Yelling Stones
We had a blessed end to Holy Week, managing to sneak off our island of residence to visit the city of Aarhus, a major university town on Jutland, the Danish mainland. On the way we stopped in Jelling to visit the old Viking seat of power and to see the Jelling stones set up by ancient kings of Denmark around the turn of the first millennium.
Pronounced “yelling,” the Jelling stones are massive rocks carved in runes and images that give honor to two kings, King Gorm and his wife, Thyra, and their son, Harald Bluetooth. (Bluetooth technology derives not only its name but also its recognizable symbol to the H rune overlaid with the B rune from his initials, the king who brought the Danish tribes together and declared them “Christian.”) It was an interesting site, and I learned that the Christ figure depicted on these stones from the 10th century is also featured on Danish passports. The stones are sometimes called Denmark’s baptismal certificate.
Jelling stones, yelling stones. I couldn’t help but get a meaningful kick out of playing with those words. It called to my mind the passage where religious scholars seek to get Jesus to pass judgment on a woman - and, predictably, only the woman - caught in adultery, in John 8. Religious scholars parade her into the place where Jesus was seated, teaching. They interrupt him to try to bait Jesus into passing judgment upon her, invoking Moses, the prophet and law-giver.
The gospel writer makes sure we know that the scholars want to trap Jesus into saying something incriminating that they could use to pass judgment on him. She’s only the bait, the lowly worm, caught on the hook of sin, being used to catch the big fish, Jesus.
The scene is famous for Jesus saying “let the one without sin cast the first stone,” and to their credit, the religious scholars demure and slink away. To hurl a stone would be to claim sinlessness, and these guys might be dim-bulbs of self-righteousness, but they know enough not to be that dumb.
The whole scene takes sin seriously and mercy even more seriously. Jesus does not yell at the woman, nor does he pick up a stone. Nor, importantly, does he shrug at her situation. He invites her to be free from the hook of sin upon which she has impaled herself. His judgment of her is one of mercy, urging her to be free of her sin without issuing any final condemnation. That is a critical distinction. There’s time in the day of salvation; there’s a whole lot of “now” left to live in the time of God’s mercy.
By refusing to be baited, Jesus also manages to show judgment and mercy even on the religious scholars. He escapes the legal trap they laid for him and exposes the religious scholars’ theopolitical legal games they play with others’ lives. In their thirst for deadly final judgments — their clamor for swift, emotionally satisfying, and merciless applications of the law upon others (that is, for condemnation) — Jesus shows how they are playing God, toying with people’s lives, and standing on far more dangerous moral ground. In this respect Jesus offers them a severe but real mercy by giving them space to reconsider and retreat. Merciful judgments - judgments that take life and its living, not just death and dying, into account - are less destructive upon all lives, holding space for the possibility of repentance and repair. Mercy wastes less life. This is why the gospel writer of John reminds us that Jesus wasn’t sent into the world to condemn the world but that through him, the world might be saved.
What does this have to do with the stones at Jelling? The Christ figure found on the massive rocks there, duplicated on Danish passports, depicts a wide-eyed Jesus tangled up, an image of him crucified as if bound up in a net. There are traditional ways of making theological sense of what Jesus did on the cross that imagine Jesus as the worm (cf. Ps 22:6-8), the bait impaled on a hook, defeating sin and death by being swallowed by death itself, allowing ensnared, sinful humanity to escape. Like Jonah, to which Jesus also compared himself, he’s swallowed up by death and spat out from his watery tomb three days later.
Back to Copenhagen in time for Easter, after a lovely few days away, we worshipped in our church here with the many who packed the pews - regular attenders and Easter visitors alike. It was a joyous day, we yelled our Alleluias, and the only stone we contemplated was the one that was rolled away. He is risen!
Peace to you, and buckets of mercy, in the coming week.