Learning by Being Wrong (Sermon preached 20 August 2023)

I invite you to take just a moment, and think of a time when you were wrong about someone. 

Notice I didn’t ask if you can think of a time like that – if you made an assumption about a person based on a first impression, or something you heard about them, or something your grandmother once said about people who look the way that person looks or are from where that person is from, and it turned out you were wrong. 

I didn’t say if because at one time or another we all have been wrong about someone. Being wrong about people is an inevitable consequence of a skill all of us humans develop as we grow up and move around in the world. We simply don’t have time to do a deep dive with every person we meet. So we learn to size them up quickly. To look for and recognize certain cues, conscious and unconscious. And draw conclusions from them.

I see a man walking down the street dressed in a certain style, moving a particular way. My brain instantly processes that information, and makes educated guesses about his age, socio-economic class, health, gender orientation, maybe even the quality of person he is. Because I trust the data I’ve already filed in here (gesture to head). I might not be absolutely correct – but chances are I’ll be somewhere in the neighborhood.

If you are seeing me preach for the first time, you’ll notice I’m a white woman of a certain age who stands up fairly straight, smiles a lot, speaks pretty clearly, sometimes uses big words – and already you’ve sized me up! Warm. Good energy. Credible (hopefully). And you will trust your assessment. It is a totally normal process. We all do it...(read more)