Monday in the Fifth Week

Susanna 1-9,15-29, 34-62; Psalm 23; John 8:1-11

As we approach the Gospel story of the woman taken in adultery (let’s call her Rachel), it’s important to read the Susanna story.  This is in the Apocrypha in Protestant Bibles; it’s Daniel 13 in Roman Catholic ones.  Susanna is beautiful, and righteous.  Two men desire her, and plan to rape her (yes, it’s rape if you threaten or coerce).  When she refuses to consent, they accuse her of sleeping with another man.  She is condemned to death, and would have died but for Daniel’s intervention.  

According to the Torah, when two people commit adultery both are to be put to death (Lev 20; Deut 22).  But so often teaching gets in the way of patriarchy or other power structures.  So Susanna is condemned without evidence, and without even the proof that another man exists.

Now, when Rachel is brought to Jesus, she was “caught in the act” - but where is the man?  If the Pharisees wanted a real trial, where’s the man?  It’s entirely possible that this woman is as innocent as Susanna.

All around the world, every day, people are imprisoned falsely.  Some are the victims of mistaken identity; others are sacrificed to people’s desire to see someone punished, even if it’s not the right person; and some are just considered “inconvenient” to someone in power.  

We are all vulnerable to the temptation to use other people in schemes of our own.  It can be little things, like getting them to do what we want; it can be bigger things, like telling “white lies”; it can be any number of situations where we think “the ends justify the means.”  But they don’t.  The means are how we show who we are and what we believe.  We are shaped by our actions, by the little ones as well as the big.  

Jesus doesn’t ask if Rachel really sinned.  Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t.  Certainly, being human, she sins in some way.  But her sin doesn’t matter here.  What matters is the massive sin, the cynical use of another, by those who would trap Jesus.  But he doesn’t even condemn them.  He just refuses to let them set the context.  

I have been a stone thrower.  Every day I gossip or judge.  I throw stones.  And I sometimes find out later that I knew no more of the story than the crowd knew of Rachel’s story.  In forgetting my sinfulness, I put myself in a position to sin more!  (I know some of you don’t want to hear about sin; sorry, I sin.)

If you are a stone thrower too, put it down.  For your own sake.

If you have been the victim of stone throwers, please forgive them.  For your own sake.

Jesus does not condemn us.  Jesus wills our freedom.  

Today, I choose freedom.