Fifth Sunday of Lent - March 17, 2013
The Fifth Sunday of Lent
John 8:2 – 7
At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Forgive the thought . . . but talk of stoning immediately sends my mind to Monty Python and the stoning of the man who spoke the name “Jehovah.” I laugh just thinking of it . . . even as I weep, because so much of my own religious experience is wound up in that short clip. I’ve done time as the person in charge of the stoning, a proud upholder of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. I’ve also had experiences of being the one about to be deluged with rocks. There is so much tied up in that short sketch . . . but I digress.
This morning, reading this text, I noticed the words, “stone such women.” This woman, brought before them, made to stand there beneath their gaze, was merely a category to these religious men. “Such women” denotes a category, a classification. I assume “woman” is one such category, and “adultress” is another such category.
But at what point does this person in front of you cease being a human being and begin to be only a category or classification? “Such women.”
We all make these kinds of judgments, based on race or gender or morality or social standing. People within any given subset are lumped together. They no longer have names, only a list of traits or characteristics determined by their category.
I assume the decision to stone her would have been made more difficult had she been called by her name, “Lydia,” perhaps, and had she whipped out pictures of her children to show her accusers, and had she dropped the name of her daddy, who may have been mayor of the village.
Appropriately enough, there are no personal details given about her. In the story, she belongs to the class of immoral women. To the majority of those in the scene, she fit the stereotype.
In this scene, anyway, she was a human being only in the eyes of Jesus.
John 8:2 – 7
At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Forgive the thought . . . but talk of stoning immediately sends my mind to Monty Python and the stoning of the man who spoke the name “Jehovah.” I laugh just thinking of it . . . even as I weep, because so much of my own religious experience is wound up in that short clip. I’ve done time as the person in charge of the stoning, a proud upholder of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. I’ve also had experiences of being the one about to be deluged with rocks. There is so much tied up in that short sketch . . . but I digress.
This morning, reading this text, I noticed the words, “stone such women.” This woman, brought before them, made to stand there beneath their gaze, was merely a category to these religious men. “Such women” denotes a category, a classification. I assume “woman” is one such category, and “adultress” is another such category.
But at what point does this person in front of you cease being a human being and begin to be only a category or classification? “Such women.”
We all make these kinds of judgments, based on race or gender or morality or social standing. People within any given subset are lumped together. They no longer have names, only a list of traits or characteristics determined by their category.
I assume the decision to stone her would have been made more difficult had she been called by her name, “Lydia,” perhaps, and had she whipped out pictures of her children to show her accusers, and had she dropped the name of her daddy, who may have been mayor of the village.
Appropriately enough, there are no personal details given about her. In the story, she belongs to the class of immoral women. To the majority of those in the scene, she fit the stereotype.
In this scene, anyway, she was a human being only in the eyes of Jesus.
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