WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

We are now well into the 3rd week of Lent.  The gospel on Sunday was the one with the Samaritan Woman at the Well.  But instead I'm thinking of the gospel about the Woman Caught in Adultery.

It seems to me both stories have scapegoats in common-- something that has been on my mind this Lent.

Suddenly I find myself slipping into imaginative prayer:

I am on the beach with Jesus.

We are sitting beside each other in beach chairs.

I can hear the ocean breathing... in-and-out, in-and-out, in-and-out.

I smell suntan lotion.

I am telling Jesus all about the old roles and trauma I am stuck in.

He leans forward in His beach chair.

He draws a line in the desert sand.

Then He tells me this:

Their stones of judgment, anger, guilt, and shame do not belong on your side of the line.

I do not want my little sister to be a scapegoat.

My Father does not want His precious daughter to be one either.

So how about we do this.

I will write a word in the sand (loneliness, grief, fear, expectation, anxiety, depression, guilt, blame).

Then, with and in the strength of your baptism, you lift and drop those stones onto the other side of the line.  I know, you just want to throw them back in the scribes and Pharisees faces.

Now Mary has come to join us on the beach.

Do as He tells you she says.

Insight:  It wasn't me who didn't belong.

It was the stones that didn't belong.

Where are they now? (John 8:10).

Cb

Amen.