Lent encounterBy the Revd David Burgess
7th February marks Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. Now, there are all sorts of ideas about Lent, some near to the mark, others a long way away from it. What, then, is the point of this particular six-week season in the church’s year?
One of the appointed Bible readings for Ash Wednesday is the story in John’s Gospel (it’s in chapter 8) about Jesus’s encounter with a woman caught in adultery. It’s one of the many examples of someone actually being confronted with themselves when they meet Jesus.
You probably know the story. Suddenly, in the temple courts where crowds of people are already flocking around Jesus, the religious leaders drag the woman in and they announce her sin to all and sundry.
“Moses says such a woman should be stoned. What do you say?” It’s a chance to trick Jesus. If he says, “Yes, Moses is right” he’s condemning her to death and falling foul of the Roman authorities. If he says, “No, she shouldn’t be stoned”, the implication is that Moses is wrong, and he’s in conflict with the religious authorities and liable to a charge of blasphemy.
Jesus’s reaction? He pauses, draws attention away from the woman by writing on the ground and then points up the key issue. “Whichever of you is without sin let him throw the first stone.” Then again, he diverts their attention, writing on the floor. One by one the accusers slip away; not faultless and, in the presence of Jesus, suddenly no longer able to bluster and pretend.
And now the woman is alone with Jesus who sees her through and through; and he doesn’t condemn her. But neither does he condone her – he doesn’t give her sin any other label. Rather, he sends her off with a real gift of trust – “…do not sin again”.
How about that as a way in to Lent? Lent as a time when we seek real insight into ourselves and into how God sees us. Lent as an opportunity to let go of some of the things which form our comfort-zone, whatever they may be. Lent as a preparation for Easter, for the cross and the resurrection.
We’re called to risk the kind of encounter with Jesus that the gospels are full of – encounters in which Jesus sees us and hears us and knows us through and through, so that we come to know ourselves as he knows us, and so that like the woman and the religious leaders we can glimpse ourselves as God intended us to be.
It’s that seeing and knowing which is the real heart of repentance and at the heart of Lent. Not grovelling, but standing in the piercing gaze of Jesus and receiving the new opportunities for living that he entrusts to us.