Fifth Sunday in lent,
cycle c
John 8:1-11
I went to a very liberal
medical school. It was the middle of the Vietnam war, and those of
you who are old like me probably remember how polarized the country
became over this issue. At my school, one professor in particular
would organize “teach ins” to which we were not forced to go, at
least not in so many words. At the teach ins we would hear several
speakers, often from the university of California at Berkeley,
describe in vivid detail the atrocities of the war and how north
Vietnam was just a poor country of farmers that wanted to be left
alone. And how those in the military who fought in this war were war
criminals. And on and on it went. There was no attempt to present
the opposite side; the only people that were allowed to demonstrate
on campus had to be invited there by a professor or student group.
And as might be expected, by the time we graduated most of us had
become radicalized. A few of us had close friends that were in the
military, and some of us thought that our defense of south Vietnam
was basically a good thing, but we were in a very silent minority.
My class had been radicalized into a mob.
Ever since then I've been
very wary of mobs. The story of the woman caught in adultery is a
story about mobs. You have a crowd of people who are taking a woman
out to execute her for breaking the mosaic law. And they are
following the law; it says right there that if you catch a man and a
woman in the act of adultery they are to be stoned. Of course we
could always ask about where the man was in this case, but that's
beside the point. There were two ways of stoning someone; one was to
throw the person down on stones which almost happened to Jesus when a
mob was going to throw him off a cliff. The other, assuming a cliff
wasn't handy, was to pick up stones and throw them until the person
was dead. That's what happened to saint Stephen. Paul was stoned
once as well, but lived through it.
Another thing going on
here is that execution was against roman law, unless it was approved
by roman authority. That, of course, was the point of getting Pilate
to allow the crucifixion of Jesus. But the way around that was to
form a mob. Sometimes the Romans would execute the whole mob if they
could get there in time with the troops; but usually the process was
over and the mob dispersed before the Romans even heard about it.
And that's what is happening here. Obviously the enemies of Jesus
are using this occasion to put him on the spot, but for the mob, that
was just an aside. They were fired up with zeal and could barely
wait until this sinner was dead.
That's the thing about a
mob. However it begins, it makes the people in the mob choose sides.
And when you are caught up in the emotions of a mob, you stop
thinking rationally. And you catch the emotions of those around you
and reflect them back until the whole group is on fire. It's
primitive; it's something from our animal ancestors.
If we are part of a mob,
by definition we are being irrational. The mob planning to stone the
woman caught in adultery is a classic mob; but there are other kinds
as well. You don't have to be physically marching down the street.
Think about die hard sports fans. Have people really broken up
friendships because one was for the Yankees and the other for the Red
Sox? Can you develop a mob using the press or social media? Of
course. We are seeing a lot of that these days and it's concerning.
The Kavenaugh hearings brought out the beast in our country with
people shouting for his head. And think of the national mob that
rose up over the kids from Covington. Had there not been proof that
they had actually behaved in an exemplary way they might very well
have been expelled from their high school and worse – that after
all was what the mob was crying for.
I suspect most of us are
at least touched by that mob mentality now and then. If you believe
strongly in something, the tendency is to see those who believe
differently as the enemy and once you make this identification even
if you are on the side of angels you've become a little irrational
and when you find like-minded people who can magnify your feelings by
agreeing with you, you've started a mob.
Jesus bends down ad
writes on the dirt. People have wondered why ever since the gospel
was written. Some say Jesus was just doing what came naturally in
those times – doodling on the ground while he gathered his
thoughts. And of course my grandmother told me he was writing down
the sins of the people who were in the mob. But maybe Jesus was
doing the only thing you can do to stop a mob – distract them.
They were full of passion, they knew they were doing what god had
commanded and at the same time thumbing their noses at the Romans,
and to top it all off, they had a chance to put Jesus on the spot.
What's you answer, Jesus? Quick, what's you answer?
And they paused and
waited, and while they waited, their rational selves awoke, and to
those rational selves Jesus said, “let him who is without sin cast
the first stone.” And one by one they left the mob and went home.
If you are not part of a
mob, your tendency is to keep silent. And because of that silence,
the mob has changed our world very quickly. Same sex marriage,
abortion without any restrictions, five year old's being surgically
and chemically changed into the opposite sex because a boy played
with a doll or a girl wanted to play football; Christians being
demonized because they don't want to go along with the mob – and
perhaps among the saddest consequences – a rapid rise in the
fraction of the population who want nothing to do with religion,
which is probably the only counter to the mob. Being a Christian
means that we try to see where Jesus is in our own story, and in the
story we've just heard, Jesus is all about mercy … but he is
against sin and against mobs.
