Stonecatchers

The most moving incident in a deeply moving book I've been reading, "Just Mercy," by Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer:

Stevenson was working hard for the release of a man unjustly condemned to death in Alabama. He'd been asked to talk about the case at a meeting in a church in the man's community, with the man's supportive neighbors.

But he knew some neighbors were "muted" (as he writes) in their support. Although they knew the man was innocent of the crime for which he'd been convicted, some neighbors were less than enthusiastic in his defense, because he'd had an affair, and wasn't a church-goer.

Stevenson began his talk with the story of the woman taken in adultery who was brought before Jesus by the men getting ready to stone her to death. He reminded the audience that Jesus had said, "Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone." When we see people who are knocked down by the stones we throw at each other, he told the listeners, we can't join in. And we can't let that happen. We have to be stonecatchers.

Years later, he was coming from a New Orleans courthouse where a judge had released two men he'd been working to free. Both had served 50 years at the notorious Angola prison on a life sentence handed them as young teens. An older woman he'd seen several times in court was sitting on the steps, and motioned him over.

Stevenson asked if she was a friend or relative of one of the released men. But she said, no, she was just there for people who needed someone to "lean on" in their misery and pain.

She'd started coming to the court for the trial of the teenagers who had murdered her grandson, about 15 years before. They were convicted and sentenced, she said. "I thought it would make me feel better, but it actually made me feel worse. I sat in the courtroom after they were sentenced and just cried and cried."

A woman she didn't know saw her, and came and sat with her. "I think she sat with me for almost two hours. For well over an hour, we didn't neither one of us say a word. It felt good to finally have someone to lean on..."

She felt the Lord wanted her to be at the court daily, "...letting anybody lean on me who needed it...all this grief and violence...people shooting each other, hurting each other like they don't care...it's a lot of pain. I decided I was supposed to be here to catch some of the stones people cast at each other."

Stevenson thought of his own invocation of Jesus' teaching years before.

The woman told him, "I heard you in that courtroom today...I know you's a stonecatcher too."

Stevenson laughed and said, "Well, I guess I try to be."

The woman took his hands, and began to rub his palms gently. "Well, it hurts to catch all them stones people throw."