* 5th Lent (C), March 21, 2010
* Theme: Lent is the Season to Let God Shake Us Up

* I do not know much about ships and boats, but
* We all know that deep water is always the safest place for a ship.
* Even in a heavy storm, a captain will steer a boat to the open sea in order to avoid a collision with reefs or other vessels.
* One of the worst things that can happen to a boat is to run aground, or to get stuck in shallow water or on a sand bar.
* The captain can do nothing until the tide rises or a giant surge of water rescues the grounded craft from a fait that would surely destroy it.

* Today’s readings portray God’s response to a people “stuck” in the remembrance of past sins, sorrows, resentments, and anger.
* Just like a boat stuck on a sandbar, the people in today’s readings would be condemned to an ignominious fait without some kind of intervention.
* In our readings, God is the surge that shakes up our world and rescues the people when they are most in need.

* In Isaiah the prophet we heard God say, “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see I am doing something new!”
* Isaiah writes as the people begin to return from the exile in Babylon to the Promised Land – a New Exodus – New Beginnings after a sinful and painful past.
* Lent is a time to let ourselves be shaken up by the Lord
* A time to let God create something new in us

* Paul, the strident Pharisee, was shaken up by God and became the Christian zealot.
* Paul writes to the Philippians, “… Forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling.”
* While Lent has the danger of getting us mired down in our guilt;
* Paul tells us not to look back on the “rubbish.”
* Instead, he wants us to hear the gospel message of grace and our totally unearned forgiveness.
* Then we can, like an athlete finishing a race, be “straining forward,” fixing our eyes and hope to our future and “God’s upward calling.”
(Cf. Jude Siciliano, O.P.)

* Jesus is God’s promise made flesh.
* Christ shows us that our God is not past-tense or a character in a nostalgic but fictional story.
* Instead, in Christ, God is doing something new for us—again and again.

* In the Gospel story, the woman caught in adultery is publicly humiliated by the scribes and Pharisees
* The Law dictates that she is to be stoned.
* Will Jesus uphold the sentence?
* His adversaries try to trap him.
* Instead, Jesus avoids the trap and does something new.

* She must have felt trapped and stuck, both by her actions and by the disdain the religious leaders felt towards her.
* Jesus doesn’t ignore or minimize what she has done
* Nor most likely the deeds of her unmentioned partner
* But Jesus finds even more reprehensible the way the religious leaders are treating her.
* She is not as a person to them, but an object of ridicule and a test for Jesus.
* His adversaries were good at looking at religious laws and applying them to others.
* But they were not very good at using those laws as guides for their own behavior.
* When the Scribes and the Pharisees saw how Jesus responded to the woman and heard what Jesus said them, they went away.
* Try to imagine how the woman felt as these men walked away one by one.
* She had been desperate, caught in her own human weakness – panicked.
* With the departure of each one, she must have felt a little more relief, and a little more hope.
* Jesus separates the sinner from the sin.
* He does not condone the sin, but he does show compassion to the sinner.
* I cannot help but think that the Moment was a New Beginning for the woman.
We can be like the elders.
* But instead of walking off – we need to stay and let Jesus shake us up and touch our hearts.
* The way he touched the heart of the woman
* (cf. Jude Siciliano, O.P.)

* Lent and Easter provide us with the opportunity to go forth weeping so that we can come back rejoicing
* It is a time to turn to the Lord and live.
* The challenge is to personal conversion.
* The challenge is also to social conversion – the transformation of the world.
* As Christians, we cannot retreat from the world into a closet of private spirituality;
* Rather, we ask God in this Lenten season to help us to embrace the world that God has given us, that we may transform the darkness of its pain into the life and joy of Easter.
* (cf. Gerald Darring @SLU.edu)

* With the arrival of Spring
* With the approach Holy Week and Easter
* We continue with our celebration of Eucharist, and we acknowledge that we all have need for New Beginnings,
* So we can recognize God’s great care and compassion for us personally
* So we can recommit ourselves to our God and to the service of all God’s People
* So that we can renew our faith together

* Amen

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