God does not give up on us
photo credit: http://palmquists.glorifyjesus.com/blog/2016/01/grace/comment-page-1/
Readings: 1st: Is 43, 16-21; Ps 125; 2nd: Phil
3, 8-14; Gosp.: Jn 8, 1-11
The message of this Sunday is simply clear, it
taps into the wonderful lessons of the season of lent that call us to true repentance
and reconciliation with God, with ourselves and with our neighbours. This
message says that we have a God who does not give up on us, a God who reaches
to us to lift us up from our dirty lives and to free us from our sinful past; we
have a God who comes to free us from the condemnation and death we have merited
by our sins, and from the condemnation which the world has passed on us because
of our sins. This message also charges us not to condemn the others when God is
actually calling them tenderly to conversion. These messages are evident in the
readings of today.
To understand the beautiful promises of renewal
and new things from God to the people of Israel in the first reading of today,
it will be good to make a brief recap of the historical background that led to
them. The history of the people of Israel that led to the exile in Babylon was
punctuated by disobedience to the commandments of God. It was the stubbornness
and sins of Israelites that led them to exile in Babylon. The first major disaster
in the History of Israel was the fall of the Northern kingdom of Israel under
the Persians in 721 BC. After that fall, the prophets of God warned the people
of the Southern Israel that Jerusalem will also fall if the people continue to be
obstinate to God’s commandments. But the people of Israel did not heed to their
warnings.
Consequently, the Babylonians marched on
Jerusalem in 587 BC, defeated her, killed her king, destroyed her temple, and carried
many of her people into slavery. With that defeat and slavery, Southern Israel
was already written off from the face of the earth, because they lost cardinal things
that defined them as a nation: their king, their land and their temple. It was
a replica of what happened to the Northern kingdom of Israel. After many years
of suffering in exile and having seen the death sentence (complete extermination
from the face of the earth) which their continued stay in Babylon had placed on
their neck, the people of Israel called on God for mercy and liberation, and
the God who did not give up on them nor wrote them off despite their sins heard
them.
The first reading of today was part of the
promises of restoration from God to the people of Israel. He promised to do new
things in their lives and urged them to forget their past evil ways, to move
away from the memories of their past sinful lives and then look into the future
with hope. God made them to understand that His novelty was not confined in the
great deeds of old, but that He has already started doing new great things in
their lives. Dear friends, this is how God relates to sinners who open
themselves to Him. God did not give up on Israel despite their past sinful
stories because He does not rejoice in the death of sinners. God always gives
sinners opportunities to come back to Him, He calls sinners tenderly to
conversion.
This message is also addressed to all of us. Is
your life full of old things? Have your mistakes and sins ruined your life and
reputations? Is your life full of sad stories, of disappointments? Have your
mistakes and sins ruined your dreams of a better tomorrow? Have people given up
on you? Have you given up on yourself already? Have people condemned you, or
kept you in a situation that is worse than death? The church wants you to know
today that there is someone who has not and will never give up on you, someone
who will never write you off. His name is Jesus. Jesus is saying that He is
ready to help you write another history of your life, the type of history that
will right the previous wrongs.
The gospel of today presents us a practical
example of how God treats a sinner; how Jesus helps sinners and wrongdoers to
write another history of their lives; how Jesus helps us to right the wrongs of
the past; how God calls sinners to tenderly conversion; how God frees sinners
from condemnation and death in the hands of other human beings, giving them
another chance.
The adulterous woman in the gospel of today,
like the people of Israel in exile, was an example of someone whose faults and
sins brought disaster and death sentence upon her. Her case was not one of
accusation because she was caught in the very act of adultery. The requirement
of the ancient law (Lev 20:10; Deut. 22:13-24) for such a crime was death. So,
she had already been condemned by the law and the people; she had been written
off. What was staring her in the face at that moment, as was the case of the
people of Israel in exile, was death. However, there was someone who did not
write her off, someone who did not give up on her. That person was Jesus, and
He freed her from death. He gave her another chance. Friends, Jesus also
challenges us not to condemn sinners, but to treat them with love and help them
to come out of their sins.
With the story of the gospel of today, the
church wants you to know that Jesus has not condemned you in your sins; He has
not given up on you, nor has he written you off. He knows that you still have
something positive to offer to the world. He wants to restore you to goodness.
He has another chance for you. He has not condemned you, so, don’t give up on
yourself, don’t condemn yourself. (Join me in singing this beautiful
song: O buru n’uwa juu m enigwe agaghi ajuu m ma emesia 2x). In fact, according
to Is 53:6; Rom. 3:23-24; 6:23, all of us have attracted
death by our sins, but Christ has lifted the death sentence from us through His
death on the cross.
Dear friends, let us now embrace
reconciliation with God, with ourselves and with our neighbours through the
sacrament of reconciliation this Season of Lent, especially by doing what St
Paul urged us to do in the second reading of today. Having been freed from
death, and having been given another chance by Christ, the church invites us to
emulate St Paul by putting Christ at the centre of our life, and then counting
all worldly things and pleasures as a loss. Let us make sure that Christ’s
sacrifice on the cross on our behalf will never be in vain. Let us distance
ourselves from anything that will lead us back to our old life of sin.
Let us end this homily with this beautify
song:
‘What can wash away my sins,
nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again,
nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
O precious is the flow that makes
me white as snow,
No other fount I know, nothing
but the Blood of Jesus.’
Rev. Fr. Isaac Chinemerem
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