The Saint 83
plea sure that the men clearly would take in murdering her. After
Jesus issues his rebuttal the accusers walk away. He looks up at the
woman and asks: “Has no one condemned you?” She tells him that
no one has. “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and from now
on do not sin again” ( John 8.11). Women and children are not overt
images of Soul in the Gospels; only Jesus at his most imaginative
and generous fi lls that role. But the life of the modest, mild, and in-
nocent is a gateway to the eternal life that Jesus promises.
Rome is another presiding image of Self hood in the Gospels—it
bears down on Jesus in much the way that the teachings of the Phar-
isees do. (So the sophists, and eventually the state, bear down on
Socrates, who teaches young men without pay and urges them to
question all matters on the earth.) Jesus’ attitude to Rome is anything
but simple. It can, in fact, be rather surprising.
The Romans are in one sense the enemies of Jesus, as they
are the enemies of all the Jews. The Romans are the conquerors, the
Jews the conquered. By refusing to assimilate themselves to the
Roman religion, keeping their rituals and their faith in the Lord,
the Jews have become a “stiff necked people” in the eyes of their
conquerors. The Jews have a history of being conquered and op-
pressed, but they have a historical memory of freedom, too. They
sought and found it and for a while thrived in the Promised Land.
The story of Jesus and the centurion is well known. A Roman
centurion, commander of a com pany of a hundred men, has a dear
servant who is sick and on the border of death. He sends messen-
gers to Jesus and asks him to help. As Jesus approaches the house
where the servant is lying ill, the centurion comes out, meets Jesus,
and tells him that he is not worthy that Jesus should come under
his roof. Speak but the word, the centurion says, and my servant
will be healed. Jesus marvels at the man’s faith, which is greater, he
says, than that of many of his own people. The man’s servant is im-
mediately made whole.