Justice or Mercy: Why Guinevere has to die. 5th Sunday Lent, 2013



It’s a trap. It’s a game. But it’s a game of lethal seriousness, as opposing forces close in around Jesus of Nazareth.

It’s the standard old-fashioned word trap. You pose someone a question to which any answer sounds bad. Famous example, “Senator, have you stopped beating your dog?”

The Pharisees are much more clever than that and their trap is more subtle. Jesus’ enemies should be good at this game because they get a lot of practice at it in the Gospels. “Who sinned? This man or his parents?”  “Should we pay the Temple tax?”  “If there’s a Resurrection, whose wife will she be among her seven husbands?”

In this case the problem is a conflict between two laws. The law of Moses says she must be executed. Roman law says that the natives aren’t allowed to execute anybody. So either way he answers, Jesus is in trouble with somebody. Either he denies the Law of Moses and discredits himself, or he denies the law of Rome and incriminates himself.

As usual, Jesus proves immune to these logic traps. He is the Truth. He can’t be caught out in a web of confusion. He points to their shared guilt before God, and the whole trap shatters. To the Pharisees’ credit, they understand and walk away.

But now is when I think it really gets interesting. Now it’s just Jesus and the woman. I picture them making eye contact for the first time. Up until now I imagine her staring at the ground. To the others, she was a tool. Her sin, her heart, her very life was of no interest to them. She was just a way to get to this troublemaker Jesus. But now she is addressed in her humanity. She is addressed by someone who made the oceans and mountains and the stars of the sky, and who loves her more than all of them, and somehow I’m sure she must have heard it in his voice and lifted her eyes to meet him.
Woman Caught in Adultery, John Martin Borg, 2002.

So now what? He’s going to forgive her, right? That’s what we want from Jesus. Quick, easy forgiveness. It’s, like, his job, right? Not so fast. He’s easily unravelled the trap forged by the Pharisees. But he now faces the trap forged in Hell.

If I can ask your patience, we’re going to take a detour to a place you might not expect. It's a literary obsession of mine so I can't resist: back to the primal matter of English literature, Arthur Pendragon, King of England, and his Knights of the Round Table. Queen Guinevere has been found unfaithful. Camelot had been a kind of Paradise, but this dark revelation shattered the foundations. The law says Guinevere must die. His heart says she must be forgiven. He should just forgive her and let her go, right? But it isn’t that simple. Consider Arthur’s dilemma. 

He loves her more than life itself. For his own part, he has forgiven her. But can he spare the punishment of the law? If he pardons her, then Camelot is a sham, a lie. If Guinevere lives, the dream of justice dies. Because then it’s all back to the old way; might makes right, different rules for the King, tyranny instead of the rule of law. I can pardon her because I’m the King and I wish to and we powerful people aren’t subject to laws like the rest of you. So it is tyranny to take her life, and it is tyranny to spare her. The more carefully you consider, the more you come to appreciate the King’s terrible, impossible dilemma.

That scene is the best cultural echo I know for where Jesus now stands. This scene is first about him and her, but of course it’s also about all of us. God stands before his unfaithful people. He is justice and He is mercy. Which shall the King deny?

There’s a naive part of us that wants him to say, “no big deal, let’s call it even and forget the whole thing.” That’s what we want from God, to pretend that sin is no big deal. We’d like to sweep it under the rug. We say “forgive and forget” but those two things are opposites. Forgetting is cheap. Let’s pretend it didn’t happen. Let’s deny reality for the sake of our comfort. Let’s pretend that our relationship isn’t all that important and that wounding it didn’t matter. That’s what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.”

We can think of it very simply. Say I’ve betrayed my best friend. I go to him with sorrowful heart and downcast eyes and ask forgiveness. “Don’t worry, we’re good, it’s no big deal,” he says. I get in his face and say “Yes it is. I’m really sorry.” Because I know if we just dismiss it that easily, our friendship is wounded forever. We can’t be real friends again without real forgiveness. And real forgiveness can only happen if we face the full weight and darkness of sin.

This point is critical as we approach the end of Lent. We’re preparing for Holy Week, and the events of Holy Week do not make sense if we don’t understand this dilemma. Pope Benedict XVI put it like this:

“God cannot simply ignore man’s disobedience and all the evil of history; he cannot treat it as if it were inconsequential or meaningless. . . . That which is wrong, the reality of evil, cannot simply be ignored; it cannot just be left to stand. It must be dealt with; it must be overcome. Only this counts as true mercy.”

There is deep mystery here, but I hope our detour to Camelot and the words of Benedict begin to throw some light. Cheap grace is not an option. So the terrible impossible dilemma closes in on us, this vicious circle, with Jesus standing at the center.

What will he do? Will he honor the Covenant, honor justice, and let the stones fly? Or will he honor mercy and let her go? If sin doesn’t matter, then love doesn’t matter. If the law is unleashed upon her, then love has failed.

There’s one thing the Pharisees didn’t think of. They never dreamed he would take her place.

Comments

  1. I am hoping that we will be able to read more of your posts soon!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment