The term “Woke” has become a hot-topic, and a lot of Christians are struggling with its meaning. If being supportive of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is woke, then it is clear to me that Jesus was, in fact, woke. There are also times when Jesus was not woke; neither was He asleep to injustice. One area of wokeness comes to us in the story in John 8 about a woman who is brought before Him for judgment. It goes like this: Jesus is preaching and teaching, and some of the religious leaders want Him to pass a judgment, like Moses would have, of death for adultery. Jesus does something peculiar. He kneels down, before and after proclaiming that those without sin can pass the first stone, and writes in the dirt. We don’t know what He wrote, only that He did it. They all walk away, and when Jesus sees that they are gone, He asks if there is no one left to accuse her. She says no, so Jesus says that He doesn’t either, but that she shouldn’t sin anymore.
There are two things happening here that are interesting (other than the sand writing). First, the woman is brought alone, even though she was caught committing adultery. Second, Jesus doesn’t let her off the hook; He defines what she did as sin and tells her to stop. In the first case, I think Jesus acted with what seems to me to be Equity because the other person was not brought to Him for judgment. In the second, we see that Jesus didn’t believe in a world without morality. Many of the sources I read said that most, or many, cases of adultery did not end up in the people being stoned to death, but it could have happened, especially if the woman was a virgin (Deut. 22). While we tend to think of Hebrew Law as being set in stone and unbending, there was often latitude given. Jesus forced the crowd to examine themselves, and to the probable delight of the woman involved, they did.
When I think of how DEI is applied, it seems to be used to take deficiencies in systems into account. Historically, American systems have been slanted towards white, Christian, straight men with property. This is why we have had to create so many laws that protect and give equal rights to those who don’t fit into those categories. Jesus saw that the laws of His people were the same, and sometimes He had to make things right. In this case, Jesus didn’t think adultery was okay, but He may have been opposed to the death penalty for it. He may have been opposed to the inequity in the way these leaders wanted to carry the law out. We don’t know. What we do know is that Jesus called for mercy rather than judgment as a matter of Equity. That seems pretty woke to me. May we do the same.
Prayer – Help us, God, to act when justice is needed, and see others as You do. Amen.
Today’s art is “Lord Have Mercy on Me” by Dorothy Fagan.