Have you ever been looking for something and discovered it was right in front of you? In the South there’s an old saying about missing something that is in plain view: If it had been a snake, it would have bit you. You shake your head and feel like a fool. But this experience of missing what is obvious is so common that it is even the subject of psychological studies.
Alejandro Lleras is a professor of psychology who studies what he calls “inattentional blindness,” or the ability to miss something obvious. He believes that our brains have developed highly selective ways of scanning and sorting information. And this scanning and sorting function in our brain works more efficiently if we “create biases against certain images it deems distracting.” My keys couldn’t possibly be right in front of me or I would have noticed them earlier. So as I scan the kitchen, I see a detailed view of every square inch of the kitchen EXCEPT for the 2-3 inches of counter space right in front of me. My brain filters it out.
A second reason why we might miss something obvious is because we are distracted or fooled by seeing the thing in an unexpected context. In 2007, internationally known concert violinist Joshua Bell, dressed in casual clothes and a ball cap, positioned himself near a garbage can in a Washington, DC subway station and played the violin. Busy DC commuters passed him by. A few dropped coins into his violin case. No one expected to see an award-winning, internationally famous musician playing for coins in a subway station, so no one recognized him in this context. (1)
Knowing I’m not the only one who misses the obvious makes me feel better. Some of you who are wives are saying, “Why my husband does that all the time.”
That reminds me of a fascinating story of espionage in World War II. In 1940, German military forces took over the tiny country of Belgium. They used threats and violence to keep the Belgian citizens from turning against them. But members of the Belgian Resistance found a way to pass messages about Nazi activities to allies in other countries without getting caught.
They recruited a group of Belgian grandmothers who were skilled at knitting. There are only two basic stitches in knitting, I understand, and they closely resemble the dots and dashes used in Morse code. So these Belgian grandmothers passed information about German train movements to the Belgian resistance and their allies by knitting scarves and blankets with Morse code embedded in their stitches. They were so effective in their espionage work primarily because no one suspected that knitting grandmothers could be fearless spies. (2)
It’s hard to look past our biases and distractions and to see what’s really in front of us. Fortunately, John the Baptist didn’t have that problem when he met Jesus. Last week, we talked about how John tried to stop Jesus from getting baptized because he didn’t understand how this could possibly fit in with God’s plan. But during Jesus’ baptism, John saw the Holy Spirit descend on Christ and suddenly he understood entirely who Jesus was! This man, who looked like a humble carpenter from a backwater town, was the Messiah, the Chosen One sent from God.
Our Bible story this morning happens the next day when John runs into Jesus again. John announces to anyone nearby, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” And he’s so excited that the next day when he sees Jesus again, John announces to his disciples, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Nothing has changed in Jesus’ appearance or his circumstances. He still looks like an average Joe. He’s still a carpenter from Nazareth. But suddenly, John looks past his biases and distractions and sees Jesus for who he really is. And two of John’s disciples see it too. They immediately leave John and begin following Jesus.
What did John see? And how would it change our lives if we could see Jesus for who he really is?
The first thing John saw was that Jesus is the hope of the world. Let’s look back at Genesis 3 for a moment. After Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they experienced shame and fear and separation from God. To cover their shame, God made clothes for them out of an animal’s skin. From the very beginning, God made it clear that sin--separation from God--equals death. Instead of killing Adam and Eve for their sin, God let an animal die in their place.
In Genesis 22, God called on Abraham and told him to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah. Can you imagine Abraham’s agony as he led his son up that mountain, expecting that he would come back down alone? At one point, Isaac even asks his father “. . . where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” And Abraham replies, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And, sure enough, when Abraham obeyed God and put Isaac on that altar, God stopped Abraham from going through with the sacrifice. Instead, God provided a ram for Abraham and Isaac to sacrifice.
Then skip on over to Exodus 12, the story of the Passover. To convince the Egyptian Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery in his land, God sends an angel of death on the land to kill the firstborn males. But he warns the Israelites to sacrifice a perfect, unblemished lamb and put its blood over the door-frames of their houses. The angel of death will pass by any house that is covered by the blood of a perfect lamb.
And in Leviticus 16, God establishes a yearly sacred festival, the Day of Atonement. On this day animal sacrifices are made to remind the people of sin’s power to separate us from God and to bring suffering and death into the world.
All that blood. All that death. And it needed to happen again and again and again until . . . until it doesn’t anymore. Why? Because one man gives his life for us all.
A tourist was visiting the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. She noticed several students on their knees studying the courtyard and taking notes on their clipboards. She asked the tour guide what they were doing.
He smiled. “Each year, the upperclassmen ask the freshmen how many bricks it took to finish paving this courtyard.”
The tourist waited until the students were out of earshot, then she whispered, “So, what’s the answer?”
The tour guide answered, “One.” Here’s the explanation.
It doesn’t matter how many bricks it took to make the courtyard. It still took only one . . . to finish it. And we’ll never know how many animals died to cover over the sins of humanity. But it only took one death, the death of Jesus Christ, to end the cycle of sacrifices. “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
Here’s another way of looking at this. Some people are frightened by snakes; some people are fascinated by them. But no matter which camp you fall in, I’m pretty sure you try to avoid getting bitten by a snake. So it’s hard to explain why a man named Tim Friede has, over a twenty-year period, set out to get bitten by 200 different species of venomous snakes, and has had more than 700 doses of lethal snake venom injected into his body. Friede risks his life in the hopes that someday medical researchers can use his blood to create a universal antivenom that will work against almost every species of snake venom in the world.
Antivenoms take a lot of time and money to create, and each one only works against one or two types of snake venom. Since the turn of the twentieth century, the process has involved extracting a snake’s deadly poison and injecting a small amount of it into the bloodstream of a horse or a sheep. If the horse or sheep was able to create antibodies against the venom, then it survived. Scientists then harvest the animal’s blood or plasma that is now rich with antibodies and turn it into an antivenom. (3)
Medical experts estimate that between 80,000 and 130,000 people die each year from snake bites. Around 400,000 people each year have a body part amputated due to snake bites. (4) You can see how this is a tragic health issue for people worldwide.
So one man decided he would change that. Tim Friede is a truck mechanic from Wisconsin. He is also deeply concerned about the problem of death and disability due to snake bites. Tim decided to risk his own life in the hopes of creating a universal antivenom treatment that would work for all species of snake. He did that by letting poisonous snakes bite him, then recording his physical reactions to the bites. He keeps a journal detailing the effects of the bite, from mind-numbing pain to excessive swelling to hives, muscle wasting and anaphylactic shock. He has come close to death more times than he can count. One entry in his journal reads, “Since dying was no fun, took off ’til December.”
Tests of Tim’s blood show that his body can produce antibodies against certain snake poisons, like that of the deadly black mamba snake, at a concentration three times higher than any current black mamba antivenom on the market. Ray Newland, the immunologist who studies Tim Friede’s blood says, “Tim’s blood is the best chance the world has at a broadly reactive antivenom.” (5)
In the same way, the first thing John sees is that Jesus is the hope of the world.
The second thing John sees is that Jesus brings peace to the world. We were made in the image of God. Going back again to Genesis 1, we were made to live in face-to-face, loving relationship with God. Sin broke this relationship and separated us from all that flows from God: eternal life, unconditional love, unfailing peace, unshakable hope, unexplainable joy.
Hebrews 10 tells us that the priests’ continual animal sacrifice had no power to take away sins. But Jesus, acting as our Great High Priest, offered his own blood. Hebrews 10: 14 says, “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” And Hebrews 10: 17 says, “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” What an incredible promise of God! By Jesus’ sacrifice, he has made us perfect forever in God’s sight.
Marghanita Laski was one of England’s best-known novelists; she was also an atheist. Not long before she died in 1988, Marghanita was interviewed on television, and she surprised many viewers when she said, “What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me.” I wonder if Ms. Laski had an ache, a question, a void that left her restless and unfulfilled. I think that’s a remarkable statement for an atheist to make. “What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me.”
What is forgiveness? It is simply healing our separation from God and restoring us to the fullness of God’s presence and love. John saw that Jesus is our path to peace with God.
And finally, John sees that Jesus shows us the sacrificial love of God. I was very moved by a story I read about a 6-year-old boy named Bridger Walker who saved his little sister from a dog attack. When Bridger saw a German shepherd dog charging at his little sister, he placed his body between her and the dog. The dog mauled him, leaving him with wounds that required 90 stitches to his head.
When asked why he jumped in front of that dog for his sister, little Bridger said, “If someone had to die, I thought it should be me.” (6)
Before the foundation of the world, before the beginning of time, God made a plan for saving humanity. And that plan required someone to die as a perfect sacrifice to cover our sins. In Jesus, God is saying, “If someone had to die, I thought it should be me.”
When you love someone, you make plans with them. You make plans for them. You want to give them the best of you, and that means long-range planning for their good. And that’s what God does through Jesus Christ. God shows His love for us in this way: before the foundation of the world, God had a plan to save us through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. First Peter 1 tells us that we were redeemed, or bought out of slavery, by the precious blood of Jesus Christ who was chosen before the creation of the world. (1 Peter 1: 18-20) And Titus 1: 1-2 tells us that the hope of eternal life was promised by God before the beginning of time. God loved us in this way: before He ever created this world, He made a plan to save us through the sacrificial death of Jesus. When you look at Jesus, what do you see? I pray you see God’s plan for humanity. Because Jesus is our hope of salvation, our peace with God, and the sacrificial love by which we are guaranteed eternal life.
1. “Miss Something Obvious? Your Brain Might Be Working” by Naomi Karten Techwell.com August 21, 2012, https://www.techwell.com/techwell-insights/2012/08/miss-something-obvious-your-brain-might-be-working. Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bell.
2. “The Wartime Spies Who Used Knitting as An Espionage Tool” by Natalie Zarrelli AtlasObscura.com, March 16, 2022. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/knitting-spies-wwi-wwii.
3. https://www.si.edu/spotlight/antibody-initiative/antivenom#:~:text=The%20French%20scientist%20Albert%20Calmette,produced%20in%20the%20United%20States.
4. https://pawsomeadvice.com/wild/snake-bite-statistics/.
5. “The Human Antivenom Project” by Kyle Dickman, May 16, 2019, Outside Online https://www.outsideonline.com/2395803/snakebite-antivenom-tim-friede?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=longreads.
6. “Boy Proudly Wears Scar After Saving Younger Sister From Dog Attack” by Sara Barnes, MyModernMet.com, August 3, 2021, https://mymodernmet.com/bridger-walker-dog-attack/.