RBWords

     I rather doubt that most of us rejoice when we receive a summons to jury duty.  It can mean a lot of inconvenience, but it is a serious responsibility.  Other people's lives will be impacted by our decision!  While the civic duty may not happen to us often, we appoint ourselves judge and jury quite often in our daily lives with other folks!!  When this happens collectively, we have a lynch mob!!  In both scriptures today, there is a lynch mob.  In one case, Susannah, it is a lynch mob born of revenge for her refusal to submit to sexual assault!!  In the other, the unnamed lady was caught in illicit sexual conduct.  While our attention and sympathy are drawn toward both women, we may do that to avoid imagining ourselves as members of the mob!  The nearness of this scriptural reminder to Holy Week should give us pause.  It was a mob that came after Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane!

     We might remember last Friday's scripture from Wisdom with its penetrating treatment of the thought process that can lead to condemnation of someone who is entirely innocent of a crime but judged "guilty" of making us envious and afraid.  Can we immediately exonerate ourselves from the mob that took Jesus from the garden?  Didn't he die for OUR sins?  And what about all the others whose lives and actions give rise to our interior jury duty and judgment?  The words of today's scriptures remind me of the words from the Letter to the Hebrews (4:12-13): Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart."   It's never too late to drop the stone we were going to throw.  AMEN