A Prayer: for the ones who were turned into an object lesson

A Prayer/Meditation inspired by Part 8 of our Unexpected Jesus Series

Hi friends,

Last week we explored the Gospel story of a woman who was not collateral damage AKA the woman who was not stoned. It’s a story about an encounter with Jesus from John 8:1-11 (most of us know it as the “woman who was caught in adultery” but as we covered in that essay, I do not like that title) as part of our Unexpected Jesus series. You can find that essay here, if you haven’t had a chance to give it a read yet - you might need some of the context for what follows.

This week, I’ve written the companion prayer/meditation for that story. It’s a tender one, I think, and I hope it meets all of us who know the experience of being someone else’s cautionary tale or scapegoat well.

In particular, I was thinking of this part of that essay:

In this moment, Jesus makes a point of treating her as an equal. There is dignity for her, respect even. The accusers were treating her as a prop at best, an expendable scapegoat at worst, but this man sees her as a person, makes eye contact with her, saved her from the fate they imagined for her, and is raising her up to standing on her own two feet again.

She isn’t collateral damage. Not in God’s eyes. There is never a worthwhile trade of suffering for “the greater good” in the Kingdom of God. Every life has value, including hers. In the midst of all their games and entrapment plots and dangerous plans, Jesus never forgot that she was a real person, deserving care.

God, the amount of women who know all too well how it feels to be collateral damage to the greater good of some institution or program or leader is unfathomable, isn’t it? How many of us here know that feeling? And so I love that we have a story in our Bibles about Jesus interrupting that devastating experience on behalf of the victim, resetting not only the moment but her dignity, too.

The Woman Who Was Not Collateral Damage

For now, holding that story in our hearts, let’s pray:

Beloved friends, this is a prayer for all of us who know this kind of story all too well. Change the year, change the place, change the players, but the feeling of fear and shame, of exposure and falsehood, of betrayal and injustice, we know well. This is a prayer for all of us who were the collateral damage, whether what happened was loud and public or quiet, like in the backrooms of power with whispers that turned your story into something shameful.

We gather in faith and hope, defiance and anger with you. There is a circle of those who know this moment well, right around you.

Maybe what they said was the least charitable version of what happened or an outright lie, perhaps it was even true at the headline-level, sure. But no matter what, may you remember that Jesus always finds those of us at the centre of the scandal.

God never forgets the one that everyone else has turned into an object lesson. May all of us who have been betrayed or blamed or used by the establishment to trap someone else or make a point or retain power, hear the voice of God in this: you will not remain the collateral damage of someone else’s agenda or performances of misguided righteousness or power-seeking games or platform building.

You are - and always have been - beloved.

May you know that you are worth saving. Every version of you has been worth saving and you still are. You are worth standing beside. You are worth an advocate and a friend. And may you move forward from this story knowing that our Jesus - who stoops down in the dust at your feet; who refused to play the game; who turned a mob back into people with names and faces and stories again - that same Jesus interrupts the violence of accusation. He breaks our horrible habits of condemnation with a disruption of grace.

And that God? saw you there and sees you now.

May all of us have the wisdom to discern the systems around us that are sacrificing the vulnerable to protect their own hypocritical respectability and nonsensical purity codes. May we have the courage to disrupt any space - including our own - where only one kind of person ever seems to pay the price. May our hearts break for every single one of us who has been caught in the crossfire of someone else’s piety, every survivor whose voice was silenced or ignored, and every scapegoat whose experience was erased.

May we, like Jesus, resist the impulse to look away. May we be a people who choose, again and again, to get into the dust with the one who is on the ground because that’s where God lives.

We rebuke any temptation to pick up a stone against another. We resist any invitation to join the mob, even when they are draped in the trappings of a faith we love or are quoting scripture with perfect pronunciation. May we be brave enough to pause, to step out of line, to bend down, and let the Holy Spirit write something true into our own hearts about justice and mercy.

May you be a holy interruption to the powers and principalities of our age. May you be the kind of person who slows down their violence with your dignity, who refuses to let anyone else become a symbol like you, instead of a precious soul. May our compassion disarm crowds and would-be kings. May our love unmask hypocrisy and in the name of this Jesus, we pray that our presence would make it impossible for injustice to continue unchecked.

May you hear the voice of your God asking, with the gentleness that undoes a lifetime’s worth of shame, “Where did your accusers go? Look, no one is here anymore.” For all of us who have been used, betrayed, dragged into someone else’s game, we pray for healing, for renewal, for joy - yes, joy! - and for your rising. We pray that you would sense and know the presence of a God who is still on the ground with you and yet pulling you up to your feet again, too.

We pray that your heart would hear and truly receive God’s words to all of the scapegoats: “Neither do I condemn you.” May you know your freedom, your safety, and your head held high again.

Their world is rarely kind to people like us who have been rescued, so hear the voice of God offering you a word to stay free, stay wise, and stay alive. May you be blessed as you re-enter your own life on the other side of this story of mercy.

Jesus never sets us up, he only sets us free.

We pray that you would carry your own story in your own hands, as someone who is no longer afraid of the crowd’s judgement and stones and versions of the truth. You are guarded by the love of God, what can they do to you?

For all of us, may we be done with sermons that turn people into props. May we surrender the purity politics that forget the humanity of those they claim to be saving. May we refuse to weaponize the law when Love himself is standing out our midst.

Let us be a people of mercy, who remember that justice and love are never opposites. May our hands be loath to pick up stones and quick to lift the fallen. When we find ourselves caught between the two borders of the binary-seeking powerful - whether it’s between law and grace or religion and empire or even our longing to belong versus our longing to be free - may we find the company of the Jesus who walked those dangerous borders long before us. God knows how to stand in the middle of impossible choices and somehow make a holy path appear out of the dust and breath and imagination of love. Keep company with Them and you’ll learn to chart that course, too.

As a community, we declare that you are not the accusations against you. You aren’t the story someone else wrote about you. You aren’t the scandal or the sermon illustration or the cautionary tale or the worst case scenario or the bad thing.

You are the one Jesus stood beside, you’re the one he lifted up, the one he refused to condemn, and the one he set free.

May that kind of love make us tender instead of bitter, may it make us brave instead of fearful, and may it make us more loving instead of more cautious.

God, help us to carve out a little corner in this world where no one is collateral damage, where dignity is restored, where every story ends with the voice of Jesus saying, “Go in peace, beloved.”

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, one God and Mother of us all.

Amen.

With love,

S.

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If you’d like to read and listen to the entire Unexpected Jesus series, here’s a full link round-up for you.

The Unexpected Jesus

• The Woman Who Was Not Collateral Damage: The Unexpected Jesus: Part 8 on The Woman Saved From Stoning

• How we produce healing in a world that has forgotten who we are: A conversation with author and poet Kaitlin B. Curtice

• 30 New Breath Prayers for Autumn: Burn-out is not / confirmation of caring more.

• The Good Things of Autumn: The surprising good thing of our new puppy, fantastic music, the reels I sent to my friends, good reads, the cookie recipe my kids loved, capitalism corner (AKA things I spent money on), and even more

• “Get bangs or get Botox, girl”: A few more thoughts on aging at this bonkers moment in time

P.S. For folks who prefer the audio version of the blessings, please accept my apologies for its absence again this week. I’m still under the weather with the dratted chest cold that simply will not release me and so there won’t be a recording of this blessing or the previous essay until I am no longer croaky. My apologies!