The Lectionary and Scripture Interpretation for Lent
The season of Lent disrupts the liturgical year and the lectionary in many ways. Click here for more information on the season and its readings.
Overview and Connections
Last week was a pause in the rigor of Lent to remember that we are indeed on a joyful walk towards Easter. Today is the 5th Sunday and the last Sunday of Lent per se. Next week will kick off Holy Week.
Today is all about a God who does the unexpected. A God who is constantly surprising us with his mercy and forgiveness.
Isaiah 43:16-21
During the Sundays of Lent, especially in the Old Testament readings, we tell our story, the stories of the foundations of our faith. Those stories have mostly recalled the Exodus event. Today we recall that once move, but we’re also told to look forward to something new. In the context of Isaiah, the “something new” was the return from Babylon. In the context of Lent, it is the Easter mystery.
Isaiah 40-55, the Book of Consolation, is written to a people in exile. It begins with the words, “Comfort, bring comfort to my people.” What is the comfort? A reminder that God has delivered his people in the past; and the promise that God will deliver his people in the future. You can depend on that! You can take comfort from it.
This passage tells us to hold the past lightly. The past is important, but we can’t get stuck there; we have to move on. The same way we can’t stay a baby or a toddler or a teen. We go through those phases toward something fuller and richer.
The passage opens by recounting what God did to the Egyptian army when he brought the people out of Egypt. God saved the Israelites by obliterating the Egyptian army.
But then v18 says, basically, don’t remember those things. The prophet says “hey… remember a long time ago when God delivered your people? When God opened the waters and swallowed up the enemy? And you rejoiced over that?! Remember all that?! Well, don’t remember it anymore; in fact, don’t even think about it! Why not? Well, that first Exodus was pretty great. But, God says, wait till you see what I’ve got in store for you now! You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Don’t keep going over old history – it’s time to move forward and let God do something new. Because I am doing something new that is so wonderful it will completely eclipse the past! Leave the past behind, look to the future.
The passage ends by trying to describe what the future holds: water in the desert; wild animals tamed; a place that is abundant with what you need and a place you don’t have to fear. That’s what God is promising.
Think back over some of the wonderful things that God has done for you. Ask God to show you if there are any places where you might be trapped in the past and are limiting what God might be wanting to do in your future.
Philippians 3:8-14
In this passage, Paul reminds us that we must pass through the entirety of the paschal mystery. So many times we want to just be in the resurrection glory. We want to stay on the mountain of Transfiguration and build tents. We don’t want to go through Holy Thursday and Good Friday. And yet, Jesus says time and again, we must. The only way to resurrection is death.
Paul opens this chapter with a warning against those who would say that circumcision or inclusion in the Jewish covenant is a requisite for salvation. For those people, he reserves the strongest of derogatory language. And he says that our confidence is in Christ, not in things of the flesh. But…. and this is typical Paul…. If you wanted to try and put confidence in the flesh, take look at my life, he says.
He then recites his biography and why it qualifies him as the exemplar of Judaism:
- He’s a true Jew among Jews
- He’s a Pharisee (who, despite what we think of them now, were revered as teachers)
- He persecuted the enemies of Judaism
- And he kept the Law perfectly
In short, he was the perfect Jew. But that wasn’t enough, and he’s learned that in Christ. In fact, he actually considers all that a liability in coming to Christ.
In v8, Paul says he would willingly throw away everything he was just for the sake of knowing Christ. In fact, that is exactly what Paul did. Paul likes to use business metaphors: in business, you give up one thing (ie money) to gain another (ie a good or service). He gave up being the perfect Jew (which he previously understood as the only way to God) in order to come to Christ (which he now understands as the only way to God). In fact, in v9, he says he would trade all the observance of the Law for faith and the righteousness – the right relationship with God – that faith brings.
In v10 he speaks of sharing in the sufferings of Christ. This is the Greek word koinonia, meaning partnership or something shared in common. It was a key word in the early church for what happened when the community gathered for fellowship. Paul says we share the suffering of Christ. The irony is that it was Christ’s suffering that brought about our right standing with God, just as our own suffering brings us into that intimate communion with God. Suffering has value; God doesn’t make us suffer as a punishment.
Paul goes on to assure us that even he had not reached the highest level of union with Christ. But he hoped for it and he continued his pursuit of it. In v12, he says he continues “in the hope that,” which is an expression of humility rather than doubt.
V13 is the hinge between the Old Testament and Gospel readings. Paul tells us don’t be distracted by past mistakes and failures. Jesus tells the woman to go and sin no more; to not to be pulled down by past sin but to make a new way through life.
In v14, Paul says he has a stellar biography that should get him good with God. But he lives as though that is forgotten, meaningless. He forgets the past. He might tell us: don’t be distracted by the past, good or bad, the wins or the failures. Like Isaiah says: forget all that. Rather, press on to something better that God has in store.
Paul says this new way of being is “in Christ”: to be so totally identified with Christ that our old self dies. That is the calling. That is what it means to be conformed to Christ’s death and resurrection.
He also mentions pursuing the goal: the skopos, which means the mark or the bullseye. I think it’s interesting that the Greek word for sin means “to miss the mark.” I wonder if this is a deliberate word-play on Paul’s part: in the past, we’ve missed the mark (sinned). Now we are to look to the future and pursue the mark, the goal, to hit the mark.
Vv15-16 are not in the lectionary but they are the wry sense of Paul’s humor that gives me a chuckle every time I read it!
Call to mind some things that you might have thought in the past should have set you right with God. Maybe regular church attendance, or working in a social justice ministry, or following rules just so. How can you or how have you set those things aside in the pursuit of God’s new way of life?
John 8:1-11
Wait… John?! All the other readings in Lent have come from Luke. Why John now?
This passage is missing from all the earliest manuscripts. It’s not until the 400s that it begins to show up. Latin manuscripts in the 400s mostly place it here in John. But other important manuscripts place it at the end of Luke 21.
Scholars overwhelmingly agree that this story was not original to John’s gospel, and most scholars think it is a Lukan story based on all the textual evidence. But how did it get lost from Luke and added to John?? And why was it lost for centuries in the first place? Scripture commentator Raymond Brown theorizes the following: we may have here an old story about Jesus’ mercy towards sinners that traveled independently of the four gospels, and could not be included until there was a change in the church’s reluctance to forgive adultery. The passage may supply an occasion for reflecting on the relationship between the oral Jesus tradition and the development of official church teaching.
So this may be a story that was important enough to be handed down orally over the generations. But Jesus’ carte blanche forgiveness of the woman perhaps seemed diametrically opposed to official church teaching around divorce, even on grounds of adultery. Perhaps Jesus was just too forgiving in this story for the institutional church to accept. Remember that this is just a theory, but it seems to me a compelling one.
Then there’s the question of how and why was it stuck here in John 8? Most likely this is because right after this story, Jesus will say that he does not judge anyone, that God alone judges.
V1 begins with Jesus going to the Mount of Olives, which is near the Temple. John never references the Mount of Olives but references to it are abundant in the synoptic gospels like Luke. So that’s just one small clue that this story might not be original to John.
In v2 we see that Jesus is drawing a big crowd. It’s one thing to do that in the countryside, but now he’s on the home turf of the religious leaders. Under their very noses, he’s drawing the crowd away from them. So they decide to set up a trap for him.
In v3, they bring the woman there in front of everyone. This is how a judicial court would be set up. The story makes it clear that this is no mere passing conversation: this is a staged trial. They set the terms: this woman was caught in the act and the Law of Moses clearly says she should be stoned. Take a moment to read the relevant verses in Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22.
Of course, it’s very interesting that the Pharisees bring only the woman when the Old Testament verses say that both should be put to death. It’s like they’re adhering to only half the law. Where is the man? Was he, perhaps, one of their own?
This is designed to be a test that Jesus can’t win, like many others the Pharisees put to him. If Jesus agrees with the Law, if he says the woman deserves death right then and there, then he goes against Rome which has forbidden capital punishment by the Jews. If he says to show her mercy, then he is clearly going against the Law. The question becomes: make light of the Law or the governing power of Rome. Which is it better to offend?
The Pharisees don’t really care which option Jesus chooses; either way, they’ll have something to bring a charge against him. Jesus’ response is interesting though. In v6, instead of speaking, he starts writing something on the ground. St. Jerome said that Jesus wrote the sins of the accusers. In a Roman court of law, the judge would write out the judgment and then read it. Maybe Jesus was just doodling to give him time to think. As an artist, I rather like this one.
Jesus finally responds in v7 that whoever is without sin should throw the first stone. We usually think that Jesus came up with this brilliant idea on the fly. Actually he didn’t. Not right there anyway. What he does is basically quote the law back to them. Deuteronomy 17:7: “The hands of the witnesses must be the first in putting that person to death, and then the hands of all the people.” This is in the specific context of stoning a woman found to be guilty of some crime. So he responds to their challenge with a challenge of his own: if you’re going to enforce the law, then enforce this part too.
Jesus goes back to doodling and eventually, he alone is left – the only sinless one among them – along with the woman. As St. Augustine put it, only two were left: misery and mercy.
The message here is very similar to the prodigal father story from last week. It’s about the limits of God’s mercy. And it shows us that we are usually the ones who put limits around that mercy, not God.
Try imaginative prayer with this one, putting yourself in the shoes of the woman. What sin are you condemned for? Can you receive and accept Jesus’ forgiveness?
Now pray with this one a little differently. Imagine that it is the same woman, the same offense, the same setting, three months later. Does the story play out the same way?
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© 2025 Kelly Sollinger