When I was five years of age, an elderly Sister of Charity of Mt St Vincent in New York taught me a memorable lesson. She had caught me accusing a playmate of a “crime.” She told me to point my finger at him one more time. I did. Then she asked none too sweetly, “Do you see that while one finger is pointed at the boy, three fingers are pointed at you yourself?” As young as I was, she had made her point indelibly.
But she was not finished. “Try, James, to spend more time in the future improving your own faults,” she said with no trace of a smile. “Then you will not have time to criticize others.” To make matters worse the “charge” against my friend proved subsequently to be unjustified. The Charity religious should have been named a Doctor of the Church.
The bad people of this Gospel story were the Scribes and Pharisees. They were proponents of capital punishment. None of us likes to identify with the heavies in any story. Yet, national polls show that despite the pleas of America’s bishops as many as 80% of us favor capital punishment. Do we really differ then that much from the antagonists of John’s Gospel today?
Let us even refine the case more narrowly. Drunk and rowdy college students partied outside a prison in Florida. At the death hour, they cheered the electrocution of some poor wretch inside. Then, as his incinerated body passed them in a hearse, they loudly and cruelly saluted him with raised cans of beer. So much then for the innocent mirth of youth! Unhappily, though, it can be argued it was we their seniors who taught them this eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth philosophy.
We have this lust for pay-back revenge even though our own Leader is the most celebrated victim of capital punishment in recorded history!
How would Jesus have reacted outside that Florida prison? I wager He would have been once again weeping. His tears would be not only for the just murdered man but also for the college students. I wager my sharp Sister of Charity would support that summation of her one-time first grade student.
How is Old Sparky, aka the electric chair, or a lethal injection or gassing any different from the stoning clearly put down by the Christ in today’s Gospel? If one is genuinely pro life as many of us like to think we are, must we not struggle for life from the womb to the tomb? Given what the Master teaches us in this famous Gospel, must not rehabilitation rather than capital punishment be the most significant plank in our criminal justice system? And, if rehabilitation does not work, then there is always life behind bars without parole. The keys can justifiably be thrown away. Society must be protected.
This Gospel does give us a lot to think about, does it not? It can cause us to sit down face in hand and rethink our own position on capital punishment. But I do suspect that is what our controversial Teacher intended in the first place.
After all, His audiences did regularly run Him out of almost every town He preached in. Clearly He was not throwing pious platitudes at them. The record shows that every time He spoke it was a “go for broke” scenario. He was the supreme challenger. He remains so today.
Scholars say that our early followers in the faith found themselves upset by this Gospel account. They wished John had never written it. In their mind, the narration has the Teacher being soft on sin. But this is sheer nonsense. Jesus does not say to the woman, “Worry not. Adultery is quite permissible.” Rather, He does say without qualification and, I dare say, with some anger once they were alone together, “Go, but do not sin again.”
The next time you find yourself pointing a finger in accusation at someone, do steal a look at the three fingers that are accusingly pointing themselves at your own honorable self. Then put the wagons in a circle and reconsider your accusation.
At that point, consider Mother Teresa’s advice. The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace.