Fifth Sunday of Lent
March 25, 2007


What message often posted on Semi tractor trailer trucks has the most in common with today’s gospel?

During the early days after I broke my collar bone back in 2001, I drove in the right lane of the highway quite a lot. I didn’t like it – it was slower, more annoying. But, it was ‘safest’. You see, it was incredibly painful to try and turn enough to ‘see my blind spot.” I was fearful in case of the need to get over quickly, that I would not know if someone would be there, and I would cause more danger than what I was trying to avoid. I also noticed on all those Semi’s out there – that little sticker with the ‘x’ on it that said, if you are here, I can’t see you. The Blind Spot. The area of our world which we are unable to see. The area of danger to ourselves and to others because we cannot know what is in that place. Though you can compensate for it (I used my side view mirrors constantly, and was mentally very aware of who was on the road) it usually takes someone else to point it out to us – to make us aware. The blind spot.

Today’s gospel – in many ways is the story of the blind spot. It is the story of what the Pharisees could not see, would not see in themselves and in others. In their best effort to trap Jesus, they bring a woman caught in the act of adultery (not the man, if you notice) and in their self righteous blindness, they make her stand there before them and Jesus. Probably half clothed, if she was caught ‘in the act’; hair disheveled, eyes frightened, downcast – a sight for a soap opera, not a public square. It didn’t matter who she was – except as she was the instrument they would use to take Jesus down. If he forgives her – we’ve got him over a violation of the law. If he condemns her, then where is that vaunted mercy of his? Who she was, what she was, who’s daughter she was, who’s wife, or even who’s lover she was – that did not matter. She was in their blind spot. She was the humanity they would not see, could not see. She was also the symbol of the past that one could not dodge, the sin one could commit that would keep you forever cut off from God and from the community. Blind spots. Places you can’t see. Things you won’t acknowledge or recognize that could be a danger to you. In this case, it was a woman who existed not as a person, but only as a tool to be used and discarded. That is what the woman was to the Pharisees. And what they wanted her to be to Jesus.

Fortunately for the woman, the Pharisees and US, Jesus does not have that same blind spot. Taking in the scene, Jesus understands it all – the trapped-ness of the woman, the smallness of heart of the Pharisees, the curious bi-standers caught up in the spectacle and the day’s newsworthy event.

And what does he want? He wants all of them to see their blind spot – all of them to see the need they have for SOMETHING NEW to emerge – to see the possibility of change, of letting go of the past and moving into something new. He wants that the woman would not die. But just as passionately, he wants the Pharisees to not die in their hard heartedness. He wants the woman and the Pharisees to see that they belong to each other and to a future that can always begin anew. There is no blind spot from God, nothing that is not seen and acknowledge. What Jesus tells both the women and the onlookers is that God sees a new future for them all. Instead of dying because of her past and their past, Jesus wants them to die TO their past.

So is suspect it is with great sorrow that after he has doodled on the ground, and given people time to look into their own blind spot and their own hardness of heart, he looks up and says: Woman, where are they all? Don’t they know I am offering to them what I am offering to you – the mercy and truth that will set all of you free?

So this day, Jesus looks to us and invites us to dream about a new future, not chained to our past, but open to God’s beginning. Pray for the grace of a friend to reveal to you a blind spot – or for the ability to at least sense what you don’t see clearly. Pray that like the woman, you might sense God’s mercy even in that place where you can’t see or don’t want to see – so that you, too, can hear Jesus say: Go and do not sin any more… Pray that if you have a hardness of heart like the Pharisees, you may know the mercy and new start that Jesus holds out to you this day.

Blind spots! We all have them. But may we not be blind to the love we have in Jesus and the healing power of his mercy offered to us all…