Sermon from Sunday, April 22, 2012 based on Luke 24.
I wonder if we should hold an Open Minds competition--- a team against a team. What is an “Open Minds” competition? It is an annual event for schools that are part of the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). Phil Weilerstein, the executive director of the alliance put it this way, “During his State of the Union Address, President Obama called on us as a nation to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. Our goal (at the NCIIA) is to teach students to do just that, and in the process, to create solutions that can both achieve commercial success and improve lives globally, positively impacting the economy and boosting creativity within the U.S.”[1]
Every year 10 to 15 teams are selected from different schools of higher learning to present their new ideas and innovations. For example this year’s presentations included a team from the Rochester Institute of Technology which is presenting a form fitting vest “that incorporate load bearing straps that allow workers to lift heavy objects more easily and with significantly less risk of injury.”[2]
Back to the question at hand, why do I think we should have an open mind competition --- because Easter is that annual event that calls us to “open our minds” so that we can see Christ. Or as Scottish whiskey king Thomas Dewar put it: “Minds are like a parachute --- they only function properly when open.” And I would suggest we are not only talking about open minds but open hearts as well. How do we know that we as disciples are in the process of opening minds? Look at today’s gospel from the beginning.
Mentioned earlier in this lesson is that Clopas and an unidentified friend --- both disciples --- were walking along the road to a community called Emmaus outside of Jerusalem on Easter afternoon. As they are walking a stranger joins them.
Clopas and his partner however were not in a good mood during the walk and they share the reason why with this stranger. Their hearts were broken, their minds, their senses, their very souls entombed in grief as surely as Jesus was entombed in the hillside outside Jerusalem, condemned to death, crucified and buried. Oh sure, these two told the stranger, some women had gone to the tomb that very morning and run home shouting that Jesus’ body was nowhere to be found and claiming a vision of something like an angel who sang the good news that Jesus was alive, that he had risen from the dead. Well, the tomb, in fact, was empty, but none of the men had seen Jesus.
Clopas and his partner knew the facts and because they knew the facts, they saw what they knew that they would see, that not only meant not seeing how the resurrection was possible but ironically not being able to tell who the stranger walking with them on the road.
Luke tells us that Jesus saw how closed their minds’ were. Luke also tells us that Jesus saw their inability to believe. And so, the stranger on the road, the one these two disciples could not recognize, the incarnation of the possibility of God, set about opening their minds, their hearts, and their lives.
Jesus begins by going back to the stories of faith. Beginning with the writings of Moses --- the stranger began to teach them, to interpret for them the stories of what God had been doing in God’s beloved creation since before the beginning of time --- and the stories of what God was continuing to do in God’s beloved creation through Jesus the Messiah, God’s Son. The stranger began to open God’s Word for them --- and God’s Word began to open their minds.
In this process of walking and talking, Easter happened for these two as they listened to the stories of God’s mighty acts, the stories of mercy and grace and love. It got their minds and hearts racing to the point that they did not want it to stop. Clopas and his partner begged the stranger to stay with them, to at least share with them their evening meal. And so the stranger did. As they sat together around a table, the stranger whom they did not recognize took the bread and giving thanks to God broke it and gave it to them.
Luke tells us that at this point, their eyes were opened and they knew him. In the power of the resurrection, God opened their eyes, their minds, their hearts, and their hands. In and through the Word and the Sacrament --- the Book and the Meal --- they recognized Jesus, they saw the presence of the Risen Lord in their midst and Easter happened to them.
Now we turn to out gospel for these two promptly return to Jerusalem to the others still locked behind closed doors. Then again Jesus reappears and repeats in motion and language what happened on the road with Clopas and the other disciples. Now, all the disciples were Easter people, a team of creative people of possibility, people of the resurrection, open to the presence and power of God in all things.
The same is true of us. Resurrection is what God is about in the world, opening God’s creation, opening you and me, opening us as creative teams of Easter people. From through the waters of our baptism until after we cross the River Jordan with Jesus at our death, God is about the business of resurrection – opening the tomb, opening our minds, opening our eyes, our hearts, our hands, our lives.
We are an Easter team, people given open eyes and clear vision. We can never ignore the pain and suffering of God’s creation. We can never pretend that mourning and crying and pain are no more. We are called to see injustice and name it for what it is. But even as we see the suffering of the world, we are called to recognize God’s presence in it, to point always to the gentle Savior who comforts the afflicted and blesses the dying. We are peacemakers and justice-doers in the name of the One who is the King of Righteousness, the Prince of Peace.
We are an Easter team gifted with minds and hearts created to be open, just like those young people from schools across the United States who gather once a year to showcase their ideas; we are conduits of God’s grace in the world.
It is true that a lot of people, and a lot of people who claim to be Christian, seem to operate mostly in the “closed mode.” But the God of Easter is about opening --- not closing. And the God who could open the tomb and raise his Son, the God who could open the very gates of death, is even now breaking down the walls that divide us, opening the prison cells of what we think we know, opening us and through us the world to the amazing possibility of God’s grace, the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.
That means that as part of the Easter team we are to inspire each other with creative new ideas in how we can solve the problems of this world. How can we open the minds of those closed to God’s grace?
It is not easy, this Easter people team business --- and in fact, a lot of the time being opened by God and to God, is downright uncomfortable and involves a whole lot of bumping up against people and ideas and ways of being in the world that we would rather avoid. Who wants to talk about something as private as sex in church, straight and gay, nevertheless we had to and have too.
It is not easy. Turn back with me to that annual Open Mind competition. Back in 2010-2011 the Open Mind team from Georgia Tech chose to tackle the constant problem of sanitation and hygiene. The problem is difficult particularly in areas of the world where the resources --- like water --- are few, but the team from Georgia Tech focused on that one issue, the solution of building effective latrines.
Latrines in of themselves do not solve the problem because dry latrines, those without running water, do not teat the waste, they do not kill ascaris cysts for example. So the team developed a dry latrine system that provides sustainable, affordable, and safe treatment of human waste using the sun’s energy. But in order to do that they used the success and failure of those before them. The team made several trips to different parts of the world to experiment with different prototypes. The team had listening and learning sessions in the communities that installed their prototypes.
So I wonder do we as disciples perhaps give up to easy. Because, being part of the Easter team means taking our baptismal promises seriously. It means being persistent, willing to hang in there with each other and the people of God, even when others bail out. It means allowing God to work God’s resurrection power on us, walking with Christ on the road. It takes being present in worship for the Word, being present in worship when the bread is broken, the wine poured. It takes study and service and a level of commitment.
Perhaps we at times give up to easily. We open the Bible to a dusty page it makes no sense and close the book. We welcome a stranger and they are gone the next week. We come to worship and sing a song or hymn that is new to us, so we stop singing. A pastor gives a sermon, and it does not relate to my life, so we give up.
Easter is happening even now. Even now, God is working, opening our eyes, our minds, our hearts, our hands, our lives.
Here’s the plan: every time, every second of our lives, in the name of Christ, as part of the Easter team expect to see Christ. So wherever we are, whatever we are doing, in word and indeed, expect that Christ is present. Let us see what we expect to see. Let us expect to see Jesus. Let us expect that our minds will be open. Amen.
[1] http://nciia.org/about