Readings: Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 38-14; John 8:1-11
Typically, the Scriptures exhort us to remember:
remember what God has done for us,
remember who we are as God’s people.
But today our Scriptures
exhort us to leave the past behind
and reach out toward the future.
Our first reading, from the Prophet Isaiah,
begins, in typical scriptural fashion, with the past,
reminding the Israelites,
now held captive in Babylon,
of how in ancient days
God had saved them from slavery in Egypt
and made them God’s people.
But then God says,
“Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!”
Though languishing in Babylon,
the Israelites should hope for an even greater salvation.
Yes, God has done great things for Israel in the past,
but God’s goodness is never exhausted;
the greatest things are not in the past,
but lie ahead in the future.
Echoing God’s words spoken through Isaiah,
Paul writes to the Christians of Philippi,
“forgetting what lies behind
but straining forward to what lies ahead,
I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.”
Paul looks at his past life with a sense of achievement—
for he had lived a life of zeal for God’s Law—
and of shame—
for his zeal had led him to persecute
the newborn Jesus-movement.
But Paul now knows that his former life,
both its good and its bad,
counts for nothing.
His former life is “rubbish”
(or, more literally, “dung”)
compared to the hope
he has been given through faith in Jesus.
He sees in Jesus the “new thing” that God will do.
He leans into the future,
he strains toward it,
drawn by his hope in God’s promised kingdom.
Perhaps less explicitly than Isaiah or Paul,
the familiar story of the woman caught in adultery
that we hear in today’s Gospel
is also about leaving the past behind
and straining toward the future.
When the woman’s accusers depart in shame,
their own sinfulness revealed,
Jesus tells the woman,
“Neither do I condemn you.
Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
He speaks not of her past,
but of her future: “from now on.”
The forgiveness of God
that Jesus extends to her
has made a way for her
through the wasteland of her past,
and made life-giving waters flow
in the desert of her despair.
It is as if he is saying to her
the words God spoke to the Israelites:
“Remember not the events of the past;
see, I am doing something new!”
She must forget what lies behind,
and strain forward to what lies ahead.
Of course, we can’t completely forget the past,
nor should we.
Good or bad, it is part of who we are.
Each Passover, the people of Israel remember
how God’s goodness saved them from captivity.
Paul remembers his zeal for God’s Law—
zeal that made him a persecutor of the Church.
The woman caught in adultery remembers that she sinned,
because she knows herself forgiven.
We don’t completely forget our past,
but neither do we dwell there.
We may celebrate it or mourn it
or sometimes do both things as once,
but it doesn’t define us.
Baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus,
we are defined by “the prize of God’s upward calling,”
we are defined by God’s kingdom:
being formed among us even now by God’s Spirit
whose fullness we still yearn form.
We reach out for that future,
we strain toward it,
we let the Spirit lift us into God’s reign.
In The Divine Comedy,
before Dante can pass from Purgatory into Paradise,
he is immersed in the waters of Lethe,
the ancient Greek river of forgetting,
and the memory of his past sins are washed away.
Beatrice—his muse and guide—
then leads him to drink from the river Eunoë,
which restores to him the memory
of the good he has done in his life.
He still knows he had sinned
because he knows himself forgiven,
but he no longer dwells in that past.
He remembers the good that he had done,
but now knows that good to be God’s gift.
For Dante, these rivers speak
of the waters of Baptism:
the waters of life that God can make flow
through the driest deserts of despair,
the waters of a hope that calls us
out of our past and into God’s future.
He writes,
“From these holiest waters I returned
to her reborn, a tree renewed, in bloom
with newborn foliage, immaculate,
eager to rise, now ready for the stars” (Purgatorio 33:142-145).
Our celebration of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus
is rapidly approaching.
These most holy days are not only
days of remembering past events
but also days of reaching out and touching the future
that God has promised to us in Jesus’ resurrection,
when every tear shall be wiped away,
every stain of sin washed clean,
every wounded memory healed,
so that we, like the people of Israel,
like Paul the zealous persecutor,
like the woman caught in adultery,
might be reborn,
eager to rise, now ready for the stars.
