Surveys conducted by the prestigious Pew Research Center have discovered that 28% of all American adults when questioned about their religious beliefs identify themselves as atheists or agnostics or as nothing in particular. Most of these people began their lives connected to a religious tradition, usually Christianity of some sort, but they no longer practice the religion of their parents, while still often claiming to be spiritual but not religious. And such people without faith are often called nones. Not nuns but nones.
With gathering speed and because of this great falling away from religious conviction, Western societies led by the nones are embracing some form of nihilism as the only legitimate basis of culture. And wherever this repudiation of reality is accomplished, then cynicism, relativism, and skepticism begin to hold sway in both public and private life, at which point many people reach the self-defeating absurdity of holding that the only truth is that there is no truth. To see this debasement of culture at work, just examine life at most universities or in the mainstream media, the entertainment-industrial complex, or the titans of technology and commerce.
In any society where this morose way of understanding reality becomes normative, life is then frequently bifurcated between exuberant excess and dark despair, and even those who are young, prosperous, healthy, and beautiful often find themselves lost and despondent but don’t know why. It is usually then that political ideologies or gnostic fantasies are embraced by the nones with messianic fervor, and these fevers can take the place of religion in their lives, thus fueling the cultural force of the great awokening.
Now, it is true that in the past few months we have seen a small resurgence of common sense rising in public affairs, both in the United States and in some parts of Old Europe. But it is much too early to know whether or not recent events are signs of a significant change in the cultural tides that brought us to our inability to distinguish men from women, citizens from foreigners, and right from wrong. But even if this little renaissance of right reason be temporary or is unconnected to a resurgence of religious belief and practice, we should take courage from remembering that Jews and Christians have been here many times before.
Those who know that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the Creator of this cosmos and of everything in it have very often been a despised minority, hard pressed on every side by their adversaries. Of this truth we are reminded by the first lesson today which is taken from chapter 43 of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, who recalled for the children of Israel all the times when the Lord saved and delivered them from persecution.
Chapter 43 opens: “But now says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you … For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” (Isaiah 43.1-3)
Isaiah continues: “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake, I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars, and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentations. I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.” (Isaiah 43.14-15)
And so the prophet concludes: “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43.16-19)
After centuries of waiting, this prophecy of Isaiah was finally fulfilled in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in two weeks we will listen at the Vigil of Easter as the history of salvation is unfolded in the readings from Holy Scripture. Then we will be led by the Pillar of Fire in the Paschal Candle to the baptismal waters of liberation and to the second birth in which the Lord calls his people by name and grants them the supernatural life of grace.
This is the life of the new creation in which we are no longer slaves to our own disordered self-love but are set free by Christ to live in freedom, the freedom of the children of God. “Behold” says the Lord, “I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?”
It was precisely this new thing which was revealed to a humiliated and desperate woman early one morning on the Temple Mount. The scribes and Pharisees were looking for any charge they could bring against Jesus to demonstrate that he was a blasphemous heretic, and this poor woman became their tool. We do not know how they found her or who betrayed her for their purpose. But she was dragged out of the bed of a man who was not her husband and exposed to the contempt of men who wanted her dead.
The enemies of Jesus thought that they had him in a trap from which there was no escape. Either he would argue for mercy, which would cause him to contradict the Law of Moses and confirm the accusations of his enemies, or he would have to condone stoning this woman to death, which they already knew by some instinct he would not do. But the Lord did not accept the premises of their trap, and he found instead a simple way to turn this wickedness back on the accusers.
Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. Saint John does not tell us what the Lord wrote in the dust, but the Law of Sinai was inscribed on tablets of stone by the fiery finger of God and given to Moses to guarantee that the Hebrews would live in freedom rather than return to the habits of slaves acquired during centuries of servitude. And now the finger of God in human flesh writes in the dust to secure freedom both for this tormented woman and for her hate-filled accusers.
Perhaps Jesus simply named in the dust all of the sins he read in the hearts of these men, but whatever he wrote, his message was received. “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And one by one, they went away until Jesus was left alone with this tormented soul, named by her accusers only by her sin. “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.” (John 8.10-11)
“Behold,” says the Lord, “I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?”
Friends, in our day unrighteousness is called freedom and blasphemy is taken as a mark of sophistication. Christian civilization is a distant memory, and now those who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God are derided as superstitious fools and hate mongers. And so the Church in our time returns in many ways to the circumstances of the first centuries of Christianity, and this too is God’s grace, so that we could each have the opportunity and blessing to say with Saint Paul in today’s second lesson:
“I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
And here we find the remedy for every form of nihilism, hatred, and self-absorption which make us slaves to sin and condemn us to the grave. By God’s grace we can attain the resurrection from the dead and a share in eternal life by being united through faith, hope, and love to the divine mercy and unbounded glory of him who alone is the Resurrection and the Life: the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the text of my homily for 6 April 2025, the Fifth Sunday of Lent.
Fr Jay Scott Newman