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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
And what I find compelling about Jesus is that I can see the attentiveness that I want in my life modeled in the way that he interacts with the people around him. This is God with soft skills. Last week we kicked off 2025, and we spoke together about the art of intention in our relationships. This year we want to start the new year by talking about depth and intimacy in our relationships. And as I said last week, that is absolutely inclusive of our romantic relationships, but actually a big part of this series is about expanding our imagination, maybe even our use of a word like intimacy, into a wider spectrum of relationships.
Jeremy Duncan:See, I think maybe more than ever, with the rise of large language models, and computers that can use language, and story, and conversation. We need now more than ever more depth and intimacy in our offline connections as well. That's not because I'm anti AI. As I said last week, I'm actually quite fascinated by this technology and how it will become part of our lives. But I do think we need to be conscious and intentional about how we engage with almost all of the technology in our world.
Jeremy Duncan:For most of our lives, computers have been largely neutral. Ones and zeros, data and digits. But all of a sudden, our computers, our networks are diving into the world of story, and narrative, mythology even. And we need to know that story will always have more influence over us than facts ever will. Particularly when those stories become internalized and self reinforcing.
Jeremy Duncan:And that's exactly what we saw in the story of Samson last week. I mean, from the outside looking in, you can see this guy is obviously a mess. And there are multiple moments along the way where at any point he could have exited from his downward spiral. But the problem is, all he has is his own internal monologue. His frustration that feeds on itself.
Jeremy Duncan:His anger that builds with every perceived slight. You read the story, and there's no voice in his life, no one with the depth of intimacy to tap him on the shoulder and say, bro, what's going on here? Bobby mentioned this actually in the question and response last Sunday night, but when you read through the story of Samson you realize he's just a very lonely man. Like he's just consistently alone. He's walking alone, and grumbling alone, attacking alone, lamenting alone.
Jeremy Duncan:In fact, most of his dialogue is even just him speaking to himself. And there's no counternarrative in his life to help him reevaluate his perspective. And I think the lesson for us is that we need to be intentional about ensuring that we are surrounded by enough voices with enough intimacy that we are never left just on our own. Now, online can be a part of that. For most of us it probably already is.
Jeremy Duncan:But we also need to be intentional about offline spaces with real people, tangible proximity with those who can hear us, and see us, and listen to even our most outlandish thoughts, so that we can receive some pushback that comes with lovingkindness. Okay. Last week, we talked about the need to be intentional. Today, we talk about how to start. First though, let's pray.
Jeremy Duncan:Our attentive God who surprises us with an infinite ability to look and look again with grace filled eyes, to see what has changed in and around us. To take us as we are in this moment, unencumbered by past mistakes. We begin today with the assurance that you are always interested in our story. Willing to listen. Motivated to come and search us out.
Jeremy Duncan:Might we trust today, truly, that your love for us is not contingent on what we have done to earn it, but on your continued imagination for everything we might become once transformed by your love. And then, might that divine instinct to believe in what could be tomorrow, Reorient us toward what is possible today. Help us to love ourselves in the way that you have first loved us. Then help us to love our neighbor in the way they deserve to be loved as well. Help us to be attentive to the unknown person we encounter this week, trusting that there is always more to tell and always more to discover.
Jeremy Duncan:Might we come to believe that perhaps our next great friendship lies on the other side of holy curiosity. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Last week was the art of intention. Today we look at the art of attention.
Jeremy Duncan:And we will explore Tuesday dinner, heuristic models, missing verses, and finally some honest attention. But as I thought about attention this week, the main image that came to mind for me was dinner. A dinner on Tuesday night in particular. See, I do most of the cooking in our house. My wife Rachel does the baking.
Jeremy Duncan:I find that all far too restricting. All those measurements and directions and recipes. Just let me put in as much butter and salt as I want. All right? And one of the traditional problems with doing the cooking in the house is figuring out what you're going to make for dinner, and then what you're going to make for dinner for the kids.
Jeremy Duncan:Right? So my kids rarely appreciate my cooking. They would much rather exist on a diet of Mr. Noodle and Kraft dinner. By the way, my kids used to have much more adventurous palates.
Jeremy Duncan:I remember when my son was 4 or 5, Rachel and I would scoff at those parents who complained about their picky eaters, thinking we had simply raised a child of extraordinary culinary enculturation, only for him to revert to noodles and ketchup about a year later. However, I did come across a theory that made me feel a little better about my cooking. I read a paper that suggested that evolutionarily, children start off with an openness to all kinds of flavors. That's because they need to eat whatever they're given. They can't hunt and forage for themselves.
Jeremy Duncan:So whatever mom and dad provide has to be acceptable to their palates. But then somewhere around the age of 4 or 5, as the kids start moving more freely on their own and their range expands beyond the view of their parents, their palates actually become much more sensitive to strong flavors like bitterness. That's because that's the age we want our kids to stop putting poisonous berries and moldy leftovers into their mouths. So those picky palates are designed to protect them from otherwise bad choices. Now, is it true?
Jeremy Duncan:I don't know. But it is what I tell myself when my kids refuse my best efforts. There's at least some peer review to back up the quality of my cooking. Anyway, on Tuesday night, we're sitting around the table and I had made this sort of communal Mediterranean meal. We had some falafel, and some roasted vegetable, and hummus, and pita all in the center of the table, and after some initial hesitation everyone without exception found this meal to be acceptable.
Jeremy Duncan:So acceptable in fact that at one point unprompted my daughter turned to me and said, daddy, I love this dinner. And then not to be outdone, my son, between bites of vegetables of all things said, Hey, dad. Today at school we learned about ancient Athens and the birth of direct democracy. Now that may have been a non sequitur, but he then proceeded to tell me all about what he learned that day without any pleading or cajoling, none of the normal preening that I display in order to get a shred of feedback on educational progress. My daughter even joined back in to tell me about a craft that she made at play school.
Jeremy Duncan:Rachel and I stopped, looked at each other across the table thinking, what is going on? We decided we're having hummus at dinner from now on. I'm joking a little bit. I think dinners alternate between being one of the most frustrating and enjoyable parts of every parent's day. But what I have learned over time is that when my kids want to share whatever it is prompted by, I want to be curious in that moment.
Jeremy Duncan:Now thankfully, ancient Athens happens to be something I am particularly interested in. I did resist the urge to talk about the New Testament at table. Minecraft though is generally somewhat lower on my investment scale. And my daughter's endless parade of scrapes and scratches that need new band aids are endlessly fascinating. To her, not so much to me.
Jeremy Duncan:Still, one of the commitments that I've made to myself is that when my kids are interested, I'm going to try to be. Because what I've learned is that that kind of attention, even for your kids, isn't always automatic. We did a series a few years ago now called Tell Me More. It was all about trying to be more curious. We used that title, Tell Me More, because as I said in that series, it was a phrase that I had intentionally picked up.
Jeremy Duncan:I tried to work into my daily vocabulary, because I got it from a friend who says it to me all the time. Anything I offer in conversation, if he can tell that I'm invested he will respond, tell me more about that. And I've tried to pick that up, not because I want to drag things out of people, or force them to share more than they're interested in volunteering, but because I want to intentionally step outside of my heuristic boundaries. See as human beings, we are constantly taking in vast amounts of information all the time and we only have so much attention to go around. In conversations we are listening for what is said, but we're also listening to what is not said.
Jeremy Duncan:When we meet someone we are picking up in all kinds of visual social cues. Are you leaning in? Are you crossing your arms? Are you checking your phone? Are you locked in with me?
Jeremy Duncan:We're seeing what's around us, but our brains are actually paying attention to far more than we can consciously be aware of. And so what happens is, there are a series of heuristic decisions that are made for us unconsciously. Your brain will discard information you don't need. It might even react emotionally to information you don't perceive. And this isn't necessarily a bug in our programming.
Jeremy Duncan:It's a feature. See, you and I only have so much computational power available to us. And so over time in both learned experience and at evolutionary scales, our brains have learned to create a good enough approximation of the world within which then you and I can make our conscious choices. That's what heuristic means. It's a rationalized, but not fully perfected model.
Jeremy Duncan:So a rule of thumb is a heuristic. And a good rule of thumb is you don't need to know what's happening over here. You need to know what's happening here. That's why you've got both eyes on the front of your face to focus your attention. However, stereotypes are also heuristics.
Jeremy Duncan:Preferences are heuristics. In groups are heuristics. Out groups are heuristics. And sometimes those heuristics stop us from being as curious as might benefit us in the long term. In fact, I might argue that in the absence of some focused intention, our attention to each other is too limited for our own good.
Jeremy Duncan:That's why even with my own son when he starts talking about ancient Athens at the dinner table, I want to teach myself, discipline myself to pay attention, to respond. Tell me more. And this is also where I think Jesus can be a real challenge for us. Because if our intention is this year to pursue more depth and more intimacy in our relationships, knowing that we need more than just our internal monologue to see and perceive the world clearly, then I think Jesus offers some intriguing moments to slow down and pay attention to. One of them comes in John 5.
Jeremy Duncan:See, at the start of this chapter, Jesus is heading up to Jerusalem for one of the festivals. And we read that in Jerusalem, near the sheep gate, was a specific pool in which the Aramaic called it Bethesda, and it was surrounded by 5 covered colonnades. Here a great number of people with disabilities used to lie. People who were blind, or lame, or paralyzed. And one who had been there had been paralyzed for 38 years.
Jeremy Duncan:But when Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a very long time, he asked him, do you want to be made well? But the man replied, sir, I have no one to help me get into the pool when the water is stirred. While I'm trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me. And, that's kind of a strange response. Right?
Jeremy Duncan:I mean, what on earth is he talking about here? When the water is stirred someone else goes ahead of me. What is that about? Well, what it's about is a missing verse. I just read verses 1 through 7 in John 5.
Jeremy Duncan:But if you look this up in your Bible, you'll notice there is no verse 4. Now it's there. It's probably just down at the bottom of your page in a footnote. This is what it says. It says, from time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the water, and the first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.
Jeremy Duncan:And what's happened here is that the story in John depends on this old myth about the pool of Bethesda. A myth that is explained in the missing verse. And presumably, the original audience of the gospel would have been well aware of this pool. And the author doesn't bother to explain it for us. He just assumes you will understand from the context of the man's response what he's talking about.
Jeremy Duncan:Now it's also possible that the author of this gospel knows this myth is nonsense. That God is not sending angels to stir up races between vulnerable people. And he doesn't want to give it any credence, so he just leaves it as part of this man's superstition. But what happened is over time as the gospel propagates and spreads and there are more and more people reading the passage who have no idea about the pool of Bethesda, people like us who don't know myths about angels and races to healing waters, somewhere around the 5th century a scribe decided to add this little bit of context in on the margins. And over time that marginal note moved into the text and eventually it ended up being assigned a verse when the Bible was first divided up into chapters.
Jeremy Duncan:Now, later, as textual criticism realized the mistake, it was relegated back into the margins, or the footnotes as it were. But the problem was we had already numbered the verses and we didn't want to renumber the rest of the chapters. So most Bibles today just skip verse 4. Point is now, we know the full story. The context for this man's objection to Jesus' question.
Jeremy Duncan:And now we can move on to what is, at least for me, the really interesting part of the story. Verse 6. When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he'd been in this condition for a very long time, he asked, do you want to be made well? And this translation is fine. In fact, it's quite good.
Jeremy Duncan:I have just one tiny little nitpick. See the word learned here, as in Jesus learned he had been in this condition, That's the word ginosko in Greek, and it refers to our knowledge. And so most translations that we have today will go with something like this. Jesus, knowing how long this man had been in this condition asked him, do you want to be well? As my son would say, I'm not a fan of that.
Jeremy Duncan:To me that implies that Jesus knows this supernaturally. And that's possible. We do see that kind of thing from time to time throughout the gospels, but the more straightforward reading the Greek here is that Jesus comes to know this because he talks with this man. In fact, ginosko here is in the participle form. And if you remember back to grade 6 grammar that means it's an I n g verb.
Jeremy Duncan:Right? So if I was going to translate this, I would go with something like, Jesus, upon learning this man had been in this condition for a very long time asked him, do you want to be made well? That's a pretty subtle change from the NIV. Like I said, I think the NIV is actually the best that we've got of our contemporary translations. But for me, it's an important change because it helps to clarify the context.
Jeremy Duncan:This is not Jesus with supernatural knowledge asking rhetorical questions of strangers in vulnerable positions. This is Jesus striking up conversations, asking questions about who He's interacting with, learning about those in front of Him, paying attention to who they are and how they want to be treated by Him. I don't think this passage is just a set piece for Jesus to perform a miracle. I think this is Jesus genuinely attentive, curious about the people who cross His path. And I'll tell you what.
Jeremy Duncan:I happen to think that a Jesus who pauses his travel plans, who delays his path to Jerusalem, who starts to talk with a man who is ignored by everyone else and who genuinely wants to know about who this man is, I honestly think that sounds more divine than a Jesus who just knows things because He does. For me, divine doesn't start with the supernatural. It starts with the perfectly loving. And I think that changes some of the calculus in how we imagine, how we understand that Jesus' interactions with people. Sometimes we have these questions about prayer.
Jeremy Duncan:Right? Like, why do I need to pray if God already knows everything about me? I mean what can God possibly learn just because I vocalize my concerns? Well, I'm not suggesting that God doesn't know. I'm simply saying maybe God wants to listen.
Jeremy Duncan:Maybe God knows there's more to a conversation than simply information. Maybe speaking and listening, self disclosing, and offering our attentive presence to each other. Maybe that is as important. Maybe that is more important even than just what is said. In fact, maybe Jesus does know everything about this man, and yet maybe Jesus does want to learn something about him by listening to him.
Jeremy Duncan:Maybe that's what's divine about the story. Actually, I think about this a lot in terms of the attention that I offer to the people in my life. One of the things I really struggle with is giving attention to more than just information. I spend a lot of my time in any given week writing and crafting language, shaping words and sentences to express my thoughts creatively and succinctly and effectively. And I really enjoy that.
Jeremy Duncan:I love doing it. Generally, I think I'm pretty good at it as well. But because of that, my perception of myself is often colored by the fact that most of my communication actually has hours of composition, and study, editing, and refining behind it. I mean this isn't real life. Right?
Jeremy Duncan:This is me with hours of preparation just to get up and talk for a couple minutes. And maybe because of that, sometimes I have struggled when people aren't able to communicate with the clarity that I expect from myself. Now, let's be honest here. That's a pretty toxic trait in a pastor or a boss or particularly a parent with kids who are learning how to express themselves. And so I've had to teach myself.
Jeremy Duncan:I have to work really hard at intentionally slowing down to pay attention, to listen not just for the information I want out of a conversation, to listen for everything that is being offered to me in every interaction. Now, maybe you would just call that emotional intelligence, but the truth is some of us like me have to work really hard at that. And what I find compelling about Jesus is that I can see the attentiveness that I want in my life modeled in the way that He interacts with the people around Him. This is God with soft skills. And that's important to me because it reframes this question that frankly can feel a little bit patronizing here.
Jeremy Duncan:Now, we're not there for the whole conversation. Everything that leads to the question we don't have all the context that Jesus does, but we do learn a few things along the way. We learn this man has been in this condition for 38 years, implying he's at least somewhat older than that, implying that something happened to him at some point in his story. We learn that he has no one to help him get into the water, implying that over time his community has faded and they've drifted away, implying He has very little social support here in this moment right now. We learn that He has put His trust in perhaps the last shred of hope He has this myth about angels and magical waters.
Jeremy Duncan:And this is where I think Jesus' question actually starts to feel personal, responsive to the attentiveness He's offered, not just a rhetorical question. See, this man has said to Jesus that he is focused on getting to the water first. But Jesus asks, do you want to be well? And there's some subtext here. Right?
Jeremy Duncan:This is not the word for healed. It's not the word for fixed or repaired. This is the word for whole, and well, and healthy. It's about your body. Yes.
Jeremy Duncan:Absolutely. But it can just as easily be applied to your social, mental, your economic health as well. This is something a lot closer to the Hebrew idea of shalom. And I have to imagine that Jesus means all of that because that's actually the key to the story for me. Jesus has listened to this man.
Jeremy Duncan:He's paid attention to this man. He's learned about this man and empathized with the way his options have been narrowed and constricted, constrained by circumstances beyond his control. How He has perhaps had to put His hope in a story that can't possibly save Him. And so the answer to Jesus' question isn't obvious because the question isn't whether He will get to the water first, the question is about giving this man agency over His own story. It's about the option to exit the narrative He's put His trust in and to choose to believe in something different, something that can actually help.
Jeremy Duncan:And look, this is going to sound grandiose but here's the truth. I think we do the same thing for each other every time we truly pay attention to each other's stories. We give each other the option to exit the narrative, however small it is, but that voice somewhere in the back of our head that tells us we are alone, we are on our own, we are uninteresting, and we are unwanted. The attention that you extend, the listening that you receive, it's about more than just the information that's exchanged. It's about reshaping the narrative we carry about who we are and why we matter.
Jeremy Duncan:And that is very much part of the wellness that I think Jesus invites all of us to discover, to know unequivocally that we matter. That's what the story is about. That's what your conversations can mean. That's what being a little bit more intentional about the attention that you offer can do, not just for the person across from you, but for you as well. It will reshape your narrative about what is important in this world.
Jeremy Duncan:The thing is that doesn't always come easily, And it rarely comes without us risking something in our relationships. But that's where we'll pick up next week. Let's pray. God, for the times that we have engaged with each other, sat across the table from each other, and tried to get the information that we wanted as a primary goal, We have put our attention on what we need, what we want, rather than what we can offer in our presence back to each other. For that, we're sorry.
Jeremy Duncan:And we ask that you would help us not contribute to those narratives that we pass on and we propagate. The most important thing about us is what we can do for someone else. God, for those times that we have been on the other side of that table, and we have felt that the only thing we could offer is what someone needed from us, that they weren't paying attention to us, that they weren't invested in who we were as people, as individuals, as someone who mattered in this universe. Might we know in this moment right now that we do matter and that the love that sits at the founding of the universe does pay attention to us, is attentive to our needs, wants to listen to our heart, wants to hear not just the facts, but the story that we are enveloped in. God, if that realization can take root in us, we pray that it would then bleed out in all of our interactions with those around us And that together we might remind each other of this incredible love that has founded this world and invites us to find a new path through it.
Jeremy Duncan:In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Hey, Jeremy here. And thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at commons, you can head to our website commons.church for more information.
Jeremy Duncan:You can find us on all of the socials at commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our discord server. Head to commons.church/discord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you.
Jeremy Duncan:Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.