Monday of the fifth week of Lent

Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.

Jesus’ easy escape from his enemies might be comical if this story were not so terrifying. There is nothing funny about the threat to stone a woman to death. When I grew up the story seemed like an ancient farce; today we know the Taliban of Afghanistan still conducts this horrifying ritual.

In both of today’s stories – from Daniel and Saint John – we hear of God’s delivering women accused of adultery from certain death. In our country today, where adultery is more common than marriage, it is hard to imagine a society’s wrath over the private relations of men and women. Even homosexual behavior is largely ignored.

But every society, ancient or modern, needs its pariahs and adulterous women were the pariahs of Jesus’ time. They were hated because they were hated, and no particular reason beyond that.

The pariahs of our time are aliens, Muslims, pedophiles, and so forth. The prevailing sentiment of the loudest would deny their rights to the protection of law. If the city announced a public stoning of a pedophile in downtown Louisville, I’m sure a crowd would show up.

Penance and the Season of Lent challenge us to discover our own pariahs. Who do I suppose deserves no sympathy? Who should not be given a fair trial with competent legal counsel?

There was enormous outrage several years ago when O.J. Simpson was freed after the murder of his ex-wife and her lover. It seemed a black man had killed a white woman and escaped justice. Black men have been one of the favorite pariahs of a racist nation for many centuries. They were supposed to be always preying upon innocent, helpless white women. Mr. Simpson’s escape seemed to bring that era to an end. If one black man escaped conviction for a double-murder he had committed, many black men were lynched for crimes they never committed.

But, of course, it will take more than one show trial before the racist society surrenders that obsession.

In today’s gospel story, no one says the woman was innocent. Even Jesus advised, “Do not sin anymore.” She escaped, as you and I escape, because Jesus willingly took upon himself the burden of the earth’s pariah. He was despised by all:

He was spurned and avoided by people,
a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
one of those from whom people hide their faces,
spurned, and we held him in no esteem.

Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,
our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken,
as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses,
crushed for our sins;
upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,
by his stripes we were healed.

Spring creeps up the hill

Healed and set free, we must discover whom we hate, and be reconciled.