5th Sunday Lent C

See Commentary on John 8:1-11


Homily 1 - 2007

In today’s Gospel, one thing that stands out for me is that Jesus does not judge. He knows the human heart. He has been tempted himself – in every way that we are (though he managed always to choose life - he didn’t sin.) He is not fazed by sin, not shocked by it. 

He understood that his mission was not to adopt the moral high-ground, not to point the finger, but to try to set people free – like himself – free, in the face of temptation, to choose life consistently. Part of that mission to set people free was to show that the God he knew and loved - the God who sent him - was a God who forgives, who hopes, and who never gives up because his God does not waste time judging. God simply loves. (People judge themselves).

But when fragile, vulnerable people have been deeply hurt (and we are all fragile, vulnerable people), a lot of other steps need to be taken; a lot of healing needs to happen, before there is much chance of moving towards real forgiveness, and what you might call closure. You can’t just get on with life – no matter much you would like to!

The Bishop has asked us to observe today as Healing Sunday throughout the diocese – in the context of the deep hurt caused particularly by the sexual abuse of children committed by a few priests in our own diocese, some of whom served here in this district.

I think we have all been hurt by the abuse. But I don’t think that most of us have any idea of what the child victims themselves have suffered, and the depth of its impact on their lives. Often their pain was suppressed and only forced its way into their consciousness years later. Then there are the families of the children abused: They were betrayed. The ones they loved were abused by priests they trusted. They have seen their children falling apart – sometimes years later – and felt powerless to help them or to live their lives for them.

And the whole Church system didn’t understand at the start, didn’t want to believe, didn’t want to lose face, so it closed ranks.

Since the extent of the harm has been made public, we have all been hurt. We other priests have felt it. You parishioners had to try to make sense of it. And some of you faced ridicule from contacts at work and sport, etc.

For healing to happen, the pain has to be acknowledged - our own pain – and the pain of the victims and their families needs to be believed and respected. And where there is pain, there is anger. Thank God for the anger – it provides the energy to make things change.

I think we all winced when news of abuse was published in the papers. Some felt angry at the papers for publishing it. Sometimes, from our perspective, the reporting seemed one-sided – but I personally wonder, if the abuse hadn’t been publicised the way it generally was, whether we would ever have moved to respond to the situation as well as in fact we have?

Healing takes time. It helps when the those who were guilty accept their guilt and the devastation they have caused, when they genuinely regret it, and come to say sorry. As healing happens, then forgiveness begins to be a real possibility.

In the Gospel today, Jesus did not make light of the sin. He named it for what it was.

But his interest was always in healing.

Eucharist is a wonderful sacrament of healing. As we continue our celebration today, let us pray that God’s healing grace be poured out over our diocese, into our own hearts, and especially into the hearts of those still hurting so deeply.


Homily 2 - 2010

In reflecting tonight on the Gospel we have just heard, I would prefer to focus, not on the woman, nor specifically on Jesus, but on the Pharisees and on the bystanders. We are dealing with a potential lynching, even if a lynching validated by long-standing law.

I would like to raise two questions: the first has to do with moral blindness; the second with the abuse of power. 

The Pharisees saw themselves as exemplars of righteousness, and guardians of true law and order. They saw the destructiveness of the woman’s behaviour. What they did not see was the depth of their own violence: they were prepared to stone her to death. They saw her sinfulness. They were completely blind to their own callous, self-interested, murderous intent.

They enjoyed the moral high-ground. The law was on their side. They had the power. No further need for reflection! They would use the woman to further their own broader interests, which were, essentially, to wrong-foot Jesus. By the end of this chapter in the Gospel, after a series of intense exchanges, as the Gospel’s author would comment: They picked up stones to throw at Jesus. They tried to lynch Jesus!

The interesting thing is who these potential lynchers were. They were the moral guardians of Israel. They were conscientious men. They were deeply religious men, the protectors of Israel’s precious religious institutions. They truly believed that God was on their side. Yet they were prepared to kill, to murder, not just the helpless female in the adulterous relationship (where was the male?), but also Jesus.

How could they feel affronted by the woman’s sin, and not see their own greater sin, their intent to murder? The question was one that greatly concerned the author of John’s Gospel. Why did deeply religious men crucify Jesus, without, apparently, the slightest moral qualm? How could they have been so blind?

The spotlight of the sexual abuse crisis moved recently to settle on Ireland and, even more recently, on Germany. How could so many bishops not move to respond effectively in order to protect so many vulnerable, powerless children? What blinded them? What paralysed them?

Part of the answer lies in the power that institutions seem to have over those who exercise authority in them. The dynamic tends so to mesmerise them that they look instinctively to protect the interests of the institution – its stability, its reputation, its influence to the virtual neglect of other responsibilities.

The dynamic affects the Church, certainly; but it affects all institutions – the Police Force, the military, governments, and so on.

It is easy for those of us not in power to point the finger. Yet, somehow or other, institutions influence everyone in them – from the top to the bottom. All tend to be complicit. For example, when the sexual abuse crisis broke in Australia, most Catholics were indignant at the victims for going public, and at the press for relentlessly publicising it. Instinctively, most defended the institution.

Moral blindness affects us all. We are highly selective in what we get indignant about. We are so used to it that it is difficult, almost impossible, to detect. We all need the continual radical conversion required to break free from the roles given us by the  institutions to which we belong or that we adopt for ourselves. We can’t live in society without institutions. But we need to learn to be our own persons within them; and that starts with the determined pursuit to see and to know ourselves. For this, it is hard to go past the importance of meditation, particularly prayerful meditation.

And, perhaps, also helpful are those who disagree with us. We need to let ourselves be challenged.


Homily 3 - 2013

I find today's Gospel quite thought-provoking.  A catch, of course, is that I'm too used to it, and I know how it ends.  Here we are again: Pharisees trying to test Jesus, wanting to rub his nose in the dirt.  And he deftly turns the tables on them, and rubs their noses in the dirt. Or does he?

When I hear the story, instinctively I give three cheers for Jesus and boo the Pharisees.  And the woman? Well, I frown at her sin, but large-heartedly don't demand her barbarous punishment.  Is that why the Gospel included the incident? to confirm us in our enlightened ways? I wonder.

For me, when I get beyond the instinctive reactions, the story raises a whole series of questions. What if, instead of the woman, it was a man caught sexually abusing a child – a young boy? or a young girl?

And who are today's equivalents of the Pharisees? People seem to love to buy the newspapers or follow the TV news that headline the sexual abuse of minors by Church personnel. Why? Because they don't like us? And if that is the case, why don't they like us? Do a lot of people react to us - to our bishops, to us priests, perhaps even to you as Catholics - in much the same way that we react to the Pharisees of Jesus' day? Do they see us as smug and self-righteous? as a powerful lobby group putting pressure on politicians to pass or block legislation? If they do, are they right? or half-right?

Jesus had been quite clear about adultery, and about a lot of other things as well.  Just read the Sermon on the Mount.  Yet he never seems to have come across to anyone as smug and self-righteous.  In fact, he was condemned in certain quarters because he mixed with tax-collecting extortioners and prostitutes – and even enjoyed eating with them.  And that seems, in fact, to have been the case.  Apparently, tax-collectors and prostitutes enjoyed eating with him, too.

Was he a hypocrite, saying one thing and doing another? And if not, How come? What was his secret?

Today's episode is interesting.  The conspicuous thing about it is the silence.  Just silence, first – no answer.  Then, his comment: If there is one of you who has not sinned, be the first to throw a stone.  And then, more silence.  And, not just silence – no eye-contact: He bent down and wrote on the ground.  What went on in the silence? What went on in the woman? What went on in Jesus? What went on in the Pharisees? The Gospel remains silent.

All sorts of things can go on in the silence – all sorts of questions arise, and insights can happen, and compassion can grow.  What is going on in you, now? What is going on in me?

I shall tell you some of what goes on in me.  One thing is the need to keep prioritising silence and building room for it in my life.  Another thing I want to cultivate is not quite silence, but is half there: to learn to listen before speaking.

When Jesus had his meals with the tax-collectors and the prostitutes, what did they talk about? Who did most of the talking? Who among them listened best? Sometimes, listening is the most effective way to love.  And perhaps, too, silence is up there with it.


Homily 4 - 2016

All I want is to know Christ … and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death. Was Paul a masochist, asking for suffering? I doubt it. I think that he knew that suffering in some shape or other is inevitable. It comes with life. I have suffered; you have suffered; Jesus certainly suffered; and so did Paul. But Paul also recognized that, depending on how we respond to suffering, it can either destroy us or build us up. He wanted to respond to the inevitable sufferings of life in the way that Jesus did, reproducing the pattern of his death. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was of the opinion that Jesus became perfect through the way that he responded to suffering.

Paul was not thinking so much of Jesus’ physical suffering. I presume he did not want to be crucified like Jesus. Rather he wanted to respond to the inner challenges occasioned by the sufferings of life just as Jesus did – particularly as evidenced in the ways Jesus approached his death. What was the mental anguish of the condemned Christ? And what was his response?  As Jesus faced into his death, his mission had failed. Few people believed. The religious hierarchy, particularly, had let him down, refusing to believe and, with him, to lead people further into the mystery of God. They were rather the ones who determined his execution. His special group of twelve, on whom he totally relied, had disowned and deserted him; one of them in fact had betrayed him; and their leader had even denied ever having known him. In face of such abject absence of faith, he could have responded with bitterness and despair, and certainly refused to forgive their hardness of heart and blindness. Instead, he chose to keep to his message of mercy and love, to continue somehow to trust God, to hope always in people, somehow, and even offer forgiveness to his murderers and treacherous former friends. He became perfect through suffering.

Is there anything pertinent to our lives and present situation we can learn from Paul, and particularly from Jesus? We have just been experiencing the intense gaze of the Royal Commission directed squarely on us as a diocesan Church. A lot of us are reeling, feeling outraged at what has happened in the past, humiliated just by being Catholics, and betrayed by those we looked up to and trusted. That is our reality. We are suffering. A number of our fellow Catholics, even family members, have chosen to walk away, no longer to belong. You and I are here. From the midst of our suffering, how might we reproduce the pattern of Jesus’ death? I do not think it is enough simply to weather the storm, to sit it out, to wish it go away, to avoid the pain and the bewilderment. That is the way of denial. God is present in the midst of all this, calling and enabling us to grow, even to become perfect. For me, that means, among other things, accepting humiliation. We need to respond respectfully and compassionately to victims and their families and friends. We need to support each other. I also believe that we need to seek if and how we have been complicit, and somehow responsible, for creating or accepting the climate that allowed what happened to happen. We need to reform our Church, to seek to understand the presence and power of sin in ourselves and in others, and particularly how sin infiltrates all human institutions, including ours, and blinds us.

Paul wrote, All I want is to know Christ. That, I hope, goes for all of us. We can know Jesus as it were from the outside, looking in. That will not do. Jesus offers us the opportunity to know him from the inside, to share his experience and his emotional anguish. It is how we, like him and with him, become fully alive, sharing his suffering so as to share his resurrection.


 Homily 5 - 2019 

I enjoy the sheer poetry of tonight’s First Reading from Isaiah, and I love its message even more. To me it’s saying, “Forget about the good old days. They’re gone. What is exciting is what is about to happen.” Isaiah had God saying, “See, I am doing a new deed, even now it comes to light; can’t you see it?” Well, no, I can’t. Can I feel any hope as I look towards the future? But then, hope, real hope, is not a factor of my anticipation of the future. Real hope springs from reading the heart of God.

I have no idea what the Church’s future will be. From our present vantage point it looks bleak – ranging from loss of confidence in the hierarchy [with the exception, perhaps, of Pope Francis], to an unprecedented level of negativity in the population at large towards most things catholic.

When Isaiah, way back in his day, had God speaking of doing a “new deed” for his Jewish people held captive in Babylon, I wonder if its beneficiaries thought of it as good or bad news. As we think of our Church tonight and its possible future, will any [thoroughly necessary] new deed on God’s part take the shape of a general cosmetic overhaul or something much more like drastic surgery? And then, how might we recognize God’s Will, God’s dream? And, unless we recognise it, how can we cooperate with it?

At this stage, St Paul comes to my aid. If Isaiah’s First Reading thrilled me, I love Paul’s comments even more – not for their poetry, but for the sheer enthusiasm of the man. I don’t know if Paul ever had any clear idea of what shape the future might take. My sense is that he trustingly left futures and outcomes totally in the hands of God. As he wrote: “I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” With worries about the future out of his way, he was free to concentrate his energies firmly on the present.

I love his observation, “All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death”. For Paul, Christ was not a pretty picture hanging on the wall, or a statue on a pedestal in the church surrounded by candles. Christ was real – his friend. He knew him; he loved him; and he trusted him. “All is want is to know Christ … and the power of his resurrection”. I am not sure what he was referring to there; but my sense of the risen Christ, drawn particularly from John’s Gospel, is of one who, on the day of his rising, greeted and gifted the men who had abandoned him, including the one who had denied even knowing him, with a greeting of Peace, the gratuitous offer of forgiveness, and responsibility to continue his mission to bring forgiveness and peace and mutual solidarity to the world.

Paul knew that life in a sin-scarred, still only partially redeemed world, would inevitably be marred by suffering, by violence and grief. Christ had experienced that. Paul wanted to face that inevitability with the same responses shown by Jesus to his suffering – trust in the power of God, forgiveness, an unshakeable, almost blind hope in people, universal love and utter non-violence. [And if that does not ensure the demise of clericalism, what will?]It is hard to choose that way – and most people don’t. Such choosing certainly has is price, but a price that is surely preferable to its alternative. Yet our world [and our Church] overwhelmingly prefers to wallow in chaos, despair, bitterness, hostility, hatred and violence – than deliberately go the way of Jesus.

If we cannot control the future, we can live the present – and, in the process, not only find breathing-room, but a quietly persistent joy. And that, essentially, may sum up God’s dream for our future.

“All I want is to know Christ – and the power of his resurrection – and to share his sufferings…”


Homily 6 - 2022

I wonder if the woman in today’s story learnt anything from her close shave with death? I wonder if she learnt anything from her encounter with Jesus? I wondered myself during the week what I could learn from my pondering on the story.

Jesus told the woman to “sin no more”, so he seems to have presumed that her adultery was voluntary on her part, and that she was not a victim of abuse [though it is interesting that her male accusers, scribes and Pharisees, did not seem concerned about bringing her accomplice to justice.]

The text noted, “Jesus was left alone with the woman, who remained standing there. He looked up …”. Can we assume from his remaining bent down and so choosing to look up at the woman that he was prepared to take her human dignity seriously, rather than stand up straight and look down on her, to threaten or to dominate her?

The conversion incident of St Paul on the road to Damascus, where he had a mysterious encounter with the risen Christ, comes to my mind. Not long before that incident, Paul had been an accomplice in the lynching by stoning of St Stephan. The fact of Paul’s obvious sinfulness was irrelevant to Jesus — who went on to call Paul to conversion and to greatness.

Jesus said two interesting things to the woman, the first of which was, “I do not condemn you”. That’s fascinating! But before we get carried away, he also said, “Don’t sin any more”. Jesus does not “condemn” anyone — but he is prepared to name and challenge sinful behaviour. The Gospel is full of that. Sinful behaviour is always destructive, either of others’ dignity or of our own. But Jesus maintains his wonderful respect for us, whatever our sin. That can seem quite confusing to us if we take the trouble really to think about it.

In instructing the woman to “sin no more”, Jesus was challenging her to mature. He did not say, as the scribes and Pharisees may have been inclined to say, “Do not break the law again”. So much of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was about going beyond law to the values that laws are meant to protect. But to recognise and appreciate value is a call to grow up, to move beyond mere conformity. We are not called to march thoughtlessly in step but to become the individual persons we have been made to be, by using our minds, our hearts and our wills. More than that, the issue of “sin” assumes that we are able to recognise that who we are and how we act in this world bring us into relationship with God. Our behaviour resonates into eternity.

Paul went on to a profound insight into God and a deep relationship with Jesus, the Christ. Today’s Second Reading illustrated that beautifully, “All I want is to know Christ ,,,”; “I believe that nothing can outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord ...”; “I am no longer trying for the perfection … that comes from the Law, but I want only the perfection that comes through faith in Christ…”.

I hope that the woman in today’s Gospel story went on, like Paul, to a deep, life-changing relationship with Jesus.