Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent
On my computer monitor, I have a post-it note with a quote I don’t remember finding and it says, “Never accept a label in place of a story.” This is the call we are offered today. We are called to seek out the story and ask what else is going on that we are not seeing right away. And there is always more to the story.
Our readings today exemplify this sentiment. This is what Daniel did in the first reading and what Jesus does in the Gospel. Both Daniel and Jesus recognized that there was more to the story than what was being presented on the surface. There is always more to the story.
We need to live more and more like Daniel and Jesus. None of us will have a woman paraded past us on her way to be stoned, but we will get caught up in the quick judgments of social media. We will have plenty of times that a headline is all it takes for us to pass judgment on a person or their actions.
Practice seeking the missing details by starting with today's Gospel passage. Read it closely and start asking some of the questions Daniel would have asked and that Jesus seemed to know. Yes, we can all quickly gravitate to “what was Jesus writing in the sand?” but there are other questions that make this scene so compelling.
None of this is to dismiss that this is a scene of Jesus’ radical mercy, but nor should that take away from his wisdom. Jesus never accepted a label in place of a story, for he wants to bring our stories into his.
- Spencer Hargadon