Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John - although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.

John 4:1-3 NIV

Fake news is nothing new apparently!

How often do I ascribe something to Jesus that he didn't say or do, or more likely, water down or ignore something that he did do, or say.

Keep coming back to the record :)

This passage also shows us the heart of the Pharisees. They were concerned about anything that eroded their power.

Numbers, popularity. These were their measures.

How easy to get caught in that thinking that my friends list, my likes, my worth is tied up in all that. That when someone else's popularity grows, that somehow that's a threat to me.

Yes I recognise all of those bits of the Pharisee heart in me. 

And just like them, it leads me to make stuff up about Jesus. 

Lord help me to cut through my own bias, my own culture, the lens of my life and experience, and simply be open to Jesus today, to see him for who he is, to let him speak without my filters, to hear without my internal obstacle course of false beliefs.

Let me hear his heartbeat of grace.

Of love.

Amen.