Sunday Musings

Jesus opens minds. He doesn't close them. Too many Christians ignore today's gospel.

Today is the Third Sunday of Easter.

In addition to being a festive holy day, Easter is an entire season of fifty days — Eastertide. The themes of these weeks focus on new life, love, connection, and community. Eastertide lasts until Pentecost which, this year, is Sunday, May 19.

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Luke 24:36b-48

Jesus himself stood among the disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

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In the last few decades, most mainline Protestant denominations rolled out branding mottos: God’s Work, Our Hands (ELCA), The Episcopal Church Welcomes You (Episcopal Church), and God Is Still Speaking (UCC). These pithy theological phrases communicate their central messages of doing justice, offering hospitality, and spiritual exploration. While all of the slogans are good and articulate core virtues in their churches, I’ve always thought the Methodists came up with the best of the lot: Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors.

To be open is a good thing. In psychology, openness, a capacity of receptively to new ideas and experiences, is a personality trait highly correlated with well-being, especially curiosity, creativity, and happiness.

Openness is an important social concept, too. We live in an age of open networks, open sources, open education, open information, open AI, and open access. Indeed, some social scientists argue that “open organizing” is one of the primary principles of our times. While we might argue about what can and should be considered in the domain of openness, there isn’t much argument that ours is a world where the quest for openness across all areas of human experience is pressuring borders, boundaries, and walls of all sorts. An open society prizes inclusion, transparency, collaboration, and community.

Even the most hard-core wall builder knows the pain of a closed society. Remember the COVID lock-down? Remember when everything was closed?

It was awful.

Most of us went along with it only because it was necessary. Somewhat ironically, those who mostly reject the idea of an open society hated it. Really hated it. Closure was so painful for people-not-noted-for-openness that they refused to cooperate. People who love boundaries and want to build walls to keep others out. They had to open things up — even if just for themselves.

Because even those who resist openness yearn for it at some level, in some way. Openness, another way of speaking of freedom, is a deep human longing.

How great was it when the closed signs were finally taken down, replaced by OPEN?

On this third Sunday of Easter, we read yet another story where Jesus miraculously appeared among his disciples. The disciples are huddled together, isolated in a small group, fearful of reports that Jesus was alive. The men didn’t believe the women and their tale of an empty tomb. As Luke says of the women’s report, “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

That sounds a lot like last week’s reading from John. Indeed, tradition holds and scholars argue that both Luke and John are telling the story of Easter night — when Jesus appeared to his terrified friends behind the locked doors of the upper room and said “Peace be with you.”

In John’s account, peace seemed to melt the disciples’ anxieties. In effect, as I suggested last Sunday, their hearts opened to embrace what — and who — they feared. Those fears were external (the people whom they had locked out) and internal (what they feared in themselves). Jesus’ peace, the breath of God, carried away the fears that closed them in. And they responded with emotional freedom — Then the disciples rejoiced.

In Luke’s telling, however, some skeptics remain in the crowd. Just saying “peace” doesn’t do it for them. They are still “startled and terrified,” closed down to the possibility that Jesus is anything other than a ghost. Even though “peace” didn’t work, Jesus calmly continued, showed them his hands and feet as bodily proof, and then said, “Have you anything to eat?”

The Lord of the Universe was hungry after been executed, spending a day in Hades, and being raised from the dead.

Watching Jesus chow down broiled fish evidently convinced the unbelievers in the group.

“Then,” after all that, “he opened their minds.” On the night of the resurrection, Jesus opened their minds. He didn’t insist that they believe what he wanted them to believe. He didn’t give them a doctrine test. He opened their minds. The stone rolled away. They were no longer closed to the possibility the women had told the truth — something they had never before imagined. When their minds opened, their fears receded. They opened to creativity, imagination, and transformation.

Easter is a story of resurrection. And the two subsequent Sundays unfold its meaning with these twinned stories about openness:

John: The disciples are so afraid that they lock themselves behind closed doors. The “room” in story signifies the double meaning of spiritual interiority, the heart. They’ve locked the doors of the hearts. Jesus showed up, spoke peace to them, and opened their hearts.

Luke: The disciples appear to be in the same place, not only fearful but perplexed and confused by the day’s events. Jesus showed up and extended peace. Yet this scared them even more: “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” That fear obscured their ability to understand. So, Jesus showed them his hands and feet. This moved their hearts, but Luke added, “while in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering…” And Jesus ate, most likely with them. Only after that strange meal, “he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.”

John: Open hearts.
Luke: Open minds.

Only open hearts and open minds can open doors.

Believing a resurrection happened doesn’t mean much if we lock ourselves behind closed doors, nurse our fears, and wall off our neighbors. It doesn’t mean much to closed hearts and closed minds.

What if resurrection means opening the heart to radical joy? What if it means sitting at table and eating with those whom we assumed dead — and at the table, we discover that those we’d left to the grave are as fully human as we are? What if it means experiencing and understanding the world with sacred openness? What if it means that we both feel differently and think differently? What if it is like moving from locking down to opening up? From fear to love?

It infuriates me when Christians insist that one must assent to a particular creed or singular theological definition of resurrection to follow Jesus. They’ve done the very thing thing that both John and Luke warn against — putting boundaries around the resurrection itself by insisting on precise doctrinal parameters. That’s being closed minded. If you turn the resurrection into a tomb, you’re doing it the wrong way.

Easter can only be experienced and imagined, never defined.

Resurrection is openness, the wild, unpredictable, confusing, puzzling, unbelievable, terrifying tale of the women: The tomb is empty; Jesus lives. Open hearts. Open minds. The veil is rent. Every wall torn down, every boundary dissolved, every lock broken, every door thrown off its hinges: There is no longer Jew nor Greek; slave nor free; male and female.

We humans long for such openness.

I doubt that the Methodist advertising gurus thought of their slogan as the multi-week story of resurrection: open hearts, open minds, open doors. That’s it. That’s the story. There’s not much else one can say when it comes to following Jesus. Except perhaps, peace — oh, and would you pass me some of that broiled fish?

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INSPIRATION

The world is
not with us enough.
O taste and see

the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bit,
savor, chew swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.
— Denise Levertov, “O Taste and See”

As the pine cone opens
to the warm breath of spring

as the buds of the tree
open to the sun

as the thirsty earth
opens to life-giving rain

as the mouth of the babe
opens for milk

as the heart of the lover
opens to its love

so open our minds
Creator eternal

so open our minds
O Lover of all

so open our minds
O crucified Redeemer

to the presence of your grace
in the sacred word,

and the grace that is your presence,
O living Word.
— Andrew King, “Then he opened their minds”

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Resurrection is the refusal to be imprisoned any longer by history and its long hatreds; it is the determination to take the first step out of the tomb….If we say we believe in the resurrection it only has meaning if we are people who believe in the possibility of transformed lives, transformed attitudes, and transformed societies.

Belief in resurrection means that I must commit myself to the possibility of transformation.

— Richard Holloway

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Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.

— Chogyam Trungpa