Monday, March 18, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Men and women, Mars and Venus, heading into heaven
Jesus, man, meets accused prostitute, woman. Indignant men who consider themselves righteous drag her from her bed to him. Teacher, what do you say?
But Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger.
Was he thinking? Was he asking his Father what happens next? One thing I know, Jesus was not avoiding their eyes.
They continued asking him and he straightened up.
Did Jesus look at them with burning, compassionate eyes? Did his face show what he was thinking?
“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Ah. He is turning it back on them. So good at that is Jesus! But he is also loving them, asking them to recognize and accept humility.
Again he bent down and wrote on the ground.
Of course Jesus is not one who condones adultery. He does not condone adultery, or abortion, or betrayal of any kind, of any part of any person.
The accusers went away, one by one, beginning with the elders. And Jesus was left alone on the hillside, with the woman.
Jesus – man – with the accused – woman. Adam and Eve, waiting. Father calling out to them, “Where are you?” Adam was ashamed of his nakedness. Jesus saw through the woman’s clothes, into her soul.
Woman, where are they?
Surely, he was at peace inside, gentle, knowing his Father’s way in this moment.
Has no one condemned you? And she replied, “No, one, sir.”
Well. Another example of our deceitful hearts. Of course the woman’s heart is deceitful too.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
Paul Theroux in his 1975 book The Great Railway Bazaar, chronicles his many-trained trip through Europe and Asia through Vietnam to Japan and back again. In Japan Mr. Theroux attempts to describe, if not reconcile, the contrast between the Japanese peoples’ behavior with what they enjoy on stage and screen and in their books. The contrast, to be specific, between their respectful, quiet and polite ways with each other in person, and the unedited lewdness and violence of their entertainments.
Outside the Nichigeki Music Hall, the Japanese men who had watched with fastidious languor and then so enthusiastically applauded the savage eroticism that could enjoy no encore—baring their teeth as they did so—these men, as I say, bowed deeply to one another, murmured polite farewells to their friends, linked arms with their wives with the gentleness of old-fashioned lovers, and, in the harsh lights of the street, smiled, looking positively cherubic. (p. 320)
On a bullet train from Aomori to Tokyo, Paul sits across from a young girl reading a thick comic book. While she went to the toilet, he read some of her book.
I was instructed and cautioned. The comic strips showed decapitations, cannibalism, people bristling with arrows like Saint Sebastian, people in flames, shrieking armies of marauders dismembering villagers, limbless people with dripping stumps, and, in general, mayhem. The drawings were not good, but they were clear. (p. 323)
And there is more, but I won’t repeat it. Mr. Theroux did say that when the green toilet light went off and he dropped the comic, “the girl returned to her seat and, so help me God, serenely returned to this distressing comic.”
Not being a sociologist I don’t need to theorize about this vast space between their (my) deceitful heart and their (my) outside show of respect and respectability. But, being sociologically minded, I guess I will anyway.
Or at least I will notice that Jesus recognized both the inner ugliness and outward righteousness of the men (and the girl). And what’s more, not just recognize but … love. Jesus loved the men with their nasty, false self-righteousness, and he loved the girl with her acknowledged former sin. “Go and sin no more,” he told her, and she would intend to obey. Jesus knew she could not obey entirely, and he loved her anyway.
Those Japanese folks in Theroux’ book did not apologize for their inner violence, nor did they exhibit it on the streets where they lived. Perhaps they had learned what Jesus wanted to teach us all, to “accept” everything about ourselves while also always striving for something more pure, holy, graced.
Given.
I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, says the Lord, but rather in his conversion, that he may live.
(Daniel 13 from Deuterocanonical Books, the story of Susannah, Psalm 23, Ezekiel 33, John 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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