Seven men freeze in place at the sudden movement. The six pygmy hunters with blowguns are all but invisible. They seem to have become part of the landscape. The six foot tall Italian anthropologist is very still but he still does not quite disappear. He has been with this tribe for three years. But they all still have a lot to share.

Trees and vines and flowering plants of all description seem to fill almost every square inch in the jungle. The fleeing birds and their movement are quickly swallowed by the complex tapestry of form and color. The sound of their flapping escape is soaked up by grass, leaves, lichen and moss. One can not see more than a few feet into the tangled mass of green growing things. In a moment there is no remaining sign that the birds ever existed.

The men move on.
They have traveled well beyond this tribe's normal hunting grounds.
They do not know this part of the jungle. Suddenly the plant life thins.
They have come to a clearing, and a long vista opens in front of them.

This is utterly outside the experience of the six hunters.
They have spent their whole life in the deep jungle where the view stops a few feet in front of your face. They stand with some uncertainty at the cusp of the grassland.

On the far side of the waving plain of grass a herd of buffalo are grazing.
The anthropologist straightens to his full height and walks slowly out into the grass.
Even a small buffalo would feed the extended tribe for a week, he muses.
He waits, with excitement, to see how the band of hunters will react
to their discovery of this new creature.

Nothing happens. The six hunters just stand in a tight bunch. They look up from time to time and glance around. They certainly see the buffalo. "Why aren't they pursuing the hunt," the anthropologist wonders.

After a while one of the hunters moves next to him, and by way of making casual conversation, points to the herd of buffalo and asks:

"What kind of bugs are those?"

Suddenly it dawns on the bemused Italian. These people do not realize that the buffalo are large creatures which only appear to be small because they are far away. In the tangle of the jungle nothing far away can be seen. The pygmy hunters have no understanding, or experience, that would enable them to correctly interpret the scene in front of them.

Some bugs bite. Others bug might make a small snack, but they will not feed a village.

No wonder the hunters are unexcited by the nearness of the biggest feast they might ever know.

Sometimes we are staring right at something and we cannot see what is actually there. Our own experience to date and cultural conditioning cause us to see only what we expect to see.

The Pharisees and the Scribes have spent a lifetime learning the flora and fauna of the Mosaic law. The Scribes know the root of the Law ­ that which was given to Moses. But they have also cultivated that root and labored over it so that branches have grown and put forth innumerable shoots. Every possible daily circumstance has been covered by the fruits of their labor. The Scribal writings on the law yield 30 volumes of leaves covered in small print. When Jesus arrives on the scene, the Scribes are still not done caring for that which they have been given. But the garden which began with 10 words has become a jungle. It is hard for anyone to travel though this thicket of instruction.

The Pharisees are those who have determined that they will travel this tangled path. Not all the Pharisees are really doing what they profess. But some are. These righteous Pharisees live deep in the thickest part of the Law. If you truly follow the way of these "Separated Ones", all your time is absorbed by your painstaking navigation through the law in all its verdant fullness.

The Pharisees and the Scribes address Jesus out of what they know. They stand surrounded by the vast outgrowth of the law, probing with their questions to see if this strange kingdom hunter knows the way. But like the pygmy Bushmen who see bugs instead of buffalo, the Pharisees and Scribes are so used to seeing the world though their familiar understanding that they cannot see Jesus for what he is.

They may perceive Jesus as a buzzing annoyance. They may fear a bite or a sting. But the Scribes and the Pharisees are not prepared to see that the biggest feast of their lives ­ the feast of the Kingdom ­ may be waiting beyond the familiar, just past the edge of the clearing.

Jesus answers the questions he is asked. He knows the Law, and he knows what it looks like when the Law is fulfilled. The thicket of commandments is reduce to two central ones: love God first, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And then Jesus tries to draw the Pharisees and the Scribes out onto the grassy plain. He asks them a question about David's son. This questions strikes to the core of the question: "What will the Messiah be like?" It begins to look as though the Messiah cannot be a nationalistic warrior king but will instead be something ­ someone ­ else. The Pharisees and the Scribes are left speechless, blinking in the sun of the clearing, but also unable, or unwilling, to move away from the understanding in which they have spent their lives. They draw back into the world they know.

We are Bushmen. We are Pharisees and Scribes.
Our century and our culture have formed us too.
Our instinctive vision is as proscribed as theirs was.
We also draw back into what we think we already know
whenever our current view of God or our life in the world is challenged.

But Jesus still stands in the clearing.
Jesus stills beckons us out of the comfortable and familiar woods in which we dwell.
We may be full of questions.
But let us be willing to walk forward even as we listen to his responses.
For even the best of what we know now will pale
as we are drawn into the full light of the Son, out into the open,
where the Kingdom waits.