[Propertalk] 3 Easter a 2017 - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

I didn't preach last week and a few thoughts popped into my head some
days ago, which is helpful as I'm going to Clergy Conference till
Wednesday. No doubt this will meet with an editor between now and the
end of the week....
Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY       3 EASTER a

	ACTS 2:14a, 36-41            30th APRIL, 2017

	1 PETER 1:17-23           PSALM116:1-3, 10-17

	LUKE 24:13-25 

	 “Ignorance is our natural state.”

	 That ought to grab our attention! I know it did mine several days
ago when I heard it on the radio. 1 I wondered if the speaker, Steven
Sloman, a cognitive scientist, was pulling our legs or if he was
making a specific cultural or political statement. But, no, he
wasn’t – on either count. He was absolutely serious. And he was
talking about everybody, at every era in history.

	 That makes it all the more serious, as far as I’m concerned.
It’s not really an excuse. It wasn’t a statement made to try to
let us off the hook. But it may explain quite a lot about society in
general and individuals in particular. One of the points that Sloman
was trying to make in its research and his teaching is that, because
of our make-up, we have a responsibility to look for and work within
communities. We may each have a specific idea or grasp on a few
things, in a very limited way, so we have to be able to work with one
another, to encourage one another on the basis of equality, otherwise
we’re doomed.

	 To affirm what Sloman wrote, “The human mind is both genius and
pathetic, brilliant and idiotic. … People are capable of the most
remarkable feats … And yet we are equally capable of the most
remarkable demonstrations of hubris and foolhardiness. Each of us is
error-prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant.” 2

	 This is actually very helpful to remember and, for me at least, it
sheds a remarkable amount of light on the two men who were going down
from Jerusalem to their home.

	 They weren’t bad people. They weren’t poor disciples. They
hadn’t flunked out of Jesus’ class of ought-thirty.

	 They just didn’t have the ability to put all the facts together
yet. Despite this state of ignorance, though, they had the enormous
desire and the wonderful ability to listen and to absorb.

	 Personally, I think Jesus sounds as if He was a little hard on
Cleopas and his friend, but maybe that description was a dig by the
compilers of the Gospel story, rather than Jesus Himself. After all,
neither any of the disciples nor any of the writers had heard of the
discipline of cognitive science, never mind the belief that ignorance
IS our natural state.

	 What IS quite plain is that Jesus has the insight and the ability to
talk to people on their own level, at whatever point they were in
their lives – something it might not hurt us to remember when we
talk to others.

	 Jesus made what turns out to be a perfectly valid assumption, namely
that with the appropriate degree of patience and compassion, and a
desire to share what knowledge an individual has, everyone can be
helped, everyone can be brought to the point of understanding what has
happened. More importantly, and often more difficult for us to accept,
Jesus assumed that if He and anyone else takes the time, others CAN be
brought around to such a level of comprehension that we can be useful
and functional members of the reign of God in the world. No one, not
those shrouded in grief; not those consumed by anger; not those
immersed in their own self-importance and aggrandizement; no one is
beyond the reach of Jesus and of renewal for the work of God.

	 But this CAN make us extraordinarily uncomfortable! “We all think
we know more than we actually do.” 3

	 We know how to talk. We know the mind of God. We know what Jesus
said, and everything He might have said, if only He’d got around to
talking about it – or so we think.

	 Yes, “Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies,
but most of us don’t even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have
we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive
scientists (such as) Steven Sloman … argue that we survive and
thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich
community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people
and things around us. We’re constantly drawing on information and
expertise stored outside our heads: in our bodies, our environment,
our possessions, and the community with which we interact — and
usually we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
  “The human mind is both brilliant and pathetic.” wrote Sloman.
“We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions, stood on
the moon, and sequenced our genome. And yet each of us is error prone,
sometimes irrational, and often ignorant.” 4

	 The key to life, the key to understanding, the key to not injuring
our bodies, our minds, or our souls, or, worse yet, the key to not
killing these, lies in what Sloman said – “we live in a rich
community of knowledge.” We ARE, or SHOULD BE willing to listen, to
ask questions, to be present with and for others, because that’s
where life is. In matters spiritual, as Jesus Himself said, “where
two or three are gathered together, I am there in their midst.”

	 This is an intensely practical comment, exactly as was Jesus’
journeying down the road to Emmaus with Cleopas and his friend. Just
as back then, we too can be filled with grief, with longings, with
misunderstandings. More often than we may care to admit, we face
difficulties that are hard to categorise and process. We may wonder
what our next step or steps will be, and whether we’ll be able to
take them. Whatever is bothering us at any given moment, we may wonder
how that’s going to impact our relationships at home and at work. We
may feel that, indeed, our human minds are both genius and pathetic.
We may believe that our emotions, maybe our commitments, have led us
into places in which we feel alone and devastated.


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