Worthy of a Drama

As we mature as Christians I think we can become almost numb to the Bible, or perhaps its not numbness but over-familiarity. We read the words that Jesus said and the account of his interactions with the lawmakers and Pharisees and they lose their impact on us and don't come across as the edgy, dangerous, revolutionary words that they are.

Having not ventured into the Bible for almost eight years returning to it is having a profound impact on me, almost as much as it had some 20+ years ago when I first read them in Ernest. Today I was somewhat taken aback by the discourse between Jesus and the Pharisees in John Chapter 8, the mood I see in it is like an argument, or something one might hear in a courtroom between the prosecution and the accused. Who is the prosecution and the accused? Well it's fluid through the back and forth between Jesus and the Pharisees; the Pharisees might begin thinking that they have all the answers, all the facts, and because of this they have the moral high ground, but it doesn’t last, Jesus with his confidence in the truth puts the Pharisees in the doc where they rightly stand accused of not being who they say they are, or who they think they are. That their truths are not self-evident, unlike the truth that Jesus asserts.

The emotions on both sides run high, they both have a lot at stake, the Pharisees their integrity and their reputation, Jesus his very life. I would love this to be recounted as a play, not a bedsheet and tea-towel parody that we often see when the story of Jesus is told, but a gritty and emotion filled drama. It’s brilliant!!

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