Inconcievable!

This is the sermon preached by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregations of Unfinished Community and Ashiya Christian Church on Sunday, April 19, 2026, drawing from Luke 24:13-35.

There’s a really simple fact about the human mind that we often ignore, but which determines nearly everything about our existence, and it is this:

What we expect to see very often determines what we do see.

We often ignore this fact because we really want to believe that we’re rational, intelligent people. We often ignore this fact because we really want to believe that we are capable of setting our biases aside, and seeing the real truth of the matter. 

We really want to ignore this fact because we hate what it means about us.

But…it’s true. 

Nearly 20 years ago, a video went viral simply called “Awareness Test,” which was simplicity itself. In the video, there was a group of basketball players passing a ball back and forth, and the watchers were asked to count how many times the ball was passed from person to person. 

Sounds simple, right?

So people would watch the video closely, counting each pass, trying to make sure they got the right number. People were focused, REALLY focused, on making sure they got it right. 

At the tend of the video, people were asked a surprising question; did you notice the moonwalking bear?At first, people were really confused, but when they went back and watched the video again, they saw something truly shocking. 

About halfway through the video of people passing the ball back and forth, a guy in a bear costume moonwalked through the middle of the group. 

And nobody noticed it. 

This very simple video revealed a fact about the human mind called Inattention Blindness. In simple terms, we only see what we expect to see. 

People were expecting to see a group of people passing a basketball around. People were expecting that there might be tricks, obstructions to their ability to count the number of passes. People were expecting a particular context, given that the video took place in a gym, with people in sports attire, doing athletic activity. 

Nobody expected a moonwalking bear. 

It defied expectations, defied the rules of reality, of normalcy, of what those viewing the video knew to be the point of the whole exercise. So the brain just…quietly edited out the thing that didn’t fit. 

I don’t know about you, but when I would hear this story of the apostles on the Emmaus road as a younger man, my reaction was always to wonder just how it was that these apostles had no idea that it was Jesus they were walking with. Pastors and teachers in my church when I was a kid always parsed it as just Jesus doing a miracle to hide his identity, but that never sat well with me. After all, why would the resurrected Jesus, the guy who literally defeated death itself, use the power of God for deception?

It seems…out of character for this to be a Jesus-thing, doesn’t it.

But when we understand the concept of inattention blindness, when we understand the great psychological secret of the moonwalking bear, we realize…this wasn’t “Jesus-magic,” it was just…psychology.

The apostles in this story…they knew, more or less, about the resurrection. The “women of the group”—who are at this point the only people who actually knew the truth because , the only people to whom Christ had revealed himself firsthand, and not….you know…the dudebros back at resistance HQ, hiding in a locked house waiting for death—they had already told everybody what happened, and received the condescension, gentle head-pats, and rolled eyes that men with privilege often trot out every time somebody else has something revelatory to share.

The idea of women having a revelation that the men did not was already a bit of a “moonwalking bear” in that time and place, but I digress.

They knew the truth, or at least should have known, and were discussing it among themselves….and then Jesus just kinda…pops up. But their reality is already so solidly pre-defined, their expectations so firmly and completely set that they simply don’t see it when Jesus Christ actual moonwalks right up to them and says, “What’s up, guys?” 

The hard truth is….Christ isn't revealed to us by default; we don't just automatically know Christ, in our lives or elsewhere. In order to see the Christ with us we have to set aside our expectations, stop looking only within the defined parameters of our own biases, wants, desires, and the ways in which we have been taught to understand who and what Christ Jesus is. 

These apostles, these followers of Christ, walked almost the entire day along with Jesus completely unaware. In fact, it was only when Jesus finally did the thing that fit their expectations of him - breaking the bread and basically re-doing communion - that their eyes were opened, and they realized he had been there the whole time.

But it’s more than that, because this revelation didn’t come as a matter of course. The meal they shared didn’t just happen, and it wasn’t a given. A random guest on your journey wouldn’t automatically join you for dinner in those days, or even today really. What had to happen first, in order for them to perceive Jesus, was for them to reach beyond the usual, and extend kindness and love by inviting the stranger to sit with them for a meal. To set aside otherwise normal fears about somebody, fears about resources, fears about exposure, and open their hearts to connection; to communion.  

And it was only after they acted in a Christlike manner, by defying their own expectations, by defying their own logic, their own reality, and inviting him to join them rather than risk himself along the roads at night, that they finally found themselves seated at the side of Christ.

The entire day, these guys walked along the road convinced that they understood the truth about Jesus, that they fully grasped his teachings, his identity, and the full truth of who and what he was. At the time they were discussing the resurrection, but even that was an attempt to define it in their terms, dismissing the truth the women had brought—“Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him,” they said—in favor of a more “rational” take which fit their expectations; that Jesus was dead, the women were hysterical, and that no one could know what was really going on.

Because they didn’t know what was going on.

They had thought themselves able to understand not because their minds were open, but because they had built a box into which they thought Jesus fit, because they'd built walls around the incomprehensible, and could safely dismiss anything that didn’t safely fit into those walls. Their expectations defined them, so when women came bearing a truth that did not fit into that box they simply could not reconcile it with their actual, factual, reality. They though they understood, but in truth they had no framework with which to actually experience the risen Christ.

Because in their minds, Jesus wasn’t actually real. Jesus was something other than real; an artifact of some abstract magic, rather than a person who could simply, walk alongside them, showing care, compassion, support, even love.

So when Jesus did just that, just started walking along with them, it was utterly inconceivable, because they expected that if a resurrection were indeed to have happened, it would be obvious to them. It would fit the expectations, present itself before them in terms they could understand. It would be grand, magical, overwhelming, drop-to-your-knees, knock-your-socks-off awesome on that great day when the resurrected Jesus turned up in the flesh in defiance of death itself.

We want to believe that when God is present in our lives, when love is present in our lives, that it’s going to be like that. That it’s going to flood our brains with dopamine, knock us to the ground in awe and wonder, and leave us utterly convinced that this is the right thing for us. We expect it to be life changing, burden-lifting, like walking gently downhill in the warm sun after years of climbing up the cold slope of a lonely mountain. 

But the longer we spend fixated on the idea of the grand, dramatic, love changing our lives for the better, the longer we miss the Christ who’s there beside us. 

Not some overwhelming force of nature, but just…Jesus. Walking alongside, telling jokes, and smiling. Walking that road with us, step by step, sharing the journey and all its difficulties, waiting for us to see him for who he really is.

This is why I wanted us to start this period of experimental worship, this period where we are once again without a dedicated physical space for church, in such an odd, geeky way. Not because I love this game—though I do—and not because I really wanted an excuse to sleep in and do church from my living room—though I’ll grant that’s a really nice bonus—but because I wanted us to start this season with the imperative to all of us to look for Jesus along the road with us. 

It’s easy to imagine that Christ is present in the sanctuary of our church, easy to see Jesus there. It’s easy to imagine praying in that space, feeling the sacred in the places we have designated as sacred. But Christ doesn’t meet our expectations. Christ doesn’t appear only where we expect him to. Christ doesn’t see as sacred only those spaces we see as sacred. 

To Christ, the most sacred space is right there with us. Along the road. In the toughest parts of our journeys, when our hearts are low, when our fears are overwhelming, and when we wonder if we will ever feel that love, safety, or security ever again. That is when Christ appears to us, when Christ answers our prayers not with miracles or revelations, but by being a friend. 

By being love.

So let us sit down together, my friends, let us break bread together, and let us open our eyes to Christ Jesus and realize that inconceivable truth that Christ, that love, has been with us this entire time.