The 5th Sunday of Lent, March 13, 2016
St. Ignatius of Loyola recommended that when reading or meditating on a biblical text we should imagine that we are there right on the spot watching what is happening. So let’s put ourselves into the scene we have heard in the Gospel. What do we see? On one side the group of Pharisees and scribes shouting for blood, on the other Jesus with his apostles, in the middle the woman caught in the act of adultery. Does anything strike you? In this public court all are men. The attorneys, the accusers, are men. All the witnesses are men. The judges would be men if they had not dragged the woman before Jesus, also a man, but a different man. Suppose they were all women - it would be very different. They would have immediately noticed that there is someone missing: the man who sinned with her. The second offender got away with it simply because he was a man. Looking at this picture I cannot help noticing the similarities with today’s world. In so many cultures women still have little or no rights. They cannot inherit, cannot do anything without the permission of their husbands and their witness counts less than that of men. In our western societies there has been enormous progress in giving women the same rights and opportunities as men. Yet, in Germany, women still earn on average 22% less than men for the same work. That in our country, proud to be governed by the rule of law, an estimated 10.000 to 30.000 trafficked women are forced into prostitution … this cries to high heaven. So we, too, still have a long way to go. In the Church for centuries women were absent in the sanctuary and in any leadership positions. We are happy to see girls as altar servants and women readers. In our community about half of those who carry responsibilities are women. But we, too, have an even longer way to go. If there is one place where women play a vital role it is the family. Yet, at the synod on the family last year there were only 30 women among the 315 participants. So there is room for improvement. The issue is not so much the thorny question of women ordination, but rather the question what role the laity and particularly women play in the decision-making processes in the Church. Let us return to the scene of the Gospel. Apart from the striking absence of women, we notice quickly that this public court was set up not to do justice, but as a trap to catch Jesus in a dilemma. If he said: “Stone the woman!” he would contradict his message of God’s mercy and lose credibility. If he said: “Don’t!” he could be accused of going against the Law of Moses, which for Israel was a kind of constitution. Jesus tears the whole setup of injustice and hypocrisy to pieces and reveals the truth with one single sentence: “Let those among you without any sin throw the first stone.” There is nobody. Maybe what he wrote in the sand helped to convince them that Jesus knew the shameful secrets of their lives. The delicate way in which Jesus exposed the sins of the accusers is also striking. The Pharisees had put the woman “in full view” of the crowd. Not so Jesus. He does not humiliate or condemn anyone, neither the accusers nor the woman. Just a gentle: “Do not sin anyone.” Start a new life! If we understand the gentleness, the delicacy, the love Jesus display towards sinners, why are we so afraid or ashamed to approach him with our own burden of failures and sins?
Fr. Wolfgang Schonecke MAfr