Opening Your Mind
Luke 24:
44-53
Do you have a moment from the past
that you remember like it was ten minutes ago? It could be a happy moment just
as easily as a moment of loss. I have several. The assassinations of Kennedy
and King. 9/11. Some of you are old
enough to remember the day when Pearl Harbor was attacked. And then, there are
those very personal moments. I remember the look my mother gave me right before
she died. It is drilled into my memory in a way that is indelible, permanent.
Whatever moment you have, it changes you. Somehow, you are never exactly the
same.
I think it must have been like that the day of the Ascension. Of course,
the disciples didn’t know Jesus was going to bodily ascend into heaven right in
front of their eyes. But according to the gospel of Luke, that is precisely
what took place. Mark’s gospel is similar in its report. It was the last
communication here on earth from the risen Son of God still in the flesh. It was
instructive. Jesus was telling his disciples the “whys” that he had come and
giving them their marching orders.
They had seen him several times since the resurrection. Over a period of
about fifty days, the New Testament records eight different appearances,
several of which were with the disciples. The disciples were his favorites. He
had hand-picked them over three years before and they had come to love him even
though they did not fully understand what it was that they were to do. So Jesus
instructed them for the last time. He told them he had fulfilled all the
prophecies and all the law. Luke says he opened
their minds. “He opened their minds
to understand the Scriptures.” He talked to them about the necessity for
his suffering, the reason for his resurrection. He explained to them the need
to proclaim the opportunity for sin to be forgiven, the sin of men and women
and the sin of nations. He told them to start in Jerusalem and to be witnesses
to these things. He said he was sending the promise of the Father upon them.
Then they walked with him to Bethany, a couple miles outside Jerusalem. He
blessed them. Luke says that while he blessed them, he parted from them and was
carried up into heaven. The word “while” is one of those compromises we make in
English to try to convey what is happening in Greek. Greek has more tenses than
English. Here the aorist tense is used to transmit a sense of some continuing
action that happened in the past. It might be translated more literally that as
Jesus was parting, he blessed and blessed and blessed them until he was out of
sight. I like that. I think that’s what he is still doing. He never stopped. He’s
still blessing you and me and people of faith today. The only condition Jesus
gave to the disciples was to stay in town until they were clothed with power.
But he opened their minds. And he
sent them a promise from the Father.
Can you imagine? By now the disciples knew they were in the
presence of the divine. He had died and was resurrected. They had seen him, touched
him, eaten with him several times. Others had seen him as well. Even so, Luke tells
us that they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit rather
than Jesus himself. They were properly awestruck. In spite of what had come before, they had to
be asking: Is this a ghost? Am I looking at someone living or someone dead?
And Jesus seeks to re-enforce what they see by offering his hands and
feet to be touched, even eating fish in front of them, as if to say Yes, I am
real. This is not the Greek notion of immortality, where the immortal soul
flees the body at physical death. This is like nothing they have ever seen or heard
of. They will have to either accept what their eyes and ears and even their
hands tell them, or they will have to deny their own senses.
Perhaps most importantly for the disciples and all who would believe in
the gospel is this: What the disciples saw, heard and felt is not just the
eternal Christ, the Son of God now somehow separate from the man who had been
crucified days before. They witnessed the risen Christ, the Son of god and Man who
had been crucified. To accept what they saw, they had to link the
crucifixion with the resurrection. What did Paul say? “I preach Christ crucified.” Easter is forever joined to Good Friday.
Neither makes sense; neither is complete—without the other.
Jesus had defeated death, but that
was only the beginning. Nothing could really have prepared the disciples for
what happened next. They had seen him die at the hands of an angry mob on a
Roman cross. They had witnessed his resurrection from the grave and had seen
and even touched his risen body. But even that would pale in comparison to what
the disciples witnessed that day in Bethany.
They watched their Lord and Savior as he bodily ascended into heaven,
blessing them as he went. Death was no longer master. Sin could and had been
conquered. Jesus rose from the dead for himself and for us, proved it to many
people on numerous occasions, and then—then he ascended into heaven in plain
view of the disciples. He blessed his band over and over and over as he
ascended.
And the disciples went home and blessed him back! Luke tells us that they
worshipped him with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God.
The Ascension was a life changing event for the disciples. They were
never the same. They waited until Pentecost, received the power to which Jesus
had alluded, and then they scattered over much of the known world bringing their
witness of those things, and what those things meant, to everyone who heard and
believed that good news.
But, you say, we don’t have the Ascension to motivate us. Luke says that
Jesus opened the minds of the
disciples to the Scriptures. They understood! They got it! We can too. Today,
we have not only the Scriptures that were available to the disciples, but also
the four gospels and Acts and the letters of Paul, John, Peter and others to
reinforce our faith and guide our actions. We have the witness of twenty
centuries of sacrifice and martyrdom and we have the witness of the scripture.
How can we not be motivated!
But, you say, we don’t have the power of Pentecost to harness us and make
us charismatic. Actually, that is exactly what we have. We have the power of
the Holy Spirit. It is promised to every Christian. It is the only way we can
hear and see the Gospel living and breathing. It is no different from that
which was received by the disciples. The difference is that their hearts were
wide open and they received the Holy Spirit in all its magnificent power. I
believe that God has already opened our
minds. We just have to take care not to spoil that which has been opened.
The world in which we live is seductive. It beckons us to do as we please, to
take care of self, to trust no one and to build our security in wealth and
possessions. Our culture, given free rein, would close the door of our minds
and allow us to be led by our politics and our pocketbooks. This is not the
environment of God’s creation. It is the man guided world of relativism and materialism.
That is our challenge today…to open
our minds. It is only then that we can really understand. That is part of
what we do when we come before the throne of grace and become baptized. It’s
part of why we gather as churches to worship. But if we are to carry on the blessing
that was given the disciples, then we must not close our minds to the life and
witness to which Jesus challenges his disciples. We must continue to ask God to
open our minds and let Him come in.
Only God can open our minds.
What we can do is to be receptive. We can invite him. We can let him in. When
we do, we too can understand the Scriptures. We too can receive the Father’s
promise. We too can witness these things, these life-changing things. And we
too can take our witness from this place to the workplace, to the fireplace and
everywhere we are. Remember your baptism. Remember why. Remember he was and is
and always will be there…for you and
for your joy and for your salvation.
