Ash Wednesday
February 17, 2010

Daniel 13.1-27
Susanna

One of the things I've always liked best about the Ten Commandments is the separation of the last two commandments: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property and Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. I remember one of the moments of my life when I was most filled with religious anger was not outrage at our society's excesses or even the abortion massacre. It was when a street preacher was handing out coins with the ten commandments which elongated the first "I am the Lord your God, / you shall have no other gods before Me" into two (at the slash mark) and shortened the final two into a simple, "Thou shalt not covet." To my mild distress, I found my translation of the Bible did something quite similar. The reason this distresses me is that I've always seen those final two commandments as a divine endorsement, all the way back in Exodus, that there is a big difference between a wife and property. Not just, I like to think, in how she may be coveted.

The section of the chapter before me today, however, shows what can happen when those two things get tied up together. The two elders who visit Joakim's house every day and lust after his pretty wife, we are told, see a lot of splendor and receive a very fine meal. They do not take her in the woods or a more private place - nowhere will do but Joakim's own fine garden for their tryst. Surely this is not just about a pretty woman (although I'm not doubting that she was extraordinary). They coveted Joakim's life and riches and the woman he could maintain in splendor with them. They wanted to possess her and cuckold him. It was not for her mind or virtue that they were drawn to her. Even Angelo, in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure has that on these elders. He fell for the person, they seem to have fallen for the idea of stealing something from Joakim. How many times have we seen this story? You can't beat the man, but you can sure as hell seduce his wife? And somehow that's really winning because that's his chief possession and the real measure of his manhood. We're putting women back as property, a jewel on a rich man's arm that can be stolen without the keeper even knowing the difference.

If they had paid enough attention to Susanna they might not have bothered trying, but then again, maybe I'm wrong. They knew that just the offer of sex wouldn't do, they had to pair it with a threat of dishonor - take her reputation and drag it through the mud. Even if Susanna was respected in the community (and it sure turns on her fast) the Elders knew they had the advantage there. After all, she was a woman and not to be trusted. And how many people are loath to see the rich man's wife fall?

Her dilemma was interesting from another perspective entirely, but she negotiated it smoothly. A truly remarkable woman - not just for caring more about her honor than her life. Countless women throughout history have proclaimed to prefer death to dishonor. I'm currently playing Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, and I spend an entire scene begging my tormenters to kill me rather than rape and dishonor me. Susanna, however, chose dishonor over sin. That's a harder choice. Yes, death was tied up with the dishonor, but they were not threatening to cut her heart out in the bath. They threatened to drag her before the community and shame her - turn her husband and family against her, make her a common punchline and a famous slut. To watch her die despised and cast out of society. How many of us could make that choice?

To have no one even know that what you did was honorable and just and virtuous? To have no one believe that you were being the good one? To stand firm in your inner moral center as everyone hung the sins of all women onto your shoulders?

And one bit that I really like about this, back to my original theme, is that Joakim's stake in Susanna is not what is in play here. Whether Susanna consented to cuckold him in reality or had her name dragged through the marketplace until everyone believed that she had anyway, his property was about to be devalued. There was nothing about Joakim at stake here. It all came down to Susanna, as a person. As a woman, not as Joakim's wife.

It's easy to get caught up in such stories with the virtues expected of an ideal woman, but preserving their right to choose who to love ultimately came down, in one chapter of the book of Daniel, to an issue of a woman's choice for her own soul rather than her inherent value to man. Even our modern world gets so confused in this situation.

The strength and grace she showed are not the only lessons we can learn from this story. It's another Old Testament shout out to a concept even the modern world cannot fully grasp - women are people, just like men, and however we try to make them into possessions, in the end that's not what is at stake. A single bright, beautiful soul standing up and saying that she cannot control what the corrupt Elders of her people choose to do, but she can choose what she will do, as a woman. And she chose to honor her husband, her self and her God.

You go girl.