stone thrower
“In my lifetime, I’ve thrown so many stones,” I’m saying to a close friend, my hand wrapped around a coffee mug, my fingers absently rubbing the shiny porcelain, but what I’m thinking about, what I imagine regretfully, is the cool hardness, the heft, of my judgements and criticisms, gracelessly hurled.
What a dark miserable truth, ugly but real, that pride so easily turns to violence.
There is a verse I’ve begun to pray over most days, an encouragement from the apostle Paul that articulates what I now understand to be the postural antidote for spiritual stoning: Let me do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but rather in humility value others above myself.
The Greek word Paul uses, there translated humility, is a derivative of the word Matthew uses to record Christ’s most intimate description of Himself, I am gentle and humble in heart. I realized months ago, when God and I started this conversation, that the Spirit of God is only encouraging me through Paul, by way of an ancient letter to the Philippian church, to let Him make me more like Jesus.
My friend, her face scrubbed and honest, nods, listening, open-eyed, her expression mirroring my sadness.
There is no healing apart from confession, so here I am, acknowledging the stones I’ve held in my guilty hands, even as I drop them, thudding and ruthless, back into the dirt. There’s nothing like a conversation with a sister-friend willing to witness the whole of your life, especially the broken parts newly sealed with God.
But I’ve been talking about this all week, telling nearly everyone–the way you do when your blind eyes suddenly see, what God showed me one black dark early morning by twinkling light, touching my eyes as we walked together into an old story:
The religious leaders of the day, trying to trap Jesus, drag a woman with them, make her stand, maybe mostly naked, in front of Jesus. Squinting, I tried to see her. I tried to see Him. It’s hard when you’re mostly blind; at first there are only blurred lines and contrasts of color, a flash of skin, gnash of teeth, the flutter of a cloak.
Historically, this has been called the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery, but in retrospect, I think that title puts the emphasis in the wrong place, because really, I’m coming to see, this is the story of Jesus responding to my sin.
Angrily, their grip on the woman too hard, the religious leaders unnecessarily remind Jesus that day that the law permits stoning in response to this kind of sin, when someone is caught in the act, and they, somehow, have caught her, have roughly pulled her out of a sinful embrace and brought her here, for judgement. As prosecutors go, they are justified in dragging her, in demanding a penalty.
I feel justified too, standing over others with my stones, especially when pointing out the ways they have sinned against me. But on the wind, I faintly hear now with deafened ears a healing voice, saying something to the effect that she who has been forgiven much loves much.
Jesus abruptly drops, before me, as far as I’m concerned, before the woman and her accusers, bending down, squatting to write with a finger in the dirt. My eyes drawn to how quickly He changes position, the vertical swiftness from stand to crouch, I watch as the movement of His body, the sacrifice of sanctimony, soils His feet, the tassels on His robe, His finger. I had not noticed this before, being always distracted by lesser details, the way He chooses to respond with His body.
He has always responded with His body.
Rather in humility, value others above yourself.
I see it a little more clearly now, the way His whole life takes this shape, this motion, the bending down, the folding in, the way He makes Himself nothing to resurrect a world. I see the heart-shifting difference between His posture and my own.
I am telling my friend, peering at her over my coffee cup, and tears swell, running down into my words like living water.
I hope I never forget, I say, the words catching in my throat the way they catch like a cross beam when I pray them.
Where have I only ever found myself in this story except standing in the place of pride, a stone’s throw away from giving this woman what she deserves, looking down on her for what she’s done, even though I haven’t ever gotten what I deserve, even though He’s never chosen to look down on me.
C.S. Lewis wrote that pride is essentially competitive, that we take pride not merely in being but in being better, and so, without competition, there is no pride. It’s funny how naturally it comes to assess even my own sin as better somehow than someone else’s.
The religious leaders, unsatisfied with the silence, press Jesus for an answer. “What do you say,” they demand, as accusers do, sharing aggressive attention over His bowed body.
So, Jesus rises finally, long enough to reply efficiently, a neat slice. “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And then, just as quickly, he kneels back down in the dust. He chose, in fact, to be made of dust for just this kind of moment.
I felt, watching all this unfold, that He had, rubbing mud over my eyes, invited me to wash, invited me at last to take my rightful place in the tale, because I know I have been, that I am, that sinful woman, and that pride is a plague against my eyes, and that for years I just haven’t been willing to see how much I resemble her.
Ann Voskamp traced out the lines of it for me that morning on the porch, making it personal, writing significantly that,
“The God of the heavens has lowered Himself to be the floor of love under your shame, the sureness of love under your humiliation, the love that goes lower than your most devastating low.”
Into the predawn chill, I gasped and whispered, Don’t let me forget.
And then I left, stunned, dropping stones behind me as I went, like the Samaritan woman, ready to tell about the One who knows me, who told me everything I ever did.
One by one, that shamed woman’s accusers left her too, until alone with Jesus, she found herself uncondemned and acquitted, set free, charged to go and sin no more. And so, as Paul would later write, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.”
It’s easier to leave the stones behind when the only comparison to be made is with Him.
God specializes in slow transformations because He’s more interested in actual, love-rooted growth than any sort of shallow planting, and I know, because it’s His way, that it’ll take a lifetime–countless more touches from His hands—for me to fully receive who I am and can be because of Him.
But for now, it’s only this, me remembering out loud, telling everyone I can how He dropped to the dirt for a stone-thrower like me, me asking Him to give me a heart like His.
