Did you see Jesus in the Gorilla costume?
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 20, 21:1-7(8-14); PM Psalm 110:1-5(6-7), 116, 117Deut. 34:1-12; Rom. 10:14-21; Matt. 24:32-51
Have you participated in the experiment where you are asked to count in a video the number of times the people wearing white shirts pass a basketball? It is a famous psychological test called the “Selective Attention Test.” The premise is there are six people and three are wearing white shirts. Two basketballs are introduced, and the people weave in and out of a circle passing the balls. You are supposed to count how many times the people wearing white shirts pass the ball. Most people get the correct answer, which in the video I saw was fifteen times in the forty-five seconds or so.
But that is not what the test is really measuring. In the middle of the video, a person in a large gorilla costume walks right across the screen. Weird, right? Here is what is even weirder: only thirty percent of people notice the gorilla. Seven out of ten people completely miss a person in a large gorilla suit walking directly across a screen with basketballs being thrown around the gorilla! And those people are paying attention!
This puts an interesting twist, on Today’s Gospel when Jesus tells the disciples to “Keep awake for they do not know when the Lord is coming.” The Gospel of Matthew uses the image of a thief coming in the middle of the night. The disciples are supposed to be vigilant. What if they are waiting for the Lord and a giant gorilla walks right by and they miss all the fun. I’m being facetious, but think it’s worthy of consideration, that we sometimes might be so focused that we miss the real beauty of waiting. What if the disciples were vigilant, but they were focused on the wrong stuff?
As Episcopalian or Anglican thought has it, we often live very much in both/and world. We wait for the Kingdom to come, and yet we proclaim that it has also arrived. We wait for Jesus, and yet we know that Jesus is present. I wonder sometimes if we miss some of the beauty of God’s world coming to live in our midst. Stories of hope, love, reconciliation, resurrection, joy, peace, and grace because we are bogged down looking for something else. What would you see if you weren’t trying so hard to count the number of times a basketball is passed or something else hyper-focused? Would you see Jesus walk by in a Gorilla suit or something even more extraordinary?
- John+
Questions for Self-Reflection
Are there specific things that you seem to focus on in life? Maybe to count, or observe, or pay attention to?
Daily Challenge
If you are out today going to a store or walking in your neighborhood, and the place if familiar, try to find five things that you have never noticed before.