remorse. It is a very simple transaction: she has sinned, he shows mercy.
St Augustine summed it up in a simple phrase: ‘relicti sunt duo – miseria et misericordia’ meaning ‘there are left the two – misery and mercy’. She is miserable, he is merciful. Nothing more is required. This is a beautiful story with a profound message and it provides us with plenty of fruit for meditation. The questions we are left with though are these: how are we to show mercy ourselves? And how is our society to best frame its laws to get the balance between mercy and punishment right.
Let us take the second of these first. I was a prison chaplain for twelve years and having observed the justice system close at hand I can tell you that there is very little that is got right by the legal system in this or any other country. There are countless acts of injustice perpetrated by the so-called justice system. It is a very blunt instrument and it cannot easily take into account of individual circumstances nor is it good at distinguishing between wildly differing situations.
Yes, as a society we should constantly endeavour to improve our justice system to that it is ever more fair and equitable. We should certainly aim to re-educate and rehabilitate offenders. But we have to also realise that some persistent offenders simply never learn and they constantly repeat their criminal behaviour. Dealing with such persons is always going to be very difficult.
But what about ourselves? How do we put into practice the example of mercy that Christ shows us? First we note that Christ does not ignore sinfulness; he always acknowledges wrongdoing. But he is not so concerned with whether it is this law or that law that is broken; what he is interested in is how people offend against the law of love. What Christ wants is for us all to love, and he is dismayed when we fall short in this regard. According to him all sin is the expression of a lack of love.
When we understand that what Christ wants above everything else is love then we begin to understand how to exercise mercy. We realise that mercy is an expression of love. And when we analyse how a lover thinks we soon understand that a lover constantly forgives his beloved. The lover constantly puts the best interpretation on the actions of the beloved and sees any aberrations as a mistake. The constant wish of the lover is to forgive the beloved. This is what we mean when we say that ‘love is blind.’
What we as ministers of Christ’s mercy have to do then is to love with a bigger and bigger heart. We have to look at those who have offended us or others with the eyes of a lover. We have to recognise that they are truly loved in the eyes of God and we have to accept them as objects of our own love. When we do this then forgiveness and mercy immediately follow.
Sometimes preachers when looking at the passage before us today put heavy emphasis on the words of Jesus, ‘Go and sin no more.’ I don’t think we need to do this because if the sinner experiences a true expression of love then they will not be inclined to sin again. Love builds up a person, love edifies them; the experience of love heals them and makes them better.
This is what we need in the world: more love. Some people think we need more strictness, more moral guidelines and better and better boundaries, but I think that what we need is more love, more kindness, more goodness, more understanding, more mercy. To me this is what Jesus came to bring us; a new attitude, a new concern to put love at the very centre of everything that we do.
Some have wondered what Jesus wrote on the ground. Preachers in the past have claimed that he wrote the names of all the sinners standing there or that he listed the sins each one was guilty of. Others have said that he wrote out the Ten Commandments. However it has also been suggested that Jesus wrote on the ground and not on paper to show that written words are not important and that they are easily brushed away.
According to me the action of writing is actually also an act of mercy. It took Jesus’ eyes off the scribes and Pharisees and it gave them time to consider what they were doing. He then looks up and says, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ And he lowers his eyes again and returns to his doodling. This gives them more time; it also avoids anyone thinking that he was looking at them in a judgemental way. Giving them time allows those gathered there to disappear while still maintaining their dignity. They knew that what they were doing was just as sinful as what that woman had done, but they are not judged by Jesus; he allows them to slip away quietly and without notice.
I think that we need to realise that every single thing that Jesus did was an act of mercy. The question we are left with is whether all of our actions are equally merciful.