As a kid my sister thought the priest was God. It was his ornate robes that misled her – his “uniform” gave him such an aura of authority and power, she assumed he was the Big Man himself.
I wasn’t much better off. While I knew enough to realize the priest wasn’t God, I still acted like he was. I was so focused on following the rules to perfection, I missed the point of faith entirely. I worshipped the law and the man in the fancy robes, and missed God.
Early on in the Book of Mark, the Pharisees — who were the ultra-religious rule-followers of the day — criticized Jesus for forgiving the sins of a paralyzed man who had come to hear him preach.
“‘Only God can forgive sins!’” the Pharisees claimed, appalled by Jesus’ bold proclamation and his gall. (Mark 2:7)
They missed the irony in their own statement, of course. They couldn’t see that it was God himself standing right before their very eyes.
The Pharisees had a very clear expectation of what God should look like and how he should act. The fact that Jesus was born in a barn in Nazareth, dressed like a wandering shepherd and kept company with the lowlifes of society simply did not jibe with their definition of God. They expected a mighty ruler, someone who established authority instead of subverting it.
The Pharisees didn’t recognize God because they expected him to look like someone else. They expected him to look more like them.
I get that. Sometimes I mock the Pharisees for their obvious flaws, but the truth is, I am a Pharisee. I miss God when he’s standing right before my very eyes. I miss God because he doesn’t look like I think he should.
I don’t see God in the man on the corner, holding a tattered cardboard sign in the sweltering heat. But I see him easily in the people I admire and the people I want to emulate. I see God in the people I want to like me.
I don’t always see God in the person who practices faith differently than I do. But I recognize him easily in the people who sit next to me in the pew each week.
I don’t see God in the people who live by standards I consider less-than or flawed. But I recognize him in the people who seem to live exactly like I do.
Turns out, I see God in the pretty places, where everything and everyone look good and wholesome and right; where the rules are followed and standards are upheld.
I see God where I am comfortable and in the people who put me at ease.
I see God where you might expect to find him — in stained glass, in blossoms and birds and spectacular sunsets, in people who look and think just like me.
Like a Pharisee, I see God where I want to see him, not where he really is.
The beautiful truth is that God is in every place and in every person. And what the crowd exclaimed the day the paralyzed man stood up and walked home with his mat in hand is true for me and many others, too:
“We’ve never seen anything like this before!” (Mark 2:12) we exclaim in awe. Because we’ve never really opened our eyes to see.
{This post originally ran in the Lincoln Journal Star.}
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