Blasphemy and Stoning

Some years ago, we had a series in the all-school chapel on Wednesdays on the attributes of God. David Smith, ordained in the Baptist Church, was assigned the love of God. I, ordained in the Mennonite Church, was assigned the wrath of God. It felt backwards to me, but it has happened again! Instead of speaking on the Jubilee Law in Leviticus 25 (Dr. Dean drew that assignment for next Tuesday), I get to speak on the response to blasphemy against God: Stone the offender to death! What am I supposed to do with this?

 

Well, well. I know how some people respond: They just don’t read the Old Testament. They suggest that people of that day had no regard for human life; they were barbaric. Of course, if people from that context could survey our society, they might ask how we can so easily abort fetuses and consider MAID for older people. They might think we are the barbarians. Of course, it’s a kind of chronological imperialism for either they or us to appoint ourselves as judge of the other. Instead, the proper response is to set our inhibitions and automatic reactions aside and ask what the text says. So, what does the text say?

 

Verses 10 to 12 set the stage. Although Leviticus contains many specific laws, they are set within a narrative, the ongoing story of God delivering God’s people and leading them through the desert to the promised land. While they were travelling, a sharp disagreement arose between two men – the sort of thing that happens when people go camping together for an extended period of time. During the resulting fight, one of them blasphemed the name of God with a curse. The people around them recognized a major problem. They put the man in custody and sought God’s response to blasphemy against God. God’s response was clear: Kill the offender by stoning.

 

Then comes a set of laws that deal with appropriate punishment – life for a life, injury for injury. I take it that the principle of equitable and appropriate punishment is in view. The point is not to replicate the injury caused by precisely same injury to the offender. We might like such a punishment when an out-of-control hockey player injures our favourite player, who then has to sit out half a season, but a precise equivalency is impractical. The pound of flesh recorded in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice illustrates the impossibility of precise equivalency. The point rather is that punishment is equitable and appropriate.

 

The action then returns to the case of the blasphemer, who is taken outside the camp and stoned.

 

Some Thoughts

 We struggle with the idea of the death penalty, and rightly so. This leads to a question: Why are the laws of appropriate punishment are inserted at just this point? Perhaps it is precisely as a reminder that taking life is God’s prerogative, and that the stated penalty for blasphemy does not change that.

[Compare Deuteronomy 25, where the law of levirate marriage is followed by a strange law that forbids a woman emasculating a man – which is sort of what happens in the way that levirate marriage is stated. The follow-up law makes it clear that the actions of Deuteronomy 20: 5-10 are exceptional, not normal. A second reason for inserting the laws of appropriate punishment here is that killing a person – which these laws deal with – is an offence against the image of God: A kind of blasphemy, if you will.]

 

This struggle leads me to the point that I considered most fully in my preliminary thinking. What is so terrible about blasphemy that it should call forth the death penalty? Why does God say, “Stone the offender to death”?

 

The text (verse 10) says that he “blasphemed the Name with a curse.” “Of the Lord” is assumed. The reference to “the name” contains the whole of God. I remember flying from London to New York a little over 30 years ago. I stood aside to let a father and son come out of the row in front of me. From their dress, I assumed they were Hasidic Jews and said to them as they passed, “Baruch ha Shem”: “Blessed be the Name.” The smile that lit up the son’s face was a delight! The Name means God.

 

In verse 15 and 16, the identity of the Name is made explicit; so also is the offence: “Those who curse their God will be punished for their sin. Anyone who blasphemes the Name of the Lord must be stoned to death by the whole community of Israel.” The problem is not that this man lost his temper, or that he said a bad word. The problem is that he cursed God.

 

 You remember that Job’s wife tells him to “curse God and die.” [Note that Job 2 uses a different word for curse, “barach”, which usually means “bless”.] Job refuses. To curse God is to cut oneself off from God. That is the problem here in Leviticus 24.

 

The Children of Israel are learning to be God’s People. They are discovering the meaning of redemption from slavery, of life in covenant with their Redeemer God. They are on the way to the Promised Land, where they will work out the law that they have received in Exodus and Leviticus. In this context, a half Egyptian, half Israelite young man epitomizes the way that God welded a disparate gathering of people into God’s People. Then he gets into a fight and curses God. He speaks words of power against redemption, against covenant, against creation. And God holds him to the words that he speaks.

 

Why does blasphemy lead to stoning? Stoning the offender to death simply takes him at his word. The stoning works out the inner logic of what the offender has said and done. He has spoken words of death, and he receives the death he has spoken.

 

Seen this way, his identity as both Israelite and alien is a reminder that all stand equal before God. The insertion of the laws of appropriate justice reinforces the point that all stand equal before God. But seen from where we are standing today, a basic and vital point remains to be made.

 

Holy Week

This is Holy Week. Three days from now we observe the death of Christ. The charge for which he was crucified was precisely the charge against this young man. He was accused – falsely – of blasphemy. Although completely innocent of the charge, he was accused and convicted and killed for this young man’s offence. The cross of Jesus stands as a stark reminder that God’s grace overwhelms God’s righteous judgment for all who turn to Jesus in faith.

 

Evil in our world is great. Our leaders speak words of death and threaten us all with destruction, whether through warfare or political anarchy or a simple strangulation by a chaotic climate. Unchecked, their words and deeds, our words and deeds lead to death.

 

So Jesus died. He died for us. He died in our place. He died to give us life. The creed reminds us:

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father.

 

Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and was made human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried. The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never end.

 

For us, and for our salvation: Egyptian, Israelite, Chosen People, Canadian, African, Asian, European, Indigenous, even our American cousins. God’s gracious and wonderful justice wrapped up in glory on the cross.

 

Amen.

 

Providence Seminary Chapel

 26 September 2024

 Leviticus 24: 10-23

 

An Example of Just Punishment

¹⁰ One day a man who had an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father came out of his tent and got into a fight with one of the Israelite men. ¹¹ During the fight, this son of an Israelite woman blasphemed the Name of the Lord with a curse. So the man was brought to Moses for judgment. His mother was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. ¹² They kept the man in custody until the Lord’s will in the matter should become clear to them.

 

¹³ Then the Lord said to Moses, ¹⁴ “Take the blasphemer outside the camp, and tell all those who heard the curse to lay their hands on his head. Then let the entire community stone him to death. ¹⁵ Say to the people of Israel: Those who curse their God will be punished for their sin. ¹⁶ Anyone who blasphemes the Name of the Lord must be stoned to death by the whole community of Israel. Any native-born Israelite or foreigner among you who blasphemes the Name of the Lord must be put to death.

 

¹⁷ “Anyone who takes another person’s life must be put to death.

¹⁸ “Anyone who kills another person’s animal must pay for it in full—a live animal for the animal that was killed.

¹⁹ “Anyone who injures another person must be dealt with according to the injury inflicted— ²⁰ a fracture for a fracture, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Whatever anyone does to injure another person must be paid back in kind.

²¹ “Whoever kills an animal must pay for it in full, but whoever kills another person must be put to death.

²² “This same standard applies both to native-born Israelites and to the foreigners living among you. I am the Lord your God.”

 

²³ After Moses gave all these instructions to the Israelites, they took the blasphemer outside the camp and stoned him to death. The Israelites did just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

A Cross-Shaped People

We have been going deeper throughout Lent, and now we come to the centre of the Christian story. The crucifixion stands at the heart of who God is and who we are. This morning, I want to look at this event through the eyes of someone who has studied the religions of the world for much of the past 30 years or so.

 

The Big Question

People in every place and every time have had to deal with the uncertainty and pain of living. Whether in a place beset by war and famine or in a peaceful country, people face the reality that life is uncertain. In the words of Thomas Hobbes, an English political philosopher who wrote 370 years ago concerning the natural condition of humankind: “the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” 

 

We may not go as far as Hobbes in our assessment of life, but in the past year, Covid-19 and climate change have both asserted our powerlessness in the face of natural events. Between the prevalence of human sin and the power of evil in our world, we are faced with an insoluble problem: Where does evil come from, and what can we do about it? Consider three answers common in our world, and then hear again the answer in the story at the centre of our faith. 

 

Buddhism 

The heart of the Buddhist faith is expressed in “the Four Noble Truths”. According to an article on Buddhism, found on the BBC’s website:

“I teach suffering, its origin, cessation and path. That’s all I teach”, declared the Buddha 2500 years ago. The Four Noble Truths contain the essence of the Buddha’s teachings. It was these four principles that the Buddha came to understand during his meditation under the bodhi tree.

1. The truth of suffering (Dukkha) 

2. The truth of the origin of suffering (Samudāya) 

3. The truth of the cessation of suffering (Nirodha) 

4. The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering (Magga) 

Found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/beliefs/fournobletruths_1.shtml

  

The truth about suffering is simple: All life is suffering. Suffering comes from human desire for change. If we give up all desire, suffering comes to an end. In short, Buddhism deals with suffering by giving up everything in life. The answer sounds a lot like Jesus, “The one who gives up life will live. The one who holds onto life will die.” The difference is that Buddhism says, “The one who gives up life will die and disappear forever.” At the centre of the Buddhist faith, the answer to human suffering is extinction, the complete and eternal loss of everything. 

 

This way of dealing with suffering – let go of everything – reflects the belief that nothing is at the centre of the universe. The Buddhist word for heaven, “Nirvana”, means “the perfection of nothing”. Let go of everything, and your suffering will come to an end. 

 

Islam 

In contrast to Buddhism’s view of God – God is “Nothing”, Islam sees God as Everything. All-powerful, completely Other, so far beyond us that there is only one right response for us to God: Submission. Life is full of hurt and pain, that is true. Muslims call this suffering, “kismet”, and they see it as dealt out by an all-powerful and all-knowing God. We can only submit to God. 

 

Think of the cry Muslims give as a form of rejoicing: “God is Great!” “Allahu Akbar”: Literally, “God is greater [than anything else].” One of the most common statements for a Muslim when making plans or discussing what will happen next is, “Inshah Allah”: “If God wills”. You can see how close Christians and Muslims are to each other. We agree that God is greater than any other power in the world, and we agree that God’s will is basic to our lives. My Dad would often add the phrase, “God willing”, to plans that we were discussing. 

 

So, Buddhism approaches suffering as inevitable and as something to help us let go of everything in life, and Islam sees suffering as inevitable and as a reason to submit to God. What about ordinary Canadians who have no particular religious faith at all. Students of religion call them “the nones”. How do they see suffering? 

 

Secularism 

One of the most common statements I hear when tragedy strikes is that we must find out what went wrong, “so that no one will ever be hurt like that again.” In this statement, I think we can see how many people around us view life and suffering. They see suffering as bad, and they think we can get rid of it. Every other religion in the world has seen suffering as basic to life and as having some role to play in helping us deal with life. Secularists just want to get rid of it. It is not good for us, and we should do whatever we can to get rid of it. 

 

My own view is that secularism shows its shallowness in this question, because history shows that life is incredibly difficult. Only people insulated from the pain and suffering of the world around us can suggest seriously that “this should never happen again”. When it happens again, they find that secularism has no answer to suffering, and they may become cynical and just tune out the painful experiences of others. 

 

The Christian View of Suffering 

Clearly, I have touched far too lightly on these worldviews. A proper consideration would take books, not a Friday morning sermon. Equally clearly, adherents of these religions could answer what I have said. If you have friends who hold to one of these, it would be worthwhile taking time to ask how they deal with suffering and pain and to listen to them seriously. They are worth listening to. 

 

Meanwhile, this is Good Friday, and we are Christians, remembering what stands at the centre of our faith. At the centre of Buddhism stands “Negation”; at the centre of Islam stands “Power”; at the centre of Secularism stands “Self”. What is at the centre of our faith? How does God come to us and enable us to deal with the suffering of life in this world? We have read the story of the cross again today. This is the centre of our faith. We worship a cross-shaped God who makes us into a cross-shaped people. The cross is a symbol of suffering and pain. Isaiah 53 is the song of the Suffering Servant. 

³ He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. ⁴ Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. ⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 

 

John 18 and 19 tell the story of Jesus walking the path of the suffering servant. When Jesus finished praying in the garden (John 17), Judas guides a detachment of soldiers, given the task of arresting Jesus. The soldiers are aware that something big is going down and they appear frightened, but they press on with their task. Peter draws his sword and strikes out to defend Jesus, and Jesus stops him from going further. The soldiers take Jesus to Annas, the father-in-law of the high priest, to go on trial for his life. 

 

We have then an interlude in which Peter denies Jesus. All his followers watch from a distance, and Jesus has to walk the path into death alone. “Jesus walked that lonesome valley. He had to walk it by himself. Nobody else could walk it for him. He had to walk it by himself.” The trial continues. Jesus is sent on to Caiaphas, the high priest, who continues the interrogation. The religious leaders are trying to find a reason to convict Jesus, but finally they take Jesus to Pilate. Pilate wonders why; they reply that only he has the authority to declare the death penalty. 

 

A side note here: John’s account reads like a summary of the story for people who know it well. He does not state the charges directly, nor does he give the details about Pilate that we find in the synoptic gospels. The details are not John’s concern. 

 

Their conversation functions to establish that Jesus is the king in ways that Pilate cannot understand. Pilate continues the trial by having Jesus scourged and then trying to set him free, but the religious leaders and people chant, “Crucify him!” Pilate asks, “Shall I crucify your King?” They respond, “We have no king but Caesar!” Every person must choose between the rulers of this world and Jesus, and they have made their choice. 

 

Finally, Jesus is taken out and placed on the cross, with the inscription above him, “The King of the Jews.” As he dies on the cross, the soldiers gamble for his clothes. Jesus gives John the charge to care for his mother. After a final sip of wine vinegar, he dies, with the words “It is finished” on his lips. As the hymn puts it, “The great transaction’s done!” Jesus lived our life and died our death. This is the centre of our faith. This is what the Christian story is all about. 

 

Suffering and the Cross 

Come back to the question with which we began. Buddhism says that pain and suffering come from life and calls us to give up life itself. Islam says that pain and suffering come from rebellion against God and calls us to submit to God. Secularism says that pain and suffering are accidents of existence and calls us to get rid of them. Christian faith does not place the answer at the centre of our faith. You can find Christian answers, but at the centre we find something else. We find a God who suffers and hurts with us. We find Jesus, dying on the cross for us. 

 

There are reasons for this death. Jesus breaks the power of sin with his death. Jesus enables us to reconcile with God through his death. We celebrate these wonders in our hymns and scripture readings. But something else is deeper. Here it is: Jesus died for us. Buddhism presents God as “Nothing”. Islam presents God as “Power”. Secularism presents God as “Self”. Jesus shows us God as Love. 

 

The centre of the story is that Jesus loves you and Jesus loves me. He doesn’t start by fixing our pain and suffering. Jesus starts by loving us. He comes into the room where we sit in grief and pain and sits with us. Remember his name at his birth? Immanuel. God with us. God is love. God loves us so much that God died for us. 

 

I have been listening to excerpts from the trial of Derek Chauvin in Minnesota. Where was Jesus as George Floyd lay dying a year ago? Lying on the pavement with him. Where is Jesus as the Army overthrows the government in Myanmar and slaughters peaceful protestors? Standing with the protestors as the bullets fly. When I was in the hospital last November, I could hear a friend fighting for life across the hallway. Where was Jesus as my friend struggled for his life in his last days? Lying beside him in the bed. Our volunteers in the SCO have walked with people in significant personal struggles. Where is Jesus as an addict fights the urge to shoot up again? Wrapped up in the struggle with him. 

 

Our Response 

If we take the cross seriously, we find that God comes to us in love and embraces us when we are at our worst. Our God is a cross-shaped God, and God calls us to be a cross-shaped church. That means that we love people around us, near and far. We never turn away from suffering and pain and say, “That’s their problem.” We embrace people with God’s love and fill up in our own bodies what was lacking in Christ’s suffering (Colossians 1: 24) – that is, we make God’s love complete by extending it in our own lives to those around us. 

 

In the Canadian Mennonite (March 15, 2021), Emily Summach quotes Rachel Held Evans in a fitting conclusion for us today: 

Death and resurrection. It’s the impossibility around which every other impossibility of the Christian faith orbits. Baptism declares that God is in the business of bringing dead things back to life, so if you want in on God’s business, you better prepare to follow God to all the rock-bottom, scorched-earth, dead-on-arrival corners of this world—including those of your own heart—because that’s where God works, that’s where God gardens. … It’s just death and resurrection, over and over again, day after day, as God reaches down into our deepest graves and, with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, wrests us from our pride, our apathy, our fear, our prejudice, our anger, our hurt and our despair. 

 

We come to the resurrection on Sunday. Today we celebrate the incredible love of God, who joins us at rock bottom and dies with us – because God loves us even more than we love ourselves. 

 

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church 

2 April 2021 

 

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 

The suffering and glory of the servant 

¹³ See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. ¹⁴ Just as there were many who were appalled at him – his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness – ¹⁵ so he will sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand. 

 

53 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? ² He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 

 

³ He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. ⁴ Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

 

⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. ⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 

 

⁷ He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. ⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. 

 

⁹ He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. ¹⁰ Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. ¹¹ After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. 

 

¹² Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. 

 

John 18:1-19:42 

 

 

Theme: Deep in the shadows: Called deep into the story.

Focus: We go deeper with Jesus to the centre of the Christian story, where we find the cross. The cross of Jesus is the centre of our lives as God’s people.