5th Sunday of Lent - Cycle C

John 8:1-11

“So he was left alone with the woman before him.”  (John 8:9)

There is a perhaps not so subtle juxtaposition between the woman standing in the middle of the crowd ready to condemn and kill her at the beginning of this passage and the freedom of the intimacy of a moment alone with Jesus at the end. 

We don’t know anything about this woman, other than her sin. We’re left to imagine her life circumstances, her upbringing, perhaps the trauma and wounds that brought her to where she was. We have no clue about her personality, her gifts, her talents. And yet, she is cemented, in the eternal word of God, for her unique heart which drew the love of our unstoppable God to a child He could not resist.  

This woman could not carry the weight of her own sin. The Pharisees could not carry the weight of her sin. But Jesus could, and He wanted to. In between the shame of the crowd and the forgiveness with the Savior, the Cross happened. Jesus stood in the gap for her as He does for each one of us. 

I’m prompted to wonder if during this encounter, He foresaw the cross. That it was not her sin that He saw, but the sacrifice of love that He would make to restore her. Did He picture the unspeakable shame and weight he would bear so that she did not have to carry those things any more? Did He feel in his heart that she was “the joy that was set before him” even in the darkness moments of his passion?

Just as much as we do not want to identify with this woman, we do, in fact, want to to be in her place. She takes up her new identity as beloved, forgiven, redeemed, and steps into a life won for her by his precious blood. It’s not a wish, a hopeful thought, a contingency based on how much we can earn it; it is an eternal reality spoken and set forth by an unchanging God. We have a choice: We can remain chained to our sins and shame in the middle of the crowd, or we can move with Jesus to the freedom of living in the healing and the wholeness He died for us to have.