The Divine Monkey Wrench--March 6, 2020

The Divine Monkey Wrench--March 6, 2020

"Early in the morning Jesus came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, 'Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?' They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, 'Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.' And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?' She said, 'No one, sir.' And Jesus said, 'Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again'." [John 8:2-11]

You might not think it at first, but restoring people to life is a controversial business.  But on second thought, maybe it has to be. Maybe resurrection is always provocative to the folks who are enmeshed in a system of death and do not want it dismantled.

I want to suggest that this is precisely what we are witnessing in this story: an act of resurrection, and one that simultaneously dismantles a crooked system.  The Respectable Religious Crowd had carefully constructed a system with which they could selectively target people as they chose, while covering themselves in a veneer of piety and respectability. Jesus, however, knowingly and purposefully jams up the mechanism of their system in such a way that saves this frightened woman's life from a lynch-mob and turns the animosity of the crowd onto himself rather than onto her.  Jesus places himself into the gears of their "system" to bring it to a halt and to spare this woman's life.  Jesus throws himself into the system as a divine monkey wrench to bring the whole thing down.  And he does it without even breaking a sweat.

Just to be clear about it, here's the clever (terrible, but clever) arrangement these Respectable Religious types have engineered. First off, these folks were not part of a civil government, and they knew they did not have legal authority (especially under Roman occupation) to put anybody to death.  But they could stir up a lynch-mob if they convinced enough folks that someone was a dangerous and troublesome law-breaker, and they could cite the punishments in Israel's ancient legal code as precedent. That allowed them to bring people up on charges almost arbitrarily (and to let others off the hook without a second thought--like, where is the man with whom this woman was "caught in the act" of adultery, and why aren't they interested in bringing him to justice?). And because they insisted they had a Bible verse to back them up--and from the very Law of Moses, no less!--they could cast themselves as the voice of "law and order," and tell everyone they were merely committed to "defending the sanctity of marriage."  That clever strategy allowed them to paint anyone who conflicted with them, on any matter, as being "against marriage" or "actively encouraging law-breaking," or "supporting illicit behavior"--even Jesus.

And that seems to have been the plan in this scene.  The Respectable Religious folks want to spring a trap, and the woman is not the target; she is the bait.  They treat her as a non-person in this whole episode, never once speaking to her, but only about her, like she is an object for their manipulation or a pawn on their chessboard.  But, of course, that's also part of their system as well.  As long as she isn't treated like a person, they can rile up the anger to provoke the lynch-mob, because it is always easier to kill someone when you don't have to see their face.  But this is really about trying to use her as a prop, as the bait in a trap to get Jesus on the record saying something that will damn him.  If they can get a sound-byte of him supporting her execution (even if it's what they seem to be kind of rooting for, too), they can use it as evidence Jesus is subverting Roman rule and advocating for revolt against the Empire (because Rome doesn't stone people for things like adultery, and advocating for the political power to sentence someone to death would mean forcing Rome out to set up their own government).  And on the other hand, if Jesus goes on the record flatly opposing her stoning, they can cast him as being "weak on crime" or say that Jesus is "attacking the institution of marriage." And if that happens, they think, they'll be able to turn the crowds against Jesus and maybe just get a lynch-mob after him, too.

Now, here's the infinite genius of Jesus in response.  He knows that if he picks either of those options, he is leaving their System intact.  Even if he says, "Don't stone her," the angry mob can still stone her--they'll just be more likely to stone Jesus, too, on charges of blasphemy for contradicting their interpretation of the Law of Moses.  That doesn't help the woman who is trembling with fear in front of this bloodthirsty crowd, and it keeps the Respectable Religious people still pulling their strings.

And, as I hope we are seeing all throughout this year's focus, Jesus is always about the work of resurrection... for everybody.  If he leaves their system in place unquestioned, maybe he can spend his energy futilely trying to save this woman's life, but then the next woman who agitates the Respectable Religious Crowd can get picked up on charges, too, and there will be no one to stop them, then.  But if Jesus can throw a monkey wrench into the gears of the system itself, he might just be able to save this woman's life, and to stop these power-wielding schemers from doing this all over again to somebody else.  He can raise her up from certain death (and I don't know what else you call that but a form of resurrection) and at the same time set everybody free from a system that surely kept a lot of people afraid of who would be selectively targeted for rule-breaking.

That's what makes his response here so perfect: he rejects the way the Respectable Religious people have framed the situation.  He short-circuits their scheme by saying that the first stone can be thrown by someone who has no sin--and one by one, they let their rocks drop to the ground.  The one person on the scene who really is "without sin" is Jesus, and he says he isn't interested in condemning her.  He has thrown a monkey wrench into the system. If Jesus won't condemn her, nobody else can, because he would have the "right" to throw the first stone, and he won't even pick one up in the first place.

Notice here, that Jesus' point isn't to say that cheating on your spouse is okay, or that infidelity is no big deal.  He doesn't take the position of, "It's ok to treat people as disposable and to cheat on your spouse," but neither will he treat this woman like she is disposable, either by condemning her to death.  Jesus is able to restore her to life and at the same time dismantle the system by which her accusers used their religiosity to make other people afraid and to keep themselves pulling strings behind the scenes.  That's essential, too, because it was that very system that was keeping everybody trapped inside, and enmeshed with fear and death.

Of course, this isn't the only time that schemers have created a system that cloaks itself with the language of religion and the pretense of "law and order" to selectively threaten people.  This was the same deathly logic of the lynch-mobs of the American South (and, horrifically, other parts of the country, too) throughout much of our history, where crowds were stirred up on the pretense that some African American person had caused an offense (like whistling at a white woman, or daring to vote), and then they were tortured and killed by a mob, who smiled and took photographs while they did it, all convinced they were "righteous" and good.

It is the same terrible sort of system when women are still treated like pawns, or when we all agree to selectively target one group of people as rule-breakers while ignoring others. It happens in all the ways we treat others as less-than on account of their skin or their hair or their way of dressing or their way of presenting themselves to the world. It happens when we refuse to see others as people with faces because that would mean we have to treat them with human dignity. But as long as we can just reduce someone else to being a "lawbreaker" or a "non-person" we can sequester them away and not have to think about how we treat them--and anybody who raises a protest can be branded as "opposed to the rule of law," too.  And so the system entrenches itself on... and on... and on.

The work cut out for us today, then, is to let Jesus' way of raising others up to life and dismantling systems of death become our way, too.  Our calling is to question the choices put to us by those systems, and to insist, for example, that seeing the human faces of others does not equate to "attacking the sanctity of marriage" as the woman's accusers surely were ready to accuse Jesus of doing.  Our calling is to save and restore life when there are mechanisms around us, with which we are often complicit, that treat people as less-than.  Our calling is not to let the system drape itself in the language and veneer of religiosity, so that questioning the system becomes questioning God.  Our calling is to reclaim the perspective of faith, sometimes even to reclaim it from the Respectable Religious People of our day, and to say that Jesus' way is always marked by mercy and grace and truth-telling, not violence and manipulation.  Our calling, too, is sometimes to throw ourselves, like Jesus does, as monkey-wrenches into the gears of those systems that dehumanize others, even if it won't win us any popularity contests.  Like our older brother in the faith Dietrich Bonhoeffer said so powerfully, "We are not simply to bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."  Jesus--and Bonhoeffer--remind us that sometimes the spoke, or the monkey wrench, is our very selves.

If that seems frightening as we consider the possible costs to our reputation, our livelihood, or our lives, well, that's warranted--but fear doesn't get the last word for people who believe that God is always raising the dead among us.  Resurrection may always be provocative to those who are enmeshed in systems of death, but that never stopped God from lifting us up from the grave and bringing us to life all over again.

Let us go and follow after Jesus today, the monkey wrench of God.

Lord Jesus, let us follow in your way of restoring others to life and dismantling all the systems that keep us from the abundant life you give for all.  And give us the courage to put one step in front of the next as we go.