Sermon for
February 3, 2012
Bill Fortier
Jesus: Maybe if we pray this sermon
all together, everyone can overlook my terrible credentials when it comes to
love. Help these cherished friends to see past my half heart, to hear your
music, singing love songs in their beloved ears. Amen.
Because I cant help myself, lets start with some science:
In the late nineties, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons conducted their
first run of their, now famous, invisible
gorilla experiment. These two young scientists wanted to build on the science
of attention. By this time, scientists
had figured out that our visual attention and visual perception wasn't all that
sharp. Our glossy big bubbles keep getting popped by these guys.
So these two young dudes set up an experiment where folks
are told to watch a basketball game. A guy in a gorilla costume walks right
through the players. Now here's the thing: an astonishing number, half to three
quarters of the viewers (!), don't see the gorilla! This experiment has been conducted
tons of times now and the scenarios have been changed, again and again, just to
make sure it isn't some kind of innate basketball deficiency. The experiment
and it's numbers stand. We're Mr and Ms Magoo when it comes to seeing stuff
that's right in front of us. We see what we expect and want to see: road hog!
Chapter 13 in Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians is an
invisible gorilla right in the middle of the New Testament. It hides in plain
sight, mostly in weddings. We just hear the word love, love, love echoing in
the
