<html><body><div>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....</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>3 EASTER a</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>ACTS 2:14a, 36-41<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>30<sup>th</sup> APRIL, 2017</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>1 PETER 1:17-23 <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PSALM116:1-3, 10-17</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>LUKE 24:13-25 </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Ignorance is our natural state.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That ought to grab our attention! I know it did mine several days ago when I heard it on the radio. <sup>1</sup> 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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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.” <sup>2</sup></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>They weren’t bad people. They weren’t poor disciples. They hadn’t flunked out of Jesus’ class of ought-thirty.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>belief that ignorance <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>IS</u></b> our natural state.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>IS</u></b> 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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>CAN</u></b> 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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But this <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>CAN</u></b> make us extraordinarily uncomfortable! “We all think<span style="background: white; margin: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> we know more than we actually do.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><sup>3</sup></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yes, <span style="background: white; margin: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">“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.</span><span style="margin: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><br><span style="background: white; margin: 0px;"> <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“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.” <sup>4</sup></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ARE</u></b>, or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>SHOULD BE</u></b> 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.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"><br></span></span></p></div></body></html>