This morning my thoughts, like at the start of the Boston Marathon, are running together in a certain direction. How odd, I know! It’s a leftover from last night’s devotional reading. It’s a book titled Nobody Left Out: Jesus Meets The Messes by Michael Murray. The line from last night’s reading is this:
When we insist we have all the answers, we miss out on what God is doing.
I guess I should be a good Bible Scholar and give the context of these words. Michael is using the story of when Jesus healed the man born blind (see John chapter 9). Jesus did this on the Sabbath. I think Jesus loved to heal on the Sabbath just to raise the hackles of those Pharisees. They were such an easy target! Anywho, some people trying to earn brownie points with the Pharisees took this man who had never seen anything in his life, but now sees everything with clarity, to the Killjoys–a.k.a. Pharisees!
Two paragraphs earlier, Michael wrote:
“The Pharisees were so caught up in the knowledge of God that they missed the joy of God. They couldn’t (or wouldn’t) acknowledge the beautiful thing Jesus did for this man. (emphasis mine)
And this morning I kept thinking: “Wow! We still have Pharisees today! And some people still think Jesus doesn’t know what we go through!” Pharisees prided themselves on their knowledge about The Word of God. No doubt, few if any, knew more about those “words” than they did. But all they knew were words–they did not know the heart of the Giver of The Words! Had Jeopardy been around back then, they would have been in the Hall of Champtions!
People who focus on their knowledge of The Bible spread across the entire theological spectrum–from (no-fun) fundamentalists to (aggressive) progressives, and all points in between. There are still Pharisees who use their knowledge about the Bible to, as Michael puts it in his book: steamroll others! How sad it is to be so focused on knowledge–that one misses the heart of God. I would rather spend a day talking with some reprobate than spend a single minute with some Killjoy Pharisee.
Don’t spend you time learning the correct answer but spend your time leaning into the ONE who loves guiding us into the only way of life where we can see with clarity rather than being full of erudition.
Kingdom Pastor 