Reflection: Stones that Condemn
“Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?” Revelation 6:16-17
It’s unthinkable, to pick up a rock and throw it at someone intending to kill them. To gather with friends and family and pelt a person until they collapse. To render up my own child (recalcitrant as they may be) to be publicly annihilated by blunt trauma. To leave their bludgeoned body dishonoured under an all-too public pile of stones. Oh, but that was the whole point of it. To know sin to be so absolutely abhorrent; its power to infect a community so damaging; the rupture of human relations with God so grievous; complicit guilt so damning. The purging of evil was fearful and so very tangible under Mosaic Law.*
But Hebrews 10 reminds us that the Law was only a shadow of the good things to come.
Fast forward to the first century, to an assembly of finger-pointing Pharisees and teachers and a man called Jesus: A good thing had come but they didn’t recognise him. There are guys who are out to trap this renegade teacher with their rules, some rocks and…an adulteress. You know what happens.** No rocks were thrown, even though every person there, bar one, was guilty. The guiltless one exercised truth and grace that day.***
I shudder at another form of stoning. The law-breaker is pushed over a precipice and a bolder dropped to entomb the body.**** Fast forward to when the final fury of God’s wrath is leashed. We’re told creation will quake and the guilty will run for the hills. They’ll wish this annihilation on themselves rather than face the King and the just wrath of the Lamb. But face him we all will.
Prayer:
Stay your furious and fair final judgement, Lord, that more people might be rescued by the furious love and mercy of the Lamb of God who was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. He bore the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we’ve each turned own way; and you have laid on him the iniquity of us all.*****
Footnotes
*By Jewish law there were about a dozen crimes punishable by stoning.
** John 8:1-59
*** because through Moses came the Law, but through Jesus Christ came grace and truth John 1:17 paraphrased
**** Enraged crowds intended this for Jesus in Luke 4:29
*****Isaiah 53:5-6 paraphrased