Today’s Scripture Reading (September
13, 2014): John 8
As I spoke
this past weekend I was reminded once again of the inequity position of women
in our religious writings. After speaking on Psalm 51, a Psalm that was written
by King David after his unfortunate moral failure with Bathsheba, I had several
women who wanted to speak with me about Bathsheba as the victim. Not only was
her character maligned by David and the one who recorded the biblical story,
but it has also been maligned by the thousands of biblical teachers who have
taught on the story and refused to acknowledge the absolute powerlessness of
Bathsheba to resist the wishes of the king under these circumstances. One lady
painted a beautiful and tragic picture of Bathsheba as a woman who was
kidnapped against her will and had her beloved husband murdered, all to service
the desire of the king – and there wasn’t the first thing that she could do
about it. She openly wondered if there might have been other children that
Bathsheba had loved and who had to be left behind as she started her new life
with the King of Israel. She asked if it were possible that Bathsheba cried
herself to sleep at night remembering all of the things that she had lost, and
if there might be just a little hate for the man with whom she now shared a
bed, and I had to admit that all of these things were very possible.
The church,
well, at least parts of it, seem to be trapped in this hierarchical idea of the
pre-eminence of the male of the species. And we come back by this idea honestly
– we can support the idea with many biblical texts including the story of David
and Bathsheba. But what we refuse to acknowledge is that the biblical texts
which argue for a dominance of the man are culturally derived, not spiritually.
In fact, the Bible also seems to argue want to spiritually argue the opposite
position. All through the New Testament, and even in Paul’s writings, women are
exalted to the positions of being the main supporters of the fledgling
Christian Church, hostesses to the needs of the prominent (yes, male) heads of
the church, and, in the case of Priscilla, even the prime teachers within the
church. And all of this argues strongly for an equality between the sexes, not
just in life, but in spiritual matters as well.
Even in this
story of the adulteress being brought before Jesus, one of the lessons that
needs to be heard is Jesus unwillingness to blame the woman for the sins of the
world (no matter how some people feel about the sin of Eve in the Garden.) In
this situation, a woman is brought before Jesus who had been caught in the act
of adultery. Many have quite correctly wondered why it was just the woman who
was brought before Jesus, after all, to be “caught in adultery” absolutely
requires the presence of another person – and in this case it requires a man. But
the subtext of this story from a cultural point of view seems to argue that the
man was innocent, it is only the woman who needs to be punished for her sin. It
is likely that the man, the one with whom she had slept with moments before
being dragged out naked to meet this Jewish Rabbi named Jesus, was even now
picking up a rock and preparing for her execution.
But Jesus
stopped the proceedings declaring that this was a game he was unwilling to play.
Was the woman guilty of sin? Yes. Was she the only one? No. She was a pawn in
someone else’s game plan and Jesus was not about to execute a pawn. It might
even be that, as he said the words asking that the one without sin be permitted
to throw the first stone, Jesus was searching for the partner of the woman in
the crowd - the one who had shared in the woman’s sin. And, in the eyes of this
counter-cultural Jesus, he was the one who was even guiltier of the current
charge of sin than the naked woman who now laid in front of him. The culture
may have been willing to blame the woman, but Jesus wanted the man who was the
power behind the sin.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: John 9
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