Gotcha!

In the late nineteenth century, a controversy erupted among scholars about a brand-new invention. For decades, students had used pencils in doing their note-taking and their exams. But in 1880, a technological breakthrough came. For the first time, manufacturers started sticking erasers on the ends of pencils. It had never been done before.

Many educators opposed the use of this new-fangled pencil on the ground that it encouraged students to make mistakes: “let them avoid errors in the first place, and they won’t need an eraser!”

Put forcefully, but simply, in today’s Gospel Lesson Jesus insisted on an eraser on the pencil of life. Old errors can be erased. New beginnings can be made. And that’s our picture of Jesus in today’s Gospel episode.

The scene in today’s Lesson is the courtyard of the Temple in Jerusalem where some Scribes and Pharisees had gathered with a miserable woman and a bag of stones. There they encountered Jesus, and “Gotcha!” must have been what they thought…