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ON CASTING STONES
“Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do you say?’ This they said, testing him, that they might have something of which to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with his finger, as though he did not hear. So when they continued asking him, he raised himself up and said to them, ‘He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.’ And again h e stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised himself up and saw no one but the woman, he said to her, ‘Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.’” (Jn 8: 3-11)
I’m thinking of our reaction, when someone in our public eye is “caught in adultery,” or “in the very act” of some other sex-related sin. I’m not talking about criminal acts like rape and domestic violence, but about sexual missteps that are morally reprehensible, but not legally actionable. We do not physically stone the culprits to death, but we quite readily bombard them with our collective outcry, mostly on social media, to the point that the culprit’s name and career is erased from the public sphere, with no hope for redemption, regardless of their very-public apologies or explanations. (I’ll note parenthetically that our “verbal stoning” is usually unleashed on men, and only rarely on women.)
Why does Christ call us to take note of our own sins, in these situations? It’s not because “two wrongs make a right.” It’s rather because, while our “eye” is blinded by the “log” in it, we can’t say, as He does to this adultress, “Go and sin no more,” empowering her to do so by His grace-filled word. All we have to offer, in our unreflectingly-angry lack of self-awareness, is death-bringing stones, which can only destroy, but can’t empower anyone to do better. Thank You, Lord, for not “condemning” us, as we so often do one another, but empowering us to do better, by Your compassionate and grace-filled Word.
Coffee With Sister Vassa
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Sister Vassa lives in Vienna, so I am unaware of how publicly "sexual sins" are reported in her social and cultural setting. But it sounds similar to America, unless she is basing her words on a more international scale. Americans are obsessed with the sexual sins of other people - at least Christians are - just as we are obsessed with sex in general. The pervasiveness of sex in our society is clearly unhealthy, and we do our best to watch over our children's access to its less than desirable effects.
Yet, all of the churches, including the Orthodox Church, are beset with the same sexual sins and of course they are deeply damaging to all the people involved. And it is worse when there are attempts to "cover up" these sins when they become high-profile cases. "Circling the wagons" to save the institutional reputation of the Church is clearly counter-productive; and only proves that the Church does not take these sexual sins seriously, though they are denounced in public pronouncements and from the amvon. All of this only leads to justifiable accusations of hypocrisy by the secular world. As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware once famously said: "Peeping through the keyhole of another person's bedroom is a very undignified position!"
Her use of the term "verbal stoning" is effective. I do not think that she is at all advocating any kind of "moral relativism," as Christ certainly did not in the dramatic episode from St. John's Gospel that Sister Vassa recounts above.
Her call for us to be vigilant so that we can remove the "log" from our own eyes is always timely. If we can drop the stones we have prepared for other people and their sins, I think we would feel much lighter.
