Jonah, Jesus, and Judgment: Part Two

sermon by Carrie Eikler
John 8:2-11, Jonah 3&4

scripture readings from Jonah 3&4 and John 8:2-11. (This was read in two voices, one reading from Jonah, the other from John. I found it drew interesting parallels with the emotion of the "angered" with the reaction from God/Jesus)

The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

Early in the morning [Jesus] came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him.

And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. 10When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground

But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4And the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

Last week we began with the story of AJ Jacobs, a New Yorker, editor of the magazine Esquire, and secular Jew who decided to take on the wild and wonderful Biblical world. He did this by actually attempting to live by its laws and prescriptions literally for one full year. As we discovered last week, this meant doing what many of us would never dream of doing: physically stoning someone the Bible says to condemn. In Jacobs’ case, he lightly pebbled a 70-year old adulterer he met while sitting on a park bench.

And if you remember, he admitted to feeling a sensation of power and righteousness in the act, while also feeling morally stunted at the same time. We began poking at our sense of righteousness whenever we pass judgment: whether we hurl verbal and emotional stones at people—like the Pharisees wished to throw physical stones—or if it is criticism of individuals or groups or situations made from a safe distance—like Jonah perched outside of Ninevah complaining to God about sparing the lives of the heathen Ninevites.

If you were like me, you felt more sensitive to your own tendency to judge this week. I paid attention to what situations began drawing out judgment in me, and to be honest, I didn’t really realize what I was doing until I was in the midst of my judgment: talking back to the radio, or rolling my eyes at someone I saw in the grocery store. But at least I was recognizing it. Did you recognize it?

My humble hypothesis from last week, is that our delight in judgment and criticism comes from a place within us that feels deep pain, and at the same time deep passion. Last week we talked about the pain and how it enters our lives when we think that life is “survival of the fittest …” that we must be on top and superior to everyone around us … that until we make the world in our own image, the our neighbors are completely misguided. Like Jonah, we understand that even God’s mercy, especially for others, isn’t a consolation when all we really want is to be right and to be better than.
Pain and passion seems like a dangerous mixture. Yet it can be a joy to discover the passion at the heart of our judgments because we can begin to cultivate the goodness of our passions, rather than allowing them to take us down judgmental paths.

So this is how it worked for me this week. I’m quite passionate between the hour of 5:30 and 6:30pm when it’s my night to cook dinner. Many of you know, I feel passionate about food and cooking, and while I give thanks for that passion, it has shown me one of my major judgments: I judge people who I feel do not appreciate food the way I do.

I have come to have a spiritual relationship with food: preparing it, serving it, eating it, and most of all trying to enjoy it. I think I’m passionate about it because for so long food has been something that I have had a lot of pain attached to. As many women in America have experienced, I’ve been told to fear food. I’ve been conditioned to think of the bad things it can do to me rather than the joyous things it can give me – to look at good food and picture fat thighs. Welcome to being a woman in America.

But in the past few years I have begun to see it differently. I have begun to delight in it. I have begun to let it really feed me. And I hope that any extra fat on my thighs has come from birthing two babies and not my new found love of baking homemade croissants. But it’s true the pain and fear are still there. When the baby weight from Alistair hasn’t fallen off as easily as with Sebastian. When my body just looks differently now than it did before. Those dark fears, those pains come creeping in and there is a head on cage match with my passion.

So rather than dealing with that collision in myself, I project it onto others: those who eat junk food, those who are obese, those who I see lining up at the drive-through at McDonald’s. And I find myself harshly judging. “If people just appreciated food like I do, took the time to prepare good food like I do, had the knowledge, the resources, the background that I do…” and it’s a downward spiral from there.

And since I’m too busy looking down on those people over there, I’m not able to look down at what’s in front of me: Jesus, drawing in the dirt. Can I join him there? When faced with the opportunity to judge, can I crouch down and be a bearer of love, rather than a giver of criticism?

I worry I may have given the impression last week that I would be giving you a quick fix to your judgmentalism today — and I realize that I am completely unqualified to tell you what to do on this matter. But as I’ve thought about it this week, there are some findings can share with you. But first and foremost, it is clear that an attitude of non-judmentalism is kind of like pacifism. It gives the impression of withdrawal, of “not doing” anything. But when we are serious about not judging, we discover it is a very active process.

So this is what I learned from a Mennonite peacemaker, Buddhist meditation, and Lenten devotions.

I heard John Paul Lederach speak at Bethany Seminary when I was a student. Lederach is a Mennonite who currently teaches at Notre Dame, but, more notably, Lederach is a well respected practitioner of international conflict transformation. I was reminded of him and his work when he was featured on NPR’s “Speaking of Faith” a couple weeks ago. And I was struck by how his approach to conflict transformation is relevant to so many aspects of our lives, even helping us drop our stones of judgments.

It involves cultivating, within ourselves, what he calls a “moral imagination.”

According to Lederach, the moral imagination is the capacity to recognize and take advantage of turning points and possibilities present to us in order to venture down unknown paths that create something entirely new. But first and foremost it requires us to see ourselves as part of a web of relationships, one that even includes our enemies … and people or situations we consistently judge.

We need to recognize we are all connected, one organism based on mutuality. It urges us to suspend the polarities of our judgments—moving beyond seeing the world in black and white, recognizing that human situations are more complex than winners and losers, best ideas and worse ideas, right choices and wrong choices. If we can do this, the moral imagination replaces our judgment by showing us surprising opportunities for connection, and unexpected potential for relationships, even in the face of differences.

Isn’t it relationships over polarities that Jesus emphasizes? I think Jesus is exhibiting a bit of moral imagination in our scripture for today. He is recognizing a turning point, a moment of tension where things could go any which way, the possibility of a new outcome, a new reaction, a new heart. In the midst of attack and judgment … when Jesus was invited to judge, he saw a turning point and he simply stopped.

Perhaps that is a good starting point for us. In my studies of Buddhism and in my on again off again yoga practice, I’ve been introduced to a practice called mindfulness. It is, simply put, trying to be absolutely present in the moment. Not dwelling on the past, or anticipating the future. Perhaps practicing mindfulness can help us crouch with Jesus as he writes in the dirt.

So while we’re here, let’s stop ourselves and practice a little – a moment of mindfulness. Take a few moments to think about what, or whom you are very judgmental, or critical, about. Maybe it’s an individual, or a behavior. It might be a group, or a way of thinking, or a belief system. What is that judgment you have? [pause]

Now imagine you encounter that person, that group, or that behavior. And you feel that bubbling of judgment starting to heat up. It shoots from your brain down to your stomach where it ferments for a moment. Then it rises up your throat and comes out in critical or hurtful words.

The first step of applying mindfulness to our judgments starts here, where you recognize what is happening. You notice what is going on, especially the physical sensations. You might notice your chest getting tight, your lips pursing, your brow knitting. I notice I’m rolling my eyes or feel the beginning of a smirk. What is your body doing.?
Now describe what you’re seeing – put into words what is going on that might be causing that sensation. The person in the grocery line has food I don’t approve. The news story is talking about a politician I don’t like. My friend has made bad decisions. But that description is itself a judgment. Practice seeing the person over the problem. Be in the moment with what you are seeing, describing the person you see, not what they’re doing or saying…. I’m looking at the person in front of me in the checkout line. I am watching a news story. I am talking with a friend. Dwell with the image of the person

And if through practice we can get to the point where we see the person rather than the problem, we might be sewing that web together where we would otherwise be cutting it apart. Simply stopping that runaway train of immediate evaluation and snap judgment helps us to be less judgmental people.

Perhaps in some way this is what Jesus was doing. Jesus stopped and wrote in the dirt. We don’t know what he’s wrote, but the act of writing itself was important enough for the author of John to include it. It meant something. Something was happening. Maybe it wasn’t so much what he was writing but what the process of his writing did in the situation.

He confused the process, forced things to stop. He threw everyone off guard and got them to look at themselves instead of the adulteress. He stopped the violent cycle

Now maybe that still seems vague and complex. Maybe it would be more helpful to look at non-judmentalism as a spiritual discipline just like any other. You could apply the spiritual discipline of silence.

This is what Torin and I did last year during Lent when we found our tendency to be judgmental was spinning out of control. We simply practiced silence and stopped giving voice to your judgments. Even if you think them, don’t say them. It can seem simplistic or misguided, but we found that it helped. Often in our sharing our judgments with others (especially if they are not those people we are judging) we are really looking for someone to agree with us that we are better than the person we are judging. If I have the ear of someone else, my judgments become catty, even more hurtful, and I become more and more separated from that web of relationships.

Now, not speaking your judgments doesn’t mean you won’t have them, but like Jesus writing in the dirt, it stops that cycle for a moment—when we actively think that silence is needed, it brings it to our attention that we were about to say something judgmental. We can then look at the judgments mindfully. It allows us to ask questions of our judgments. We can ask ourselves, will this observation build up or tear down? Will I be more connected with the web of relationships, or leave me disconnected? Is this about making me feel superior?

Connectedness, mindfulness, prayer, and silence. That’s a tall order. But I believe it can be worth the work. Jesus gives us an example of mercy, but he also gives us, with stones in hand, a chance to also practice it. He didn’t just give the angry crowd words of non-judgment, he gave them an opportunity to participate in his gospel of mercy. When he says, “Go and sin no more,” it is hard to hear it as a command to the woman without hoping it will touch the ears of those walking away.

Our work at relinquishing judgment, is our living out Christ’s gospel. May the passion overcome the pain as we become bearers of Love.