Fifth Sunday of Lent

Today I’m considering carefully the length of my homily in light of an article I saw. The title was: The Greek philosopher, Socrates. And the subtitle: He talked a lot. They killed him. There's a message in that article!

How many are following this weekend's NCAA championship basketball games? Unfortunately my men's team lost but my women's team may win: ND!

We all like winners, don't we! You may have heard about the Army general who went to a luncheon and ordered a broiled lobster. When the plate was brought out, the lobster was missing a claw. So the general summoned the waiter.

The waiter explained: “General, our lobsters are kept in a holding tank. In the tank, they often fight, and sometimes lose a claw.” The general glared at the waiter and bellowed: “Then for God's sake, bring me a winner!”Yes, sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.

Today’s word of God takes us back to the Ancient Israel of the 6th century before Jesus. Ancient Babylonia had conquered the Hebrews; destroyed Jerusalem and demolished the Temple; and deported many Hebrews to Babylonia.

Yet at the end of that century, God fired up the Hebrews with hope for the future. Set free by Persia, the Hebrews returned to their homeland to rebuild. The author proclaims here that God will breathe hope into the Hebrews in spite of their catastrophes. Yes, God will usher in a new age: there will be new highways; fertile land; abundant produce; flowing rivers; and a newly created people will praise God. 

The author may well ask you and me: when was the last time we breathed hope into the life of someone with a word of encouragement or a helping hand when they were “down and out,” so to speak?

Paul writes his letter to the Christian community in Philippi from an unknown jail cell, perhaps in Rome. And what motivates Paul?  Paul proclaims that Jesus Christ “possesses” him.  Yes, years before, Christ had turned Paul’s life “upside down” on the way to Damascus. And ever since, proclaiming the good news—Jesus Christ is alive-- was Paul’s one passion in life

We share in God’s divine  life, Paul proclaims here, through faith in Jesus Christ.  And so Paul sets his eyes on “what lies ahead”, eternal life beyond death. Paul may ask us: do we set our eyes on eternal life beyond death?

In John's Gospel, Jesus meets a woman who has been caught in an adulterous relationship. I wonder if the nineteenth-century American author Nathaniel Hawthorne read this Gospel story before he wrote The Scarlet Letter: a novel about about sin, guilt, and the letter A for adulterer. The novel is about resentment, revenge, and violence in 17th century Puritan New England. How many had to read that book in school? Did you know that Rose Hawthorne, founder of the Hawthorne Dominican Sisters, was Nathaniel’s daughter? These sisters still care for terminally ill cancer patients.

Anyway, did you ever wonder what Jesus wrote on the ground as the crowd surrounded the woman? Was Jesus doodling? Was he asking God for advice? Was it a gesture of silence, prompting everyone to rethink? And what about the man in the adulterous relationship, who was as guilty as the woman?

In so many words, Jesus says to us in this story, “Don’t be so negatively judgmental about other people.” All of us need forgiveness. That’s why Jesus came: to forgive, heal, transform us, to save us from death and propel us into a glorious future, like Jesus did to this down-and-out woman in the Gospel.

This story invites you and me to reflect on our own willingness to forgive people who have wronged us, intentionally or unintentionally. Jesus says forgiveness is a primary characteristic of discipleship.

A folk wisdom says “forgive and forget.” But sometimes we can’t forgive unless we remember—for example, a once-happy relationship. Then a wrong done to us. And finally, a shattered relationship. Perhaps we may have contributed to that. Sometimes we have to forgive ourselves as well as others so we can move forward with our lives.

Let me illustrate with a favorite book of mine, The Hiding Place, in which Corrie Ten Boom describes how she lectured throughout post-WWII Europe about the need to forgive one another. Some of you know the story. After one of her talks, a former SS guard came up to her. He didn’t recognize her, but she recognized him immediately.
Suddenly, Corrie remembered as if they were re-living the concentration camp experience: the laughing guards, the heaps of clothes on the floor, the frightened face of her own sister.

When this repentant former SS guard extended his hand to shake hers, she, who had preached so often about forgiveness, kept her hand at her side as she had angry, raging, and vengeful thoughts about this man.

And then she remembered: Jesus Christ had died for this man, Jesus forgives him. “Lord Jesus,” she prayed, “forgive me and help me to forgive him.” She tried to smile, to raise her hand. But she couldn’t. And so again she breathed a silent prayer: “Jesus, I can’t forgive him for what he did to my sister and so many other people I knew. Give me your forgiveness.”

She discovered that forgiveness depended not upon herself but upon God’s grace. When Jesus tells us to love our enemies, he also gives us the grace to love, to forgive.

To forgive as Christ forgives is sometimes impossible to do on our own. It calls for a humility, a generosity, a spirit of compassion that is beyond many people. But Christ doesn’t ask us to forgive on our own. He simply asks that we participate in his gift of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is an act of the will that overrides negative feelings about someone who has wronged us. God has already forgiven—and all he asks us to do is to participate in his. Forgiveness is possible, not when we try to forgive on our own but when we trust in God to bring healing and forgiveness and reconciliation to our broken relationships. And as God constantly searches out the lost and the stranger, so should we.

The Gospel invites us to forgive one another as Jesus forgave, to wish them well even if we still have negative feelings about them. Forgiveness can transform someone down-and-out into a person of hope.

I pray that God will give all of us the grace to participate in the forgiveness of Christ so that we can be at peace with ourselves and one another and God,  faithful disciples of Jesus.