This week marks the fifth week of Lent and we are presented with the Gospel passage of John 8:1-11, let the person without sin be the first to throw a stone.  The story is probably well known to us.  The scribes and the Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman, they claim, was caught committing adultery and ask his opinion on whether or not she should be put to death by stoning.  The crowd is dissipated once Jesus gives his reply, “If there is one of you who has not sinned let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Like every encounter with Jesus that is recorded in the scripture, something is revealed about God and something is revealed about humanity in this story.  The Scriptures open up for us this constant exploration of human beings trying to work out who God is and what God stands for.  And Jesus seems to blow our conceptions out of the water, time and again.  God does not condemn.  God does not judge.  God is the God of life, not the God of death and destruction.  In the face of human beings who like to pick up stones and kill, God calls for restraint.  God calls for life.

And stone throwing happens on both the global stage and in the quiet of our neighbourhoods.  We witness it from Hollywood to Canberra, and from Camberwell to Wattle Park.  “Look at them!”, we cry as we pick up the stone and aim.  As our outrage escalates God’s call to refrain summons us.  When we respond to that summons we know that God’s name is mercy.  God’s name is compassion.  God’s name is love.

At the same time, God’s appeal to halting our condemnation and our killing is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card for those who wish to inflict violence and pain.  God’s mercy and compassion is not a license for us to do what we like knowing that we will simply be forgiven.  God’s mercy is an appeal to both our collective and individual consciences.  God’s mercy throws us back on ourselves.  It invites us to look at our own actions, motivations and prejudices.  “Go, and sin no more” Jesus says to the woman in the gospel.

So we learn that conversion (change of heart and mind) is two-fold.  It is the discovery that the name of God is mercy and compassion.  It is also an appeal to imitate God in all our encounters.  Christians are first and foremost called to witness God’s mercy not just for the sake of the Christian community but as an indicator as to what God’s dream is for the whole of humanity.  Unfortunately, that dream is still unrealised.  Lent is the opportunity for us to explore further how we might move into the realm of God’s dream and enact it through our own daily interactions.  The gospels are a constant invitation for us to imagine the world to which God is calling us.

Fr Brendan