The Law & the Woman & the Capitol protest: some thoughts on John 8: 3-5

 “The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman along
who had been caught committing adultery; and making
her stand there in the middle they said to Jesus: Master,
this woman was caught in the very act of committing
adultery, and in the Law, Moses has ordered us
to stone women of this kind.
What have you got to say?”

--John 8:3-5

What a fearful statement.  The scribes and Pharisees make such a fearful claim when they say, Moses ordered us to stone women “of this kind.”  The implication is that the Law, from God, commands us to kill her. What other choice do we have? It’s God’s law! 

But then, as if to trick Jesus, they ask: What do you think?

There are a few things here I would like to think about.  First, that word “ordered.”  Did God actually “order” His people to kill anyone guilty of adultery? In Leviticus (20:10) and Deuteronomy (22: 23-34) the punishment for adultery is prescribed as death (for both man and woman). And the idea behind it is that it is a grave sin and must be driven out of the community.  So, in a sense the scribes and Pharisees are right.  And yet, how does Jesus respond?

His answer isn’t: No. You’re wrong. You misinterpreted the Law. Or even to blame them for spying on the woman. What were they doing, that they were able to catch her “in the very act?”

No. He responds with silence.  He kneels down and begins “writing on the ground with His finger.” (8:6) Why?  Why doesn’t He correct them? Why doesn’t He chastise them?  In Matthew’s Gospel, when the same guys come with another question about God commanding a writ of divorce, Jesus seems almost to shake His head and sigh, “It was because of the hardness of your hearts that Moses allowed you to divorce…” (cf. Mt 19:7-9).  Why doesn’t He say something like that here, too?  I wonder. 

They are saying something provocative and dangerous. And it is very clear that they have come to Him not seeking answers but an excuse for something they already have in their hearts. They are truly hungry for blood. This crowd has been riled up and is ready to erupt.

On some level, they remind me of those people in Washington DC who stormed the capitol. People who were clearly riled up and ready to explode.  They were not in Washington to seek answers or debate issues. From all appearances, they were there to cast stones.

I have been wondering about that event for a few days now. The horror of it, the anger that overwhelmed many of the protesters --turning them into a violent mob. Five people died. But I have also been thinking about some of the faces I keep seeing on the news. On many of them I see anger and rage and frustration, but on others I see smiles and something like glee. In some of these pictures and videos, I see what looks more like a bunch of middle-aged high-schoolers out for a last fling—a lark! A kind of Spring Break from Covid and isolation and the exhausting lives they find themselves trapped in. 

I do not mean to denigrate their anger, or deny that they may sincerely feel aggrieved; may even sincerely feel like their election was stolen. But… how do we stop this craziness? How do we stop this divisiveness? How do we stop our country, our society, our culture from self-destruction, from becoming nothing but a raging series of reactionary riots?

One way might be to look to Jesus for an example.  The crowd comes to Him, ready for a fight, hungering for justification and confrontation.  And instead of correcting them, or engaging in their anger, He listens and even takes notes.  And by doing so—what happens? The tension is released. The crowd is dispersed—in fact, it disperses itself. The frenzy that caught up the crowd has been calmed, because someone helped them slow down and think—slow down and remember who they were. Not riotous murderers, but people, families, fathers and brothers and sons, mothers and daughters and… people. Just ordinary people who have struggled with their own sins and failings, their own weaknesses and longings.

Jesus doesn’t argue with them or their understanding of the Law.  He simply listens to them, to their concerns, and then asks them to remember who they are.

What a beautiful lesson we get every time we open the scripture. If only we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

 

Lord, open my eyes that I may read Your word more clearly

Lord, open my ears that I may hear Your word more fully

and open my heart, that I may be filled

with the Love that is always found there.

 

 

    

Prophets in the valley of dry bones: some thoughts on Ezekiel and the Floyd George protests

“He made me walk up and down

and all around among them…

they were completely dry…”

--Isaiah 37:2

A prophet is someone called to speak the truth for God.  Being a prophet isn’t about being particularly brave or especially good or even worthy.  Remember Jonah.  It is about responding to a call to witness to the truth.

And prophets are often called to act in strange and troubling ways.  Think about Jeremiah and the linen girdle (Jer 13), or the wooden yoke (27), Hosea and Gomer, or Ezekiel called to lie for 390 days on his left side and then 40 more on his right, all the time staring at an iron plate and cooking his bread on dung (Ezekiel 4), or to dig a hole in the wall of the city and climb through it with a rucksack on his back (Ez 12).  Strange behaviors, and probably very troubling to some of their fellow citizens.  Even somewhat destructive at times.  Prophets are never easy to live with, to listen to... And being a prophet must be a terrible, a fearful calling... like joining in a protest march.

The protestors who march the streets each day, each night here in our city, in our land, they are prophets.  They are witnesses to the truth. The truth about George Floyd, the truth about black lives, and the truth about America.  A horrifying truth about our system, our way of life.   Reading Ezekiel this morning, the famous passage of the valley of dry bones, I realized something.  This vision of the prophet walking up and down among the dry bones suddenly revealed a new truth. A truth about our world today and about these protests. That vision of Ezekiel wandering among the dry bones, that is exactly what is happening here, on the streets of this country each day, each night.  The protestors, who our president wants to call anarchists and even terrorists, are nothing more and nothing less than prophets walking among the dry bones.  The dry bones of our society; bones that once promised life, liberty, justice, freedom but have given so many of our brothers and sisters only injustice, brutality, racism, and death.

Late into the night these prophets walk through empty streets, through a valley of bones, up and down and all among them, a valley barren of hope.  These towering buildings, our “high places,” to so many of us they have become signs of commerce, success, abundance, pleasure and ease, economic growth. But seen through the witness of the prophets, they are finally revealed to be nothing more than white-washed tombs full of dry bones.  They stink of the dead promise they symbolize; comfort, freedom, justice, security, equality, all nothing more than dry bones.

Like the prophet of old, these protestors walk among the dry bones of a society that has died. A society that still gathers in the valley of its own undoing, unaware even that it has nothing left but the dry bones of what it once hoped to be. The dry bones are gathered in piles, brick by brick, in store fronts and offices, shining steel and glistening glass piled high, looming towers of commerce and business rising to the clouds, and yet all of it empty of life, filled with nothing but dry bones, the dead dreams and promises of what was hoped or planned and finally what was settled for…  All of it dry bones.

And each night the protestors, these prophets, come out and wander (like Ezekiel) among the dry bones and the white-washed tombs, wander the valley of death, calling, calling out to the bones:

Dry bones, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 

Wake up!