Homily for 5th Sunday of Lent, Year C, 2025

This Lent we have been focussing on the theme of metanoia. We have seen that though it is typically translated by the word repentance, what it really points to is a fundamental change of heart, a new way of seeing life, a new type of consciousness, awareness. We have looked at different aspects of this experience. Different ways into it, different things that flow from it.

Today’s readings give us two very basic experience of this change of heart. We have a radical change of scene, change of perspective, change of heart in our gospel. And we have something even deeper in our second reading. Our second reading is perhaps the end goal of a process that might start somewhere like our gospel.

Our gospel is very familiar.  (By the way Someone once told me that this gospel is what brought them into the church. One day they were attending to see what was going on, and this gospel was read. This person told me that she felt that if this was this community is about, then I want to be part of it.)

Our gospel is very familiar. It is a classic example of seeing a different side. The mob see the Law, God’s word, as a way of condemning another person. A mistake, a sin is something that you cannot come back from. Jesus, who is the Word of God, knows that this is completely wrong, almost the inverse image of the truth. God’s word, God’s law is all about life, all about truth, all about liberating people to know the love of God and so enter into the freedom of God.

And Jesus brilliantly gets the crowd to change their point of departure. Do I want to come back from my sins? Do I want to lose hope? What if it was me in that situation: what would I want the Word of God to sound like? We hear Jesus change the context, not to ignore the mistake, but to call to life. Jesus always chooses life. God is God of the living. The mob should have known this. And now they do. Or perhaps the mob is no more. The Word has addressed them individually. Each person now feels called. Each person is now accountable for his or her own life.

This is the real call, the real experience of metanoia: that is, to hear how I am spoken by God. To realise that my truth, my identity is actually in the hands of another. Another who loves me in a way I can barely fathom.

We hear this understanding so powerfully in our second reading. This is perhaps the most wonderful description of the conversion of St Paul, conversion being another way we can translate metanoia.

St Paul has had such a profound experience of life, of God, that everything before that is now counted as rubbish. I hope we have all had moments like this. So many parents talk about life before and after children. As though children open up a part of the brain, that relativises all else. Things that once counted no longer do, or at least cannot to the same extent.

Or we might have had a goal, something we wanted, either to achieve or purchase, something we were aiming at. And then something happens, illness, tragedy, whatever it is, that reveals the goals to be fundamentally meaningless. Meaningless because we now know what really counts.

St Paul experiences this to the nth degree. I have mentioned before the wonderful description of his conversion. How he goes blind: he can no longer see. Like walking into a room of blinding love, his eyes need to adjust to the new spiritual reality. Likewise, he chooses to fast: he now knows just how hungry he is; and that what previously has satisfied him no longer will. Indeed, never could.

Today in our reading, we hear all this articulated so beautifully. Nothing he could do, nothing he could ever accomplish would come close to the love he has experienced from Jesus Christ. He recognises not only the mistakes, the grievous sins he has committed, but that Christ still loves him. That Christ wants him. That Christ trusts him to a stupid degree.

And this love has completely changed him. He is no longer defensive. It is no longer about him. He is completely free to proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ. He knows without a shadow of a doubt that this love is true life, and that everyone who is not living this truth should receive the same gift that he had received. To me, this is perhaps one of the most poignant and wonderful descriptions of coming to faith in the whole Bible.

Perhaps we might pray to know God’s love to this depth. That it would course through us in this way. That we could sing God’s praises in such an unself-conscious way. Completely free. Completely directed. Perfectly called. Let’s pray for this change of heart. That our heart be replaced by that of Christ, a heart that pours itself out in love, a love that alone can define real life.