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.