Fifth Sunday of Lent, cycle C

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.