You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
How is it that Peter, who is a fisherman with little education,
is able to see who Christ truly is.
Yet the Pharisees, the Sadducees,
the religious leaders of the time could not see who Jesus really was.
Then when Jesus asks the question,
even his disciples repeat back;
they say they think he is
John the Baptist, the latest prophet, Elijah
or Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
What is it with the way that Peter saw
that he was able to see straight through to the truth?
One of the challenges is that we all have a bias in how we see things.
We tend to see the way we want to see.
It reminds me of an old scholastic axiom that I recently reread,
and it goes like this;
“Whatever is received, is received
according to the manner of the receiver.”
In other words, we see what we want to see
or we see what we expect to see.
And we can see that it not only exists today,
but existed all the way back in the time of Jesus.
The human brain is wired in a certain way with certain biases
and most of those biases work to create efficiencies in the brain.
I recently listened to a podcast
that reflected on a book by Brian McLaren,
about learning how to see more clearly.
The title of the book is “Learning How to See.”
In that book, he presents13 different biases
that we have in the brain in not seeing clearly, if you would;
that we're biased against seeing what is actually in front of us.
Each of them started with the letter C so you can easily remember.
I want to share five of them and then reflect on just two.
The first one is probably the most obvious,
which we all already know in one shape or another.
It is called confirmation bias.
The brain is wired to receive information
that confirms what it already thinks
and to reject information that contradicts or refutes
what it already thinks.
We get confirmation of our opinion
I think we have all had experiences of the confirmation bias in our lives.
But here are a couple more that are rather interesting.
The next one he calls complexity bias
where the brain would rather a simple lie than a complex truth.
The brain is wired in such a way and we cannot help it.
This is to increase efficiency, right?
Anything that it will make jumps to assumptions and make shortcuts
so that it becomes more efficient.
It is about survival, right.
The third one is even more interesting;
it is called a community bias or social confirmation bias.
The brain finds it hard to see
what the group does not want you to see.
We see this is when we are listening to something on television
where again, there is a social confirmation bias, right?
We do not want to see what our group does not want us to see,
and we do not want to see the way other groups see.
We see that not only on the national landscape politically,
but we see it religiously and socially;
groups see a certain way.
Tribe over truth!
But the last two, which I want to reflect on today,
I find really fascinating and are called complimentary bias.
In other words, the brain is wired in such ways
that if I like you and you like me,
then I am going to listen to you more and be more open to what you have to say.
The alternate is also true;
if you don't like me and I don't like you,
there is almost nothing you can do to say that I am going to be open to.
We see this as another group think bias.
The last one is called contact bias;
if we lack contact with a person
the brain finds it very hard to see what that person sees
or the way that they see.
This last one is the one I want to start with in reflection
because that is the one that Peter had in a positive case.
Peter had contact close contact with Jesus Christ.
And because he had so much contact with him,
he could see Jesus for who he really was.
It is a statement of the obvious but does not always happen.
But because Peter desired to see Jesus
and no matter how intelligent you are,
it is the way your brain gets wired.
That is why as I have said to you,
if we want to be good Christians, good followers of Jesus,
then we have to have close contact with Jesus.
We have to be men and women, boys and girls,
of prayer where we learn to see Jesus.
Then we learn to listen to Jesus in our own lives.
I don't mean just on a cursory level, but on a deeper level.
We have to be men and women of prayer
who carve out prayer time as a priority of our day;
learning to not only see Jesus,
but to see what Jesus wants us to see.
We are not going to do that without close contact.
That is why we come to the table.
That is one part of it.
But it is not enough just to come here
because that is not enough for the whole week.
We have to pray each and every day over and over again.
And you've heard me talk about that.
The other part of our role as Christians,
is to testify to what we see by our way of life.
It is not just enough we come here to receive the body of Christ,
but we have to become the body of Christ.
We do not just come to see Jesus.
We come to become Jesus in our world.
And so, we want others to see us and to see Christ in us.
Now comes the next bias, a complimentary bias.
If we want people to see Jesus in us,
then we are going to have to find a way for us to like them.
We do not need to be their best friend,
but at the very least, we need not repulse them.
We need, at the very least, to not shun them away,
and find some way to attract them to us;
that way we can be a credible witness to the gospel.
Otherwise, what we do here becomes just us for ourselves.
And that is not what the gospel is about.
Let me give an example of this.
During the summer, I have been reading this other book
and you have seen me talk about it in the Bulletin.
The book is called “Tiny Habits” by BJ Fogg.
As I was reading it and thinking about how to form little habits
and what I want to convert and make better in myself.
One thing that really bothers me, and I wanted to change it,
was a situation while I hike here in Los Altos.
I usually hike in Stevens Creek County Park.
It is not a particularly well populated park
and when I go hiking on the weekend, for a two-hour hike,
I might bump into maybe 15 or 20 people.
But during the weekday, when I do a shorter hour hike,
I will maybe bump into five people.
I always make a point of saying hello to people on the trail.
And it really bugs me when people do not say hello back.
I will say, “Good morning, how are you?”
Silence.
Sometimes I get so irritated after they have ignored me,
that I will say out loud to myself,
“Good morning, Brendan, how are you?
I am fine, Brendan, how are you?”
I know it is a bit childish, but I get mad.
When I was listening to this book during the summer,
I was on a trail in Utah and everyone there,
I do not know if they take happy pills over there,
but they are all smiling and happy.
They smile at you and greet you really well.
I noticed they were smiling before I got anywhere close to them,
big bright smile, smiling at me.
As we got closer they would say, “Good morning.”
Of course, I would smile back and say, “Good morning”.
I thought to myself, I wonder is it the smile that matters.
I thought to myself back here in Los Altos,
I am six foot five, 240 pounds and I have a German Shepherd.
I wonder if I do not come across as friendly!
I thought for just a moment, maybe it is me, not them.
So, I ran an experiment.
Oftentimes I get distracted as I am walking
because I am listening to a podcast or I am praying,
or I am deep in thought, and I might say hello at the very last minute.
My new experiment was this:
as soon as I see them in the distance,
I would start smiling brightly.
And then as soon as they got close, I would say, “Good morning.”
Amazingly the smile and greeting return rate was 100%!!
It wasn't them; it was me.
I have to be honest with you, that was a little hard to realize.
I did not realize that I was not the one smiling,
I was not the one welcoming.
They were only mirroring back what they were getting.
Now that brings us back to us.
I wonder, do we smile at one another?
We wonder and sometimes say,
people aren't very friendly at church.
But I wonder where it starts.
Is it them that are not friendly or is it us that are not friendly?
Do we smile at people when we come in?
Do we smile at them and wave at them and say hello?
Or do we wait for everybody else to do the other thing?
And then we often complain.
I wonder if it is us.
So here is my challenge to us,
if we are going to take the gospel seriously
and get to know Christ, which I am going to assume
you are going to be people of prayer
but we have to be evangelists, right?
We have to proclaim the gospel by the way we are.
Can we learn to smile at another?
We are going to practice it now.
I know you are thinking,
“Oh gosh, I have to smile now. Okay?”
I want you to try it.
It has to be an authentic smile now.
Look to your neighbor, smile, and say, good morning.
Come on, let is try it!
Give yourself a round of applause, just smiling.
That was not so hard, right?
Here is the thing, is it seems so simple,
but oftentimes when we come into church
and we come into the parking lot,
we are deep in thought.
There is lots of stuff going on.
Some stuff is very serious and we have had a hard day.
Or maybe we are struggling with illness
or maybe we got some going on with our marriage
or our children are doing stuff we are struggling to understand.
We are deep in thought.
But when we see somebody in the distance,
including the parking lot, maybe especially the parking lot,
that we smile at each other, and we greet one another.
You do not have to have a full-on conversation,
but that starts with a smile and a greeting.
And when we certainly come into church,
can we smile and greet one another?
And then when we see each other at the store,
then we can smile and greet one another
because my friends, people are watching us
and people are making decisions on
whether we're credible witness to the gospel or not.
And if we are not smiling and not greeting,
then we have not allowed the joy of the gospel to touch our hearts.
It has not come through.
It may be in there, but it is locked in a cage somewhere.
We have to let it in through our soul
and out through our lips and through a smile.
And we need to see the world that way.
My challenge this week is
to allow these biases to work for us, not against us,
to become contact with Christ in our bias and get to know him
and then become him to others through
the beginning of a smile and a greet him a deal for this week.
