An Asian American Political Theology: The Writing Jesus (3)

John 8 offers us a tantalizing episode of Jesus's ministry, and the tantalization issues forth from the fact that it was not in the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament.  This does not mean that this section of John 8 is not authoritative; we trust that the mistakes, gaps, or otherwise in the text do not obscure the Truth of Scripture.  Perhaps its ambiguity and mysteriousness prompted the earliest church officials from including it in the manuscript.

The story I refer to is told in John 8:2-11.  At the beginning, Jesus had already sat down to teach the people at the Temple Courts.  The scribes and Jesus's opponents, supposedly Zealots, the "Tea Partiers" of the Jewish establishment, brought a woman caught in adultery.  Now, in our patriarchal world, it is often the case that we assume her sin and move on.  But the problem is, in Jewish tradition, both partners in the adulterous affair are to be punished.  The fact that these Zealots only brought the woman into the picture suggests - given their zealotry for pure faith - that the woman was not indeed "caught in the very act" of adultery.  (If so, the male partner should also be brought to Jesus, no?)  Worse, as Jean K. Kim suggests, this may be merely a rumor surrounding the woman; she was rumored to be adulterous, but no proof existed.  Thus, this placed her within social interstitiality; did she sin or not?  We may regard the same way "men who don't act manly" or "women who don't act womanly" (e.g. sissy boys, "butch"); somehow it is the human tendency (perhaps it is even sin) that compels us to want to put people cleanly within certain groups.  I want to ensure that you are straight/LGBT so that I know how to differentiate, for instance, how I treat you.  The same I presume is true with the woman in question; did she or did she not have sex with another guy?  We want to assume her guilt in order that the story make sense.  But I suggest we don't approach this story with the goal to make it an exercise in proving the quadratic formula; meaning, I don't want the desired outcome to influence how we enter the story.  Tunnel visioning leads to air accidents (cf. Singapore Airlines Flight 006), and it will lead us to poor biblical interpretive practices.

But, you may say, Jesus did say at the end that "go and sin no more."  How you interpret that depends on your Christology.  I hold a high Christology, and so I would say that indeed the woman has sinned. We can quibble back and forth about this, but the crux of the story does not center on the woman's sin.  No; even if she sinned and was caught having illicit sex, that the male partner was absent suggests a hidden motive behind this exercise.  Furthermore, the timing is suspicious; Jesus was teaching at the temple to a crowd, and lo and behold!  The Zealots come with the woman, "in front of everyone."  Talk about good timing!  The Zealots have Jesus cornered.  He could exercise grace publicly and say, "Do not lay a hand on her!"  But that would suggest his moral laxity. (Note: times have not changed.)  Jesus could exercise judgment and say, "Follow the letter of the Law," breaking Roman Law in the process and giving the Zealots reason to charge Jesus.  So Jesus, what will be your answer?

Jesus bent down to write on the ground, as the text tells us.  What he wrote was not known, and the text gave us no hints.  Church tradition gave us many theories, but I suspect these theories are largely based on how we want the text to read.  That is the problem with these narrative "gaps," for it allows us to eisegetically fill in what we want it to say.  I don't think that's advisable, considering the Zealots themselves seemed to display no interest in it.  They wanted a Jesus-yes or Jesus-no; anything else is not workable.  And so, Jesus stood up and said: Fine!  You want an answer; I'll give you one.  The Law says to stone the lady.  If any of you have no sin, then be my guest.  Jesus returned to his writing.

What did Jesus write?

This question haunts the reader, or at least it should, for it is the only part of the narrative that is not "complete."  We want to peek over Jesus's shoulder.  Jesus, what did you write?  But maybe, as I suggest, the focus here is not what Jesus wrote.  The focus is not quite on the woman either.  And neither the Zealots are the focal point.  The focal point is Jesus, and in his writing - his artful image - he has upended the systemic immonde that brought the woman unjustly before Jesus in the first place, dissipated it, and created monde.  The immonde of the Zealots threatened to crush the woman literally under the weight of not just her sin, but the weight of the world upon her.  Here she is, in front of the public.  For her to be stoned would serve as an example to the public; if you have sex with another man, this is what will happen to you!  But again, where is that other man in her case?  The entire judicial situation seems to smell rotten with injustice.  The weight of the world presses upon the woman, indeed.  But it presses upon Jesus as well, for he is also caught in the web of injustice; he is at risk depending on his answer to the woman's fate.

With one masterful rhetorical/theological stroke, instead of focusing the immonde on one woman, Jesus dissipated it, creating monde.  In this monde is room for further creativity.  Yes, Sang Hyun Lee finds creativity within the liminal space of identity, but I don't think it is merely there.  The creativity within liminal space, the creativity under the weight of the world as the agonistic political pushes back against immonde, is there.  But it signals greater freedom, perhaps greater re-creativity as new boundaries of existence, of being human, are pushed.  Thus, in the immonde of the Zealots' concentration of the weight of the world on the woman, one that will end in stoning and death, the artful sign of Jesus's writing speaks to a restored monde, allowing for grace and mercy.  Thus, "neither do I condemn you."  Freed from such immonde, she was free to go and sin no more.  Dare I say, freed from such immonde, she no longer needed to walk around with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

A quick survey of what has transpired in our argument so far.  First, an approach to Asian American political theology begins from a reflection of the "weight of the world" that Asian Americans feel in their experience of immonde.  This comes in the form of displacement and misfulfillment; the former which places the individual in interstitial settings between "Asia" and "America," and the latter which denies the individual fullness of being if s/he fails to fulfill the high expectations of the world that was generated by the myth of the model minority or Yellow Peril.  The immonde, despite its genesis in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, is not unknown in the biblical text, and we saw in the situation with the adulteress that Jesus was at the very center of the regeneration of monde.  What is left is to ask how this location of Jesus is helpful for considering the relationship between the Asian American church and social institutions/patterns.