Dropping Stones

Following a lengthy discussion of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery with several gentlemen who reside at the Riverbend Maximum Security Prison, I have contemplated how difficult it can be for good religious folk to drop their stones and walk away. We have a tendency to cast stones at people with whom we disagree, whom we do not understand or find repugnant, or whom otherwise perceive as different and inferior. We cast these stones over political ideology. Conservatives vilify President Obama, and liberals did the same to President George W. Bush. We cast stones over religious differences, not only, for example, Christians toward Muslims and vice versa, but within religious traditions based on differing doctrinal understandings and interpretations. We cast stones at the poor and persecute them through arcane criminal justice policies that ruin individual lives and leave entire communities impoverished and disenfranchised. And like our Pharisaical ancestors, we are quick to judge and condemn those we consider sinful, particularly those we deem to have committed a sexual sin that renders them unclean and an abomination. All of this, it seems to me, is an adventure in scapegoating. We love having a scapegoat to judge, find lacking, and condemn. We make jokes about them and point out all the ways that they are inferior to us, the dominant and righteous group. Not only does casting stones at a scapegoat bind the dominant group together, it reminds the members of the dominant group that as long as they are standing in judgment over the scapegoat, no one is judging them. Jesus, however, does not allow the crowd to condemn its scapegoat. He reminds the crowd that they are all lacking, all sinful, all without the right to judge. How hard it is to drop the stones and walk away. Because when we do, we are reminded that we are, in fact, no better than the ones we would treat as scapegoats, and the ones we would condemn are, in fact, no worse than us. As painful as it may be to admit, we are all the same. If John's account is trustworthy, there was only one person in the story who had any right to judge and condemn. He refused to allow anyone else to lay illegitimate claim to that right, and he refused to exercise that right himself.