Jehu, the Guy with the Really Big Stone
Dear Jesus,
You don’t me but I sure as heck know you. I was one of the people responsible for all the ruckus last week. However, it wasn’t all my idea.
Silas and I knew each other well. I’m a Pharisee and Silas is a teacher of the law and we both have a bit of a thing for Margarita. She was comely and attractive with those dark eyes and a winning smile. We would see her at the market and our overtures were always met with a disappointing but firm declining of our advances. It drove us nuts.
So we dreamt up this plan. As a Pharisee and a teacher we had heard about you. How forgiving and patient and understanding you always were. A faithful, practising rabbi but somehow different. A bit out there. You drove us nuts in quite a different way. Just when we thought we understood you, you warped our minds and lives with a new saying, a new teaching, a new challenge. Were you for us or against us? We could never work it out.
So one night after a few wines, Silas and I hatched a cunning plan.
We knew that pretty Margarita always went down to the cellar on market day to collect the herbs and olives ready for the customers. Silas would follow her in and if she didn’t see his point of view, then a bit of torn clothing, a bit of shouting and distress and he would bring her in front of you claiming adultery. My job was to round up the crowds and bring them along for the spectacle.
So it was, at the appointed day, at the appointed time everything aligned. You were in town, Margarita had gone down into the cellar and I was hanging out with a few other teachers. The signal was given and it all unfolded. The crowd quickly gathered. Silas dragged a dishevelled, protesting, struggling Margarita before everyone and made the accusation. Not necessarily towards Margarita but to you. His words were smooth and articulate.
“Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
All of us had picked up filthy great rocks and we were set to stone her. I could feel the comfortable weight in my hand and I was determined that I was going to be first.
You were composed and unfazed by the shouting around you. You met our noise and questions with your silence.
It was obvious that you could see the trap. If you said ‘Yes, stone her’, then your reputation of compassion and forgiveness was out the window and down the drain. If you said ‘Forgive her’, then you were clearly in breach of the faith that had been handed down and your license as a rabbi would be revoked by the Professional Standards Board.
But you said… nothing. At least not to start with. You just bent down and doodled in the dust. What the heck?
We kept up with our questions louder and louder and then you rose and looked at us. I felt like you were looking straight at me and I prickled. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It was as if you knew everything about me.
And then you said it.
“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
And then you just bent down and started to scratch around in the dust again. Just left us to our own thoughts. Left us to work it out for ourselves.
The old codgers were first to drop their rock and walk away, but it took me a while.
I had let my emotions manipulate me. My unreciprocated attraction to Margarita and my theological angst toward you. I was not in control of these things. I was at their mercy, slave to their every whim.
Somehow you knew all this. You knew exactly what to say and the way to say it. Gently, calmly, in a measured voice but again with that dastardly unmistakable compassion. What is more, you knew that I needed to hear these words and obviously I have never forgotten them.
I said at the start of this letter that you did know me, but it turns out you did. You may not have known my name or where I lived, but you knew me in ways that no one else ever had. You saw straight through me. You knew my every flaw and wrinkle. Every rough edge and every chip on my shoulder.
You knew me… You know me. You know me very well indeed. Better than I know myself.
So I dropped my stone and went away fizzing with irritation and humiliation. I just had to write to you and tell you.
Oh, one last thing. I wonder …what if it was you personally, who was on trial before the crowds?
Would you be so forgiving if someone flogged you, spat upon you, mocked you, denied you, betrayed you; drove some nails through your body and pinned you to the wood? What then? Would you cry out for retaliation, revenge and retribution? Or would you pray ‘Father Forgive’?
Just a question
Yours in the disorientation of my very different dimension.
Jehu
Teacher and Quarryman.