Queen Camel, Ash Wednesday, 18/2/2015 [1]
I invite you to take (the stone you’ve been given); to grip it your hand. And while your mind is on this, picture the scene in the gospel story which I’m about to read to you.
We are approaching Lent - and this Lent is an opportunity for you and I to ask ourselves, why am I carrying a stone?
Reading: John 8:1-11
1Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2Early in the morning he 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. 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. 9When 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.’
Why am I carrying a stone?
When I think about it, I’ve been carrying stones all my life.
In the playground, when the ugly boy was being pushed around and pushed away by everyone else, I was always one of the crowd doing the pushing.
At the office, in the crisis which hit when the corporation was revealed to be trading illegally, something we employees already knew but never questioned, I sided with everyone else against the whistle blower, to have her first disciplined and then fired.
At the sports ground, I found myself joining in the crowd’s brutal chants against opposition team players, spitting out words not relating to anything they’d done on the pitch, but fixing on their colour, or the way they looked, or their sexuality.
On the PCC I raised my hand, just as everyone else did, to agree the decision to stop the alcoholic woman coming into our Sunday evening services, for she could be a distraction to us as we worshipped God.
Why am I carrying a stone?
Because I deeply desire to be part of the group, I need more than anything to belong, and when the group’s identity is threatened, when things look like they may be falling apart, I’m as ready as everyone else to gang up against someone we’ve identified who doesn’t fit, who we can punish or expel as the means to make things right again, to strengthen our belonging to each other.
In his essay ‘On the Happy Life’, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote:
'Nothing is more important to understand than that we must not, in the manner of sheep, follow the lead of the flock walking ahead of us, going where they go habitually, not where they need to go. Nothing entangles us in greater evils than our propensity to obey public opinion, to regard those things as best that are endorsed by the approval of the majority. Because we are surrounded by the example of many others, we live our lives not according to reason but by imitation.' [2]
We live our lives by imitation. We are driven by our desire to be like others. And when that is expressed in a desire to be right then we imitate the behaviour of our peers at the expense of those we deem to be wrong…
And when that is expressed in a desire to be pure then we imitate the behaviour of our peers at the expense of those we deem to be impure…
And when that is expressed in a desire to be just then we imitate the behaviour of our peers by criminalising others…
Why am I carrying a stone?
Because it’s Election time… And - however much I may protest my impartiality - this is a time when my desires are driven to imitate the social group to which I belong. And note how public discourse - the conversation which influences our voting decisions - so often focusses on identifying the outsider, selecting the scapegoat, against whom opinions form. Note, for example, the recent rise in language which demonises the poor, the prevalence of statements by politicians and commentators - and people having coffee with us in the cafe - about ‘children without fathers’, about the ‘undeserving poor’. ‘This [is] classic demonization, reducing complex social problems to supposed individual failings and behavioural faults’, [3] and the logical extreme of this rhetoric is the current contest between the UK’s main political parties to outdo each other with popular measures to withhold welfare benefits from those deemed not to deserve them. [4] The so-called ‘problematic underclass’ is the scapegoat of the ‘normal’ middle-class majority today.
Why am I carrying a stone?
Because I’m religious. And whilst the desire to be moral is a good one, that desire is so often distorted into a form of judgmentalism focussed on accusations against others.
It’s no surprise that the issue vexing the mob of angry men who Jesus encountered in the Temple that morning - was sex.
For, as we know, religious people have been hung up on sex from time immemorial. That not one of the men could admit to having no such sin in themselves, when Jesus challenged them, underlines the point. And the woman caught in adultery is one of countless victims of a righteous mob driving out their own demons by demonising another. In a passage based on another great gospel scapegoat story, the story of the Gadarene demoniac Legion [5], before Jesus expels them to possess the pigs at the cliff edge, the demons turn to the reader and say,
‘We are banished from society but are necessary for its functioning. Some scapegoats are necessary, as fate falls upon the weakest members of the group. But if you deprive these people who exile us of this possibility of projecting their madness upon us, they will all become madmen. We are necessary for their peace. Our impurity reassures them in the conviction of their purity’. [6]
The point is well-made by now, I will labour it no more. But you may still be asking, why am I carrying a stone today? Why have you given me this to hold?
I’ve done it because Lent is a time to acknowledge our failings. Lent is a time to face our demons.
Lent is a time to interrogate our desires, to ask, ‘Who am I imitating and why?’.
The great writer on the ‘Powers that be’, the invisible forces which shape our human behaviour, Walter Wink, says that the satanic within us only has power when it goes unrecognised, unacknowledged, unchallenged. Like Jesus found at the end of his forty days in the wilderness, enlightened resistance works.
The craving of the addict may never be healed, but the addiction itself can be stopped. Inappropriate sexual desires may never cease, but their expression can be checked. The sense that one is unlovable, unworthy, or inadequate may never fully disappear, but we can refuse to let that drive us to perfectionism, despair, or overwork. Satan sublimated … : transformation comes not through the denial and repression of our evil, but by naming it, owning it, and lifting it up to God. [7]
The key then is to pray that our desires become aligned with God’s desires; that we cease being driven by imitating others in our social group, and learn to imitate God. The contemporary Christian musician Brenda Schulte sings, ‘Give me a heart for Your desire’ [8], which is exactly the prayer I mean. Or you may prefer this, from the Book of Common prayer, which asks for the very same:
ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen. [9]
[Followed by a time of reflection with a recording of Brenda Schulte, ‘Give me a heart for Your desire’]
Notes
[1] From 2006 onwards I have preached Ash Wednesday / Lent sermons with the title Why am I carrying a stone?, and whilst this version is significantly different from those, the core mimetic message remains the same. Paul Neuchterlein’s girardianlectionary.net has for many years been my key source for (as he puts it) ‘understanding the bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard’ - see his introduction on the home page for starters.
[2] Wikipedia: De Vita Beata. Cited in a Facebook post by George Dunn in the René Girard discussion group, 13 February 2015.
[3] Owen Jones, Why ‘chavs’ were the riots’ scapegoats, Independent, 1 May 2012. See his Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class for a full discussion of the development of this trend.
[4] See for example, Matt Chorley, We should stop the dole after two years to force jobless to take work, says Labour's Rachel Reeves, Mail Online, 11 February 2015.
[5] The story of the Gerasene demoniac, Mark 5.1-20, is discussed in detail in Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers (Powers, Vol 2): The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence, to which this sermon owes a great deal.
[6] Franz-J. Leenhardt, ‘An Exegetical Essay: Mark 5:1-20’, from Barthes et al, Structural Analysis and Biblical Exegesis: Interpretational Essays (Pittsburgh Theological Monographs, No 3), quoted in Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers, p.46.
[7] Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers, p.40.
[8] Brenda Schulte, ‘Heart for Your desire’, from Various Artists, Experiencing God: Music for Knowing and Doing the Will of God, Star Song Music/Emi 1999.
[9] Book of Common Prayer (1928), Holy Communion, Collect for Purity.
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