He Opened Their Minds                              June 1, 2003

The Bible says he opened their minds so it must be a good thing to have an open mind don't you think? Yet it seems to be a strong tendency of the religious experience to close one's mind. The Bible also says in another place describing the same event that it is not for you to know which may or may not be a comfort to us yet it also seems to be a strong tendency of the religious experience to claim knowledge of all things. He opened their minds to understand the scriptures it says yet in the other passage they ask him to answer a question about the scriptures and he tells them that it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his authority. What is it then that we are to understand if not the answers to our questions? What is it that we are to understand if we are not to know everything?  Perhaps it is as simple as understanding what we cannot know just by knowing but by staying open to what will be revealed.

A closed mind is much easier to manage than an open one. A closed mind assumes that one knows it all already or at least one knows enough or all one wants to know. An open mind is much more work. It requires paying attention. It requires asking questions, even questions of one's own long-held assumptions. It requires thinking about things. It requires a certain amount of humility. It requires considering the unknown. It requires accepting the fact that one might not really know anything yet or that what one does know might be wrong or perhaps better said, incorrect or inaccurate. The difference is especially acute in the context of religion and even more particularly in the context of the scriptures. A closed mind assumes the Bible is the Answer. An open mind assumes the Bible asks the Questions that will lead us to the Answer or creates openings in the mind through which the answer may be revealed. A closed mind sees the Bible as the end of the quest for the Truth. The open mind sees the Book as the beginning of the quest for the Truth. A closed mind would assume that there is an answer and we already know what it is. The open mind, though not giving up on an answer, might be more inclined to think that the answer may well be found in the question.

The subject of the readings for this day certainly raises many questions while providing part of the answer for those who are willing to believe. When I was in Jerusalem we stayed near the church where apparently there is a footprint that purports to be the footprint of Jesus as he pushed off from earth for the last time to ascend to heaven. For some reason this sight was not on our agenda and we did not actually see it but Annie Dillard no less mentions it in her little book, For the Time Being: When he leads trips to Israel, Abbot Philip Lawrence of the monastery of Christ in the Desert (somewhere) in New Mexico, gives only one charge to his flock. "When they show the stone with the footprint of Christ in it," he says, "don't laugh." Maybe that was another footprint of Christ. I don't know. I don't think I am making this up.

Lawrence Wood (a UM pastor in Michigan) writes in the Christian Century: Just like that, Jesus is gone. He reappears just long enough to say goodbye. Like a wraith, like a dream, he leaves behind no children, no estate, no writings, no trace of himself except this feeling that his presence was real, that his absence is temporary. Christians have the uncanny feeling that he was just here. He must have just stepped out.  It doesn't seem like much to stake one's life on does it? A footprint. A memory. A word. And that is precisely why there is probably more to this than we know so far. Why do we still come together and wonder who he is? Why do we still do what he asked us to do in this strange meal we share? Why does it mean so much to us?

There is an expression I heard once where this mystery was referred to as the presence of the absence. Jesus may have taken off but the risen Christ is present in the Holy Spirit which expands with every heart that gathers it in.

(Wood in CC) Luke tells two stories about the ascension. In the first, he says that Jesus walked with the disciples, "as far as Bethany" where his friends Mary and Martha lived. According to the Gospel of John, Bethany was also where he raised Lazarus from the dead. So it was a significant place for him- a good place for him to spend his last moments on earth. (Wood goes on.) Let's read between the lines and imagine that he chose the place of his departure because he wanted to see Mary and Martha one more last time. Perhaps they ran to meet him, threw their arms around him, shouted in amazement. Mary probably had no more tears to wet his feet. Perhaps he sat at their table and let Martha wait on him again. All the while, the wondering disciples who had traveled the few miles from Jerusalem saw why he had risen, why he had come back here. Read this way the Gospel version of the ascension is a love story.

Luke's second account of a departure site is in Acts. Here he doesn't mention Bethany but says that Jesus ordered the disciples not to leave Jerusalem . .  (In this account) Jesus promised his disciples that he would not leave them comfortless, but would give them the Spirit. He meant for them to have an inheritance. And when, in a manner of speaking, they picked up his mantle, that's what they got - a double portion. The Spirit at Pentecost! We can still feel the force of it, whistling around our ears. This too is a love story. A story of how love survives loss. We are not comfortless. We don't worry too much about his absence, in part because his Spirit is so alive and present. He may have risen, but in another sense he remains on the ground. He has become his disciples. They have become him.

Perhaps that is why a footprint in a stone seems laughable. Who needs a footprint when one has a living Spirit limited only by one's imagination and own spirit.  Which brings us back to why an open mind is a good thing. In order for imagination to work one's mind need be open, open to all that is possible, known or unknown, open to what will be revealed. We will need our imagination to make our way into the mystery.

It is a mystery and it is a mystery because it is a love story.  If anyone has figured out love they should write a book and let the rest of us know. When we have figured out love we will also have figured out God. When he opened their minds to understand what they could not know but what they could do, it sounded a lot like love to me. It seems to me that we will have to be very open-minded to believe that love is the answer.

The Bible says: with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you . . .   Hope is essentially an open mind but more because it is also about the heart and the eyes of the heart that see the unseen and know the unknown. In other words it is knowing without knowing. I am not making this up either. You could look it up.  Or you could have an open mind that might one day understand. What difference does it make? Does it not make sense that the more we are open to life the more life we will know?  Most of us like to think we are opened minded but most of us are lazy too (which we don't like to think) and so we pretend to be open minded but really we have already decided what's what and aren't budging. Change is all well and good as long as it doesn't bother us too much but of course change is bothersome and so is the unknown and the something new that keeps coming up where the Spirit is and, frankly, either we do the work of thinking  and being open to new ways of thinking or we don't. That doesn't mean that something is right just because it is new but it also doesn't mean that something is right just because it is not new. The thing is, life is wonderful if we pay attention.

I can't help but think that the things that Jesus opened their minds to understand about the scriptures were that the scriptures were about hope and love. These are the reasons we exist here together in this place. We are the people that hope and that love. Both are action words. Both change who we are by changing what we think and what we do. We cannot know for sure what results or what answers our hope or our love will bring. Both hope and love raise many questions but they are also both answers to the most basic questions of all like why do we exist at all? What does it any of it mean? Love is what gives us hope and we can only know love as we enter into its mystery with hope without knowing what we are getting into until we get into it.

It all makes perfect sense to me. All we have to do is continue to love because we have hope and continue to hope because we have love. And when I say hope I mean hope and when I say love I mean love, the hope that does what it hopes for, the love that does what love demands; that lays down its life for others. Where does it end? It doesn't. Where does it begin? Wherever we are when we open our minds to understand why we are here. The scriptures are about life and life is both simple and complicated because life is a love story. Maybe that's what he told them, the scriptures are a love story.

The book says he opened their minds to understand this. May he open ours as well. May ours be a love story too.

©WIMMER2003