I like discovering musicians I’d never known before. First, I love music, all of it, no matter what the genre. Second, I love finding artists that my kids haven’t yet discovered.
Which is why I was listening to Lael Neale’s new album, Star Eater’s Delight (©️2023 Sub Pop Records), the other morning. I heard her song, “In Verona,” and its hook, “Cast no stone.”
Earlier, Neale sings:
Cast the stone, cast the stone,
What Jesus said.
But later, and throughout the song, it’s:
Cast no stone, cast no stone,
What Jesus said.
Of course, I’m transported back to the temple in Jerusalem on the day some good folks dragged before Jesus a woman who’d been “caught in the very act” of adultery.
The whole scene smacked of a set-up, whether to ensnare Jesus in a legal quagmire or to give a husband a chance to get rid of one wife and choose another. Jesus smelled setup a mile away, and as the self-righteous men held over her head stones for the woman’s execution, Jesus said, “Let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone.”
“Cast the stone, cast the stone, what Jesus said.” And no one did.
No one could because no one is without sin. Jesus didn’t condemn the would-be executioners; he just watched them go, judging themselves in their own hearts.
He didn’t condemn the woman either. Only she and God knew the truth of her situation. Let them work it out in the quiet of her heart.
So, here we are today in an era where people are “canceled” for expressing an unpopular opinion. People are condemned for slipping up when they should have known better.
Stones of judgment are flying left and right, often from the hands of men and women cut from the same self-righteous cloth as the good folks of Jerusalem.
And sometimes I feel the coolness, the smoothness, the deadliness of the stone in my own hand. Do you?
Cast no stone, cast no stone, what Jesus said.
Phil Baisley is pastor of Greenfield Friends Church. This weekly column is written by local clergy members.
