O Lord, we come not simply because it says “prayer of illumination” in the bulletin and this is how sermons start, we come because we need Your help. And so we pray, come, Holy Spirit, come, heavenly dove, with all Your quickening powers, kindle a flame of sacred love in these cold hearts of ours. Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, with all your quickening powers. Come shed abroad a Savior’s love, and that shall kindle ours. Give us ears to hear. Speak, for Your servants are listening. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Several years ago I read a fascinating book called Everything is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us. And the title suggests that the book is actually a play on “everything is obvious,” that in fact, everything is not so obvious, and common sense does often fail us. The book is written by Duncan Watts, a researcher at Microsoft, and formerly a professor at Columbia. He tells the story in the book about posing a problem to one of his undergraduate classes. He said “I want you to consider two countries. In country A 12% of the population agrees to be organ donors, that when they die, their organs can be donated for science or for those who need them. 12% in country A. In country B, 99.9% of the people are organ donors.” And he said, “What accounts for this difference?” And so the class would discuss and they came up with lots of possibilities. They thought well, maybe, one country was very religious and that’s why their number was 99.9. Maybe it was some sort of religious conviction to love their neighbors, or maybe one people valued life in a different way, or maybe they had different views of the body, and maybe perhaps in country A there was a thought that it wasn’t right that the body should be used in that way after death. Or maybe one country was very well-developed and had the medical technology to use organ donation and others didn’t. Or maybe one had many accidental deaths and injuries, and so they wanted to have organ donation. Or maybe one just had very skilled doctors to do it well and they didn’t trust any other country, the doctors with chainsaws or something.

So he said, “Well, let me tell you that country A is Germany, and country B is Austria.” And this was shocking. They were thinking that maybe these countries were in vastly different parts of the globe, very different cultures, not two countries that were right next to each other. So he said, “What accounts for the difference between Germany and Austria?” And they came up with more ideas. Maybe Austria had a big media campaign to encourage organ donations and it was, it was on train stations and there was a media blitz, or maybe it’s something to do with the education system and they were instructed in it, or people started speculating “it must have something to do with the Nazis” or something or World War II. They all figured some big explanation, some variation in culture or strategy, or beliefs that led to such an extreme difference. 12% in Germany, maybe it’s different but at the time of this illustration, 12% in Germany, 99% in Austria.

All of those reasons were wrong. The real reason was amazingly simple and quite boring. In Germany, at least at the time of this illustration, you have to sign up to be an organ donor, and in Austria, everyone is automatically an organ donor unless you opt out. [laughter] Opt in, opt out.

Right now the children’s ministry team is saying can we do that for nursery? [laughter] You just have to opt out. Let us know if you’re not going to show up.

And the point of the story is that common sense sometimes fails us. It’s tempting to draw all sorts of conclusions. There must be cultural, social, spiritual differences between Germans and Austrians, but the difference was entirely bureaucratic and administrati...