Hanlon's Razor
Christy Ramsey
We can search for miracle as well as we can find malice in others
Hanlon’s Razor
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Audio from worship at Christ Presbyterian Church, Gardnerville, NV on August 1,2021
edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine.
Sermons also available free on iTunes
One difference between a community and a cult is just that – difference. A community embraces it. A cult outlaws it. Both are organized around a common goal and beliefs. But community is harder than a cult because everyone is not like you and me. More specifically, it’s harder because not everybody is me. If it was me, everything would be fine. But it doesn’t work that way in community. Only in cults.
You’re saying, why is he talking about community? Because that’s what our scripture’s about. You may think that it’s about spiritual gifts. This is one of those spiritual gifts inventory passages. You know, the one we all love to like. It’s just like, you know, it’s an Amazon Wish List, and we just got a gift card. You know, we’re going through it saying, oh, what can I get? Oh, boy.
But I want to caution you, at least for today, do not pretend that this is Christmas Eve, and the verses are gaily wrapped packages for us to shake and figure out what we got. Because that’s not what the scripture is about. In fact, all the spiritual gift list is not to talk to us about how wonderful it is to have gifts, although that’s pretty good. It is about community. It is about differences, about how people that are different, in different ways, are blessed together to build up the body, even though they are different. You get that? It is about embracing differences.
And look how subtly it has changed. Instead of saying, oh, them, they’re not like us, they’re different; instead of saying people are different, and we’ve got to put up with them, it says what? People have different gifts. People that are different are gifts, not burdens. Not something to be fixed. Not something to be convinced. Not something to come in line with the one true opinion – which is mine, by the way. They are gifts.
What if we went along with that? It goes, “Oh, what a gift that is.” You know, it’s kind of like in the South. I don’t know, anybody from the South? They have that saying, “Oh, bless her heart.” That means I don’t really approve of what you’re doing or saying, but bless you anyway. Now, you can go through what that means. But I’m going to take it to mean you’re a gift. Your specialness, uniqueness, problematic behavior I’m taking as a blessing; I’m taking as a gift.
Now, one of my main errors is I forget to explain my title. So let’s get that done. Hanlon’s Razor is by Robert Hanlon. Did I get the name right?
ATTENDEE: Hanlon.
Hanlon, yes, thanks. I wrote it down for all of us. Yeah, Robert Hanlon is a computer programmer. And he sent in this to a joke book, kind of distilling what has been floating around in literature and quotes for centuries. And he says that “Do not attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Don’t think someone is evil and out to get you when it could be they’re just stupid, and not even thinking about themselves or you or anybody.
Now, Bob, come on. That’s pretty harsh. You know. Stupid? Really, Bob? You know, Bob must be one of those cultural elites, you know, went to college, thinks they know everything. Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve just cut myself with Hanlon’s Razor because I’m assuming malice in what he says. Well, I’m still not happy with the stupid.
So since I’m the one true measure of all things for like 20 minutes, I would like to say a different one. Let’s call it Ramsey’s Razor. That’s great. You saw that coming. Ramsey’s Razor. And I’m going to say do not attribute to malice what can be explained by miracle. Do not attribute to malice, to evil in the world, to somebody out to get you, what could be a miracle.
When you say “miracle,” what do you mean? Some supernatural intervention in the orderly course of nature? Well, yeah, those are showy, and that’s good. But that’s not just all the miracles. For me, miracle is that what we talked about in the gospel, a sign. A work that points to Jesus Christ and to God. And you look at it, and you say, “I see God there.” You know, like you look at my face, and you see Jesus. Right there. A miracle. You think God when you see this. And you see Jesus struggling in the gospel because he straight-off calls him out. He calls him out. He says, “You’re just here because you’ve got the loaves, and you were fed with bread.” And he’s talking about the feeding of the 5,000. He’s talking about the miracle.
And boy, do we go on about that. You know, oh, he just had five loaves and two fish, and then they came up, and they had baskets over, and let’s do the calculation, take an inventory, and how many was that? And it was just men, so it was probably more like 10,000. You know, okay, that’s an okay miracle. But, you know, I’m pretty sure a competent caterer could do that, and definitely a magician could pull that off. There’d be a little prep work, but it’s doable. Far as a miracle goes, I don’t know.
But I tell you, how about this? If, I’m saying if. So no emails to the stated clerk; okay? I’m saying “if” right here. So if, what if this is? You remember the story? It’s supposed to be a sign of God for the miracle. A child comes up. Maybe a girl. A child comes up and says, “Well, I got my lunch. I could share that.” And a disciple says, “Well, what’s that among so many?” And so Jesus accepted that gift, and he brought her out in front of the crowd, and he broke it. Remember? He broke it. He held it up, and he blessed it. He took it from, let’s say a little girl, and shared it out.
And people say, well, it was a miracle because of the baskets. The baskets were magic baskets. They never filled. Well, you know, back then there wasn’t any fast foods, or wasn’t any restaurants on the turnpike. There wasn’t any of that stuff. People, if they were going out for the day, you’d better believe they had food. They were packing a lunch. But you know, when you’re in a crowd, and all sorts of people around, maybe you don’t want to get out your food when there’s a bunch of hungry people around you. Maybe you don’t want to do that.
But, you know, they saw the little girl, and they go, well, you know, the little girl shared stuff. She shared all she had. I’m not going to be shamed up by a little girl. I got stuff. Hey, you want something? It’s like that Nevada Day Parade. Have you ever tried to be sober throughout a Nevada Day Parade? You’ve got to pretty much be militant about it. “Hey, I got something. Try some of this.” You know?
So that little girl, and Jesus’s acceptance of her gift, changed that crowd of strangers into a crowd of friends and family, sitting down for a meal. And where they had scarcity, when they had nothing, they had plenty because they had it with them all along. You know, it’s like that famous church building – have you ever heard of the church building fundraising capital campaign? The campaign person comes up and says, “I’ve got good news. We have all the money we need for this capital campaign.” And everybody goes, “Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.” And then he says, “Yeah, it’s right in your wallets.” Not so much hallelujah there.
And I tell you that my version of the transformation of that crowd from strangers that will let the other persons go hungry, to a family and friends and a community that shares their bread with one another until there’s enough and more left over, I’m telling you that’s a miracle. That shows me God and the way God wants us in the world, much more than how much bread is in that basket in the leftovers. That’s the gospel.
And we look out at the crowd, and they said, oh, that person’s going to take my bread. That person’s going to steal my lunch. That person is going to grab my wine if I bring it out. Malice. But Jesus was able to turn that into miracle. Be okay if I share my stuff. Everyone else will share. It’ll be a miracle. I’ll be a sign of God’s working among us. It’d be a taste of heaven, if I assume miracle instead of malice.
My brother doesn’t call me for decades. He just doesn’t call. And I thought it was, you know, because of that incident 25 years ago, you know, back when we were kids. Or it was because he doesn’t care about me, or because he’s mad at me, or because I’m too preachy, or because of his wife. Malice. None of that’s true. I mean, I didn’t check it out, just put it in my head.
We’ve been pretty much meeting on Zoom for an hour every week during the pandemic. You know, we go back and forth. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes not so good; you know? But there’s no malice there. Miracle. I was talking to him, and both of my brothers come on the Zoom most of the time. And he says, you know, “We’ve got to keep this up because, if we don’t, I don’t talk to Tim for a year.” It’s not malice. It’s just that we’re not looking for the miracle.
Twice I was in a big church. How do you know it’s a big church? Because the pastor’s office has a private bathroom. I’m telling you, as I got older, that got better and better, I’ll tell you. And one time I was in a church, and I’d go around the church, doing I don’t know, whatever I was doing. And behind me followed the custodian. The custodian followed me. You know, he just giggled. I could hear him chortling back there. And I go, “What are you doing?” He goes, “Oh, no, don’t mind me. I’m fine.” I walk more and hear him giggling. What’s he doing? What is up with that guy? You know? Couldn’t figure it out.
And I go, why is he following me? Does he think I’m stealing stuff? What is he doing? You know? I go, “What are you doing?” I finally said. He goes, “Well, Pastor, when you walk around with your coffee, you spill little drops on the carpet. And it’s a lot easier just to wipe them up as soon as they come off.”
Malice or miracle? You know, where there’s confirmation bias, you probably heard about this, this is what runs YouTube and Facebook and our magazine subscriptions in olden times, you know, and our television news selection now in that we want to hear things we already know. We want to confirm our beliefs of what we already suspect and believe and understand. And so Facebook and YouTube have really fired up on that. And if you keep watching YouTube, they say, oh, you like that? Here’s a little bit more. Oh, you like that? Here’s even more. And if you like that, here’s even more and more. And you just keep rolling down into a rabbit hole of our own biases and prejudice.
And then there’s also availability bias or availability heuristic. Which means the information that is most recently available, that it’s easy for us to get, is the one we go by. Basically, it’s the lazy principle. You know, it’s a lot easier to read a tweet than a book. It’s a lot easier to go with a hot take from a TV host over a few 30-second sound bytes than it is to listen to a lecture on an expert. It’s a lot easier to watch someone on TikTok or YouTube, or someone at your breakfast table tell you about the latest medical news, about this or that, than to actually go to your doctor and actually talk to someone who actually studied medicine. That’s harder to do.
Availability. We look for the easy stuff. And too often, the stuff that is apparent, that is out there, that is ready for us to consume is the stuff that is designed to make us upset, to fire us up, to say the both/and, either/or, the other side, oh, gets upset, we’re going to suck you in to watch and click. Malice, not miracle.
And the malice people will tell you that the different ones are out to get us. And they’ll have little snippets or little snaps, little tweets to tell you about the different ones that are out to get you. Where in our scripture today we find the different ones are out to bless us. Ramsey’s Razors don’t attribute to malice what God says could be a miracle. Do you know how hard it must be with someone with the gift of prophecy? That person’s got to be hard to put up with. Or an evangelist? Can you imagine being with someone that’s an evangelist? But in our scripture it says those are gifts. Those are miracles. That’s what makes community.
If we look at what we have in our community as gifts instead as obstacles to fix, we can find the miracles. We want to fill up the voids in our life, the emptiness, the unknowns, the questions. And we can do that. We can do that with faith. We can believe that God is there, God is working. We can do that. And we can do that with fear, and so often we do. The scary unknown, the monsters in the dark, the scariness of what is coming next. We can fill that up with fear. And I’m not telling you either one. Sometimes it is fearful. Sometimes it is faithful, and it might be good for us to practice more on the faithful thing. I’m not telling you not to do that.
But I’m telling you, what if we could keep that empty space open? Keep it available for God’s work and miracle? Fill it up, not with faith, not with fear, but just keep it open and say God will show us the way. We’ll be faithful, and God will be there. You don’t have to fill it up with fear, or even with faith.
Ever hear that story about is a glass half full or half empty? That’s a trick question because I believe there’s no way to tell from a static picture whether the glass is half full or half empty. You’ve got to know which way you’re going. Because if you’re filling up the glass, it’s half full. If you’re draining the glass, it’s half empty. It’s on the way to being empty, or it’s on the way for being filled. There’s no way to say right in the middle, is that half full or half empty? It’s only with the direction. Maybe that’s hard to understand.
Let’s talk about church. Is the church half full or half empty? Well, if you’re thinking the church is going to grow, more people are going to come, you’re going to say oh, my gosh, the church is half full. We’d better get some more chairs. If you’re thinking the other way, oh, my gosh, the church is half empty. We’d better get rid of the chairs. Or what if we could say it’s neither half full or half empty? There’s room for others. There’s room for others. There’s room for people to come. Did you know that church planner says if your church is more than 80% filled, new people won’t come because they say there’s no room for me here. They don’t see it as half full or half empty. They look at it, is there room for me?
And I tell you, if we fill things up with malice, there’s no room for a miracle. But if we somehow are able to keep the things we don’t know, the future we cannot see, and say to ourselves that with God we can go forward in there, if we can keep that place open, well, then, there’s room for God to do marvelous things. There’s room for God for a miracle to create community. There’s room for God to say, those people, they’re different. Praise God. It’s a blessing, not a curse.
Amen.
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