Jesus and the Closeness-Communication Bias

Transcript of a message preached July 7, 2024 at Northglenn United Church of Christ

“I told you that before. Why do you never listen when I tell you?”

Recently, I came home from having a great conversation with a good friend of mine. I was all excited about the conversation we had together. He had pointed out something in my life that I found very helpful for me as a person in my own personal growth, and I was excited to share that learning with my wife.

But when I got home and told her the story, she was unimpressed. She said, “I've told you that before. How come you never listen when I tell you that?”

Perhaps you've been in this same, situation before with a spouse or a friend or a family member. Having begun preparation for this message today, I told her, as Jesus said, prophets are honored everywhere except in their own hometowns, among their own relatives, and in their own households.

And just to be clear, in this example, my wife is the prophet. Just so we're clear, right.

I think we can all relate to this kind of situation, though, right? The longer we've been in a relationship with someone, whether it's a spouse, a child, a friend, a coworker, this tends to happen in relationships the longer we've known someone. I noticed in the bulletin, there are no anniversaries this month. Well, my anniversary is the end of this month and will mark 20 years of marriage for my wife. And I. Thank you.

And as much as I love her and in committed to her, the reality is, I'm afraid to admit, I don't always pay as much attention to everything she says, as much as I should. But this dynamic happens in other situations as well, not just husband and wife spouses.

Like I mentioned, children, families, coworkers, even professional sports teams. I don't know how many sports fans there are among us, but often you'll hear about a coach getting fired or let go because his voice or her voice had grown tired or stale. The Broncos big rival of Kansas City Chiefs, their coach, Andy Reed, very successful, was fired by the Philadelphia Eagles despite a very stellar record. He went to five NFC championship games, advanced to one Super bowl. Yet even then, his voice had grown, tired and stale, and they decided to move on from him, believing that the organization needed new direction.

This challenge, this challenge that we have of listening and hearing the people who are closest to us is called the closeness communication bias. According to an article from the New York Times, humans have a tendency to tune out those people we feel close to because we feel like we know what they're already going to say. Again, the closeness communication bias. I'm seeing a lot of head nods in agreement. Right?

And this actually works well for me today because you don't know me. You don't know what I'm going to say. The closeness-communication bias is at work. Whenever romantic partners begin to drift from one another, feeling like they don't know each other anymore. Or in a parent child relationship, when a child does something completely unexpected to the parent. So it doesn't matter if you're a spouse, a parent, or even a sports coach. If you've been in a relationship with someone for a long time, chances are you are being trained, your brain is trained to tune them out, and you are going to have to be. We are going to have to be all the more intentional about listening. If you notice this morning, I want to listen to you.

So I made sure I put in my hearing aid. But lest we think we are alone in our struggles, let us not forgive that Jesus himself faced these same challenges among his family and friends. As was read from the Gospel of Mark today, we see that Jesus was frustrated with his words, how they were received from those who knew him best. Again, the verses say that on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded.

They said, where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands? Is this not the carpenter, the son of Maryland, brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, prophets are not without honor, except in their own hometowns, among their own kin, and in their own house. And he could do no deed of power there, except he laid on his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed. Jesus was amazed at their unbelief. Again, these words from his family and friends and neighbors are so astounding.

Where did this m man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his name? Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary?

Obviously, we know the end of the story. We know who Jesus was and is. But, back then, those people who knew him so well could not see or hear or recognize who he was. To them, he was just a construction worker. That was out of his mind, they thought.

Now, something interesting about the word that we interpret as carpenter in our bibles today. In the original language, there's thought that also the word could be translated as stone worker. So think about it this way. In a, modern society, modern culture, we often see Jesus portrayed as a carpenter, a fine woodworker. If you've seen the movie the “Passion of the Christ”, remember, Jesus makes this nice custom table. And the joke is, right, that people are going to sit like this, because back in that time, people actually ate laying on their sides.

So we tend to think of Jesus as this kind of upscale custom woodworker, right? Well, what if Jesus was simply like, we might think today a day labor, like we tend to see on the side of the road, or like at the Home Depot looking for work. So if we think about Jesus in that context, when we think about Jesus, who people knew very well, getting up in the morning, going to work, going to look for work, or they saw him coming home dirty, smelly, sweaty, tired from a brutal day of manual labor, it caught them by surprise when one day, this completely regular guy, this regular Joe, starts teaching in the synagogue as one with authority and power.

Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands? Is this not Mary, the son of the carpenter?

As part of my daily job, I worked down in Aurora, old Aurora, off Dayton and Colfax. I don't know how many of you have been in that part of town, but on Dayton, just north of Colfax, there's this stretch of road that is always, every day I, uh, drive down there full of people looking for a day labor job. And if you drive by in a truck, they're going to stick their hand out and wave. If you slow down, they're going to come over and try to talk to you because they want a day of a day's work.

You can imagine then how shocking it would be, and I would be similarly shocked if one day one of those gentlemen set up shop on the corner of Dayton and Colfax and started preaching, proclaiming, doing miracles, I mean, it would be bizarre. Those who knew him well would think he had gone out of his mind. This is the other side of the closeness communication bias. Again, from the New York Times article, the closeness communication bias not only keeps us from listening to those we love, it also keeps them from hearing us. Here's the truth. While we can control what we pay attention to and focus on those closest to us and hearing them, we cannot control how others will hear us and how they will hear what we say to them.

Psychologist and author Kathleen Smith writes about this challenging dynamic. She notes that when we really want someone to hear us well, try extra hard to convince them to listen and agree with what we're saying, she says. In this dynamic, those of us who are trying really hard to convince others or to change others will try. And what happens is the people who are hearing us or not hearing us will respond in three ways. They'll either agree with us just to calm us down, they'll attack us back and they'll start fighting back, or they'll just run away, avoiding us.

In my youth, my dad was, and actually still is, a pastor. But when I was in high school, my dad was starting a church. So I, being a good son, would go along with him door to door to knock on people's doors and invite them to church. And sure enough, one household after another would say, oh, yeah, sure, I'll be there on Sunday. And wouldn't you know it, Sunday would come, and they would not be anywhere around. And my dad would always be so disappointed. And I think to myself, dad, what did you expect? They're trying to get you off their porch again. Being a good church pastor, son, when I was a really little kid, my dad would go, pass out tracks. Everyone remember Bible tracts? Seeing those?

So we would stand on the side of a street corner or something and pass out, ible tracts. And sure enough, what would people do? They'd make a wide berth, big loop around us because they wanted to avoid us.

Or the third thing that, frankly, I thankfully not had that much encounters with. Some people just kind of want to come up and just attack you and start fighting with you and tell you how you're wrong and what they think and what you should be doing. I've had that happen, thankfully, not that often.

This is why so many of our attempts to manage others, to convince others, backfires. The best way to get people to listen, or at least the best thing we can do to help people possibly listen, is to lower our own intensity.

Notice what Jesus does. Just a few verses later, it seemed like he learned from his initial encounter with his neighbors, again from Mark, the scriptures say.

He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over clean, unclean spirits. He ordered to take nothing for the journey except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave this place, if any place will not welcome you, and they refuse to hear you as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.

Now, I know that sounds kind of harsh. We tend to interpret those words, shaking off the dust off your feet as something fairly harsh. In truth, from what I can tell, there is no clear consensus on what those words actually mean. So at least the way I understand it is that Jesus is saying, leave all that place, even the dust, with them there. You're not to take responsibility. You, the disciples, are not to take responsibility for what they will or will not hear or respond to. You're not responsible for their decisions or lack thereof. It's about taking responsibility for yourself, disciples, not for others.

See, the challenge of the closeness communication bias is that one side begins trying to take responsibility for the other's hearing, meaning they'll try too hard to get the other person to hear them. Something I have to think about right as I literally deliver this message. Not trying too hard, not yelling or talking loudly, which can happen, forcing your opinion on the other, telling them how they should be treating you.

We've never. Who's never done that in relationship, right? Whatever it is, it almost never works. Author Kathleen Smith calls this convincing, which he says can look like, uh, talking without asking questions, passing along your own anxiety. Have you ever had that situation where someone comes up to you full of just tension, and then you. You recognize yourself just all tense, saying, we or you need to do this? I've never done that. Ignoring or dismissing other people's thoughts or defining the challenge for them.

In contrast, Smith recommends what she calls connecting, which can look like asking questions as much as you share thoughts, managing one's own anxiety, using m I statements like, I have decided to do this. Listening again to people's thoughts and asking people to define their own challenges.

Think about some of the famous stories in the bible of Jesus; Jesus in Zacchaeus, Jesus and the samaritan woman, Jesus. Even in his encounters with the religious leaders, what does he constantly do?

He asks questions: Who do you say that I am?

He uses I statements. I am the bread of life.

He listens to people's thoughts. Remember, Zacchaeus, that song we sing, Zacchaeus, you come down from going to your house today, and I presume he's going to listen.

We live in a time and a place today where we think we can convince the other, but it hardly ever works. People just get defensive, agitated, angry, or they simply walk away to avoid another conversation. Whether it be in your relationships with your friends, your family, your spouse, your coworker, we would all be much better off rather than convincing. Instead, seeking to connect, asking questions, listening to others, using I statements.

Now, I know I've been talking about this in our personal relationships, but I want to raise the stakes, if I may, for just a moment. As we are in this season of American culture getting closer and closer to the November election, the political tension keeps ratcheting up. Fears of authoritarianism, incompetency, you name it. Those tensions increase, while the amount of people who are thoughtful, consider it generous, decrease as pressures and tensions increase.

I can imagine among your friends and family, those you know well, perhaps in your neighborhood or community, there are people who are saying to you, whether explicitly or implicitly, why are you wasting your time with that candidate? Why would you give money to that campaign? Why do you still support that political party? Yet despite their questions, and sometimes those questions are more like statements, right? There is nothing you can say that will convince them otherwise. Or maybe you are the one asking those same questions of them.

Remember the closeness-communication bias. Even if you were a prophet and could say something wise, profound, chances are they would not be able to hear and receive your words. Not even Jesus. One has to wonder, could it convince those he loved? And we know where this all ends up, right? Further political polarization, further agitation, maybe even violence.

What if there was another way?

A few years back, ColoradoPublic Radio pulled together a group of people from different walks of life and political persuasions, served them dinner, and asked them to listen and talk with one another. I want to read you sum this story. The efforts consisted of seven Coloradoans from diverse political backgrounds gathered for a series of dinners to discuss their differences and seek common ground. The group comprised of Republicans, Democrats, and a third party voter. Their conversations centered on crucial issues such as healthcare, race, and climate change. To foster deep understanding, they visited each other's homes and places of worship. These, uh, personal interactions significantly increased empathy among the participants. Despite their political disagreements. From the start, the group discovered several points of agreement. For example, they found common ground on the importance of affordable healthcare, the need for racial equality, and the urgency of addressing climate change. These discussions, though, were not just about finding solutions, but also about understanding the perspectives and experiences of the other persons view. Essential in the process, though, was that they followed basic steps that we’ve been talking about.

They manage their own anxiety. For instance, Sarah, a Democrat, initially felt nervous about discussing climate change with Tom, a Republican. But by recognizing and managing her own anxiety, she was able to approach the conversation more calmly, which led to productive dialogue. Also, they used I statements. For instance, when discussing healthcare, John, a third party voter, used I statements to discuss his own experiences. Instead of saying, you don't understand how broken the system is, he said, I have had difficulty affording my prescriptions. This approach helped others empathize with him without feeling attacked.

Third, they asked people to define their own challenges. For instance, during a conversation about race, Emily, a Republican, asked a fellow participant, a Democrat, to share his own personal challenges with racial inequality. This invitation allowed this person, Michael, to explain his own experiences in depth, fostering greater understanding and empathy.

And finally, they listened. They listened attentively to the answers given. This project's outcome highlights the potential for dialogue and understanding in a society often shaped by political divisions.

When we engage with people we disagree with, but come to that conversation with empathy and open dialogue, it is possible. It is possible to bridge even the most entrenched political divides.

This way that Jesus modeled can be a powerful tool to foster a, uh, more inclusive and understanding society where diverse perspectives are not only acknowledged but also valued. By building bridges, as Jesus did, we can together create spaces where our friends, our families, and those we disagree with, even ourselves, can be heard, understood, and respected. This, I believe, is the way of Jesus, that he invites us to.

Let us pray.

Holy God, we live in a time of so much tension and division. We experience this tension and division within ourselves, our relationships, our families, our communities, even our nation. God, help us. Help us to live the way of Jesus, to listen, to speak for ourselves, to let others speak for themselves.God, we trust that with your help, we can together bring inclusion and understanding to our communities, to our families, to our relationships. God, we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.