Where Are Your Accusers?

Saturday's gospel leaves off the end of the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery.  It pairs more neatly, perhaps, with the Susanna and Daniel story that way.

But I think about cutting off this vital part of the story, and it puzzles me to no small degree.  Why not give the woman her chance to react?  Then again, we don't get a TON of her reaction.  And shouldn't we address how Jesus deals with her actual guilt?

And what I can't help seeing in their conversation is a kind of parable of Final Judgment.  We have all messed up, but what if our fate is decided more by whether or not we have an accuser left at the end of the day?  If we have reconciled with those we hurt, or if we have made room for everyone to understand and find love, if we have joined as one big family...

If we all put down our own stones.

Then at the end, there will be no more accusers.  So Jesus and God will say the same to us.

Perhaps that seems too easy, but if you think about it, it really isn't.  It requires reconciling the entire human race.  Getting each and every one of us to really admit that we are imperfect and have done terrible things to good people.  That we have been selfish and petty and even cruel.  Because we all have.

That's what makes you put down the rock in your hand.  The rock perhaps justifiably in your hand, ready to aim at the person who scarred you, who broke you, who made it impossible for you to trust.

I'd like to think that some of the people in that crowd put it down out of love, instead of simply shame.  Perhaps that's easier, really.  We can feel good about ourselves for taking pity, for acting out of love.  So much easier to drop the stone because WE are so good that we can forgive.

What Jesus asks instead is for us to find a way of peace and forgiveness through our own guilt and shame.  Which is shocking, really.  And harder.  Oh so much harder.  But if we actually want to BE better people, rather than just FEEL like better people...if we want to put down our rocks permanently...if we want to be safe from the slaughter when our time comes...

Well, that's exactly what we have to do.