First Stones

John 8:1-11; Isaiah 43:16-21

April 7, 2019

Have you ever noticed the tights on archers in renaissance paintings? Those things look like they’re painted on … well, I mean, they are, but seriously. Talk about leaving little to the imagination.

The image on the back of the bulletin this morning comes from a painting in the Uffizi in Florence. It became part of the “buns of Italy” series of photos of classic art that I shot back in January. I thought of those images when I read last week about the Notre Dame mom complaining about college women wearing leggings, and how their clingy clothes are distracting to young men.

I wonder if Renaissance-era moms complained that men in tights were distracting their daughters … or their sons.

Somehow I doubt it. It’s always the woman’s fault.

Clearly blaming the woman is nothing new under the sun, and that tendency to shame women is central to the text we just read from John.

A quick word about the text: this reading is not included in the Revised Common Lectionary, though it does appear as the reading for this, the 5^th Sunday of Lent, in the Roman Catholic lectionary. Most scholars agree that these eleven verses were not part of the original text of John’s gospel. Not only does this story rather abruptly interrupt the narrative of John, it also uses phrases, such as “scribes and Pharisees,” that are otherwise not found in John. The crafters of the Revised Common Lectionary may well have left the story out of the cycle of readings because it likely was added to John as late as the 10^th century of the Common Era. Some contemporary editions of the Bible place the entire text in brackets.

All of that is more or less interesting as textual history, I suppose, but, more importantly, it reminds me that all of this – sacred story, canon, theological orthodoxy, religion writ large, faith itself – all of it is living and evolving, and thus it invites our always renewing engagement.

Isaiah’s reassurance to the exiles – that God is about to do a new thing – remains both reassurance and challenge to people of faith in all times and situations. God is about to do a new thing: pay attention!

In this little story in John’s gospel – as throughout the gospels – God is busy doing a new thing through the life of Jesus. Jesus, for his part, seems to be saying, over and over again: pay attention!

This story from John has, over the years, become something of a talisman of cheap grace for those who have not paid attention, but it merits renewed engagement, as well. That is to say, Jesus’ words – “let the one who is without sin cast the first stone” – have become a catchphrase of phony apologies. As Gerard Sloyan puts it in his commentary on John, the phrase “has become a watchword of exculpation for the solidly guilty. […] Today’s white collar criminal and politicians ‘on the take’ fleece the citizens and then have the gall to quote Jesus.”[1]

The classic formulation of such non-apology apologies sounds something like this: “I didn’t do that thing you clearly saw me do, but if I did do it, well everyone else is doing it, too, so it can’t be that bad. Let the one without sin cast the first stone. Please refer any questions to my legal team.”

All the while, that’s one of the things Jesus is actually calling out: hypocrisy, and, especially, hypocrisy on the part of those in positions of power whose misuse and abuse of that power hurts, especially, those who have no power.

In the story from John, a woman is dragged to center stage to be shamed and, indeed, put to death. The powerful men – the aforementioned “scribes and Pharisees” – cite Mosaic law, the law of Jesus’ people, to support the stoning.

It’s worth noting that the law they cite, from the purity codes in Leviticus as well as other mentions in the Torah and the prophets, proscribes death to both the woman and her partner in adultery. After all, it does take two, but the man is nowhere to be found in this story.

I was about to say, “one wonders why,” but, honestly, no one does. We either don’t wonder because it never occurs to us to ask because we have been so thoroughly accultured to blaming the woman that we don’t even expect to see the man, or we don’t wonder because we know that the woman alone is going to bear the brunt of blame and scorn and shame and punishment because the patriarchy has not been crushed. Yet.

It’s easy to step back and read these ancient stories through 21^st-century eyes, and actually it’s impossible not to do so. We can’t miss the overwhelming influence of unquestioned patriarchal culture on these texts, nor should we. At the same time, the characters in these stories could no more step outside of their own time and culture than we can step outside of our time and culture.

When the apostle Paul wrote “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” he was naming far more than simply personal, individual faults and failings. He was naming the culture, the time, the social system within which everyone lives and moves and has their being, and he was holding it in contrast to the household of God, the kindom of heaven in which God reigns in sovereign love, and into which Paul was inviting everyone to live and move and have their being.

Moreover, he was pointing to Jesus as the way to liberation, as the One who had thrown the first stones against the walls of injustice.

So Jesus stands next to this woman and says to the patriarchs, “none of you is without sin because the very system that pretends to allow you to stand in judgment of this woman is, itself, utterly broken, unjust, and sinful. The system itself stands under the judgment of almighty God.”

In posing his simple proposition – “let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone” – Jesus casts the first stone, and it’s aimed squarely at the foundations of injustice upon which the edifice of patriarchy rests. Jesus is calling out their shared hypocrisy, to be sure, but at a deeper level he is calling into question the entire system. He’s pulling the stones right out of the foundation of the whole structure, and he’s throwing those stones right back at the walls trying to knock the whole thing over.

We don’t want to think of Jesus throwing stones, even metaphorically. But, as Walter Brueggemann reminds us, “We have made Jesus too pious, too nice, too patient, too polite. He was none of these. He was a dangerous alternative kind of power that was prepared to name names […] to describe social relations exactly as they were, who counted on the fact that in the end, all the raw, abusive power in the world could not prevail.”[2]

The social order in which both Jesus and Paul lived was clearly defined by a patriarchal hierarchy in which women were marginalized and essentially powerless. Within that context, powerful men – religious leaders – drag a woman forward to shame her for her sexuality, and Jesus condemns not the woman but the leaders who dominate so easily within a system that oppresses not only this one woman whose sexual behavior is outside their bounds of propriety, but, in fact, all women who are rendered voiceless and powerless by virtue of gender.

As Rosemary Radford Ruether put it about 40 years ago in her groundbreaking work, Sexism and God-Talk, “Jesus as liberator calls for a renunciation, a dissolution, of the web of status relationships by which societies have defined privilege and deprivation. He protests against the identification of this system with the favor or disfavor of God.”[3]

In pronouncing liberation for this one woman, Jesus calls into question the entire system: “Woman,” he says after the men have left, “where are they?”

Lest we thing that the woman is mere passive prop in the story of oppression, when Jesus speaks a word of liberation from that oppressive system it is accompanied by a charge. He asks of her oppressors, “where are they?” And then answers:

“They are gone, girlfriend. So, you go, too, and sin no more. You go, too, and don’t participate in their broken and sinful system any longer. You go, too, as an impowered member of the household of God called to follow the way of liberation. You go, too, and be part of the movement that is lifting the yoke of oppression from your sisters. You go, too, and throw stones until the walls come tumbling down and the patriarchy is crushed beneath the ruins. Oh, and as you go on your way into a new world, wear whatever is comfortable, including leggings. This is the word of the Lord.”

Amen.

---

[1] Gerard Sloyan, Interpretation: John (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988) 97.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, A Gospel of Hope (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2018) 49-50.

[3] Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983) 137.