May 28^th

Luke 24: 44-53

Ephesians 1: 15- 23

Open Minds

Elizabeth Macaulay

If you knew that it was your last day on earth.

If you knew that you have one last chance to teach the treasures of your heart to your beloveds. If you knew you had the time to tell one last story.

What would it be?

Yesterday we celebrated here in the sanctuary the life of a man who lived life fully and well. He spent great time with his children and grandchildren. He sunk seven holes in one and he served his country with distinction and he married an aquatennial princess and he flew planes and the stories Chuck Myre lived by will live on in his beloveds.

And probably the stories that will live on most powerfully are those he didn’t even know he was telling.

But had he known that he was to die, what final wisdom might he have graced his kin with?

For Jesus, risen and about to ascend into heaven, the question was more than rhetorical. It was real. What oh what could he do to help his frightened and doubting disciples? How could he help them to make that profound shift from being followers of Jesus to being leaders who would teach his stories?

Without the physical presence of Jesus to reassure and guide them, they needed great stories to give them hope and vision. They needed a sense of the scope of this thing to which they had been called.

So what Jesus does is profound. He opens their minds to understand the scriptures.

Doesn’t it take your breath away? The vision of being totally open to the sweep of God’s presence and passion for creation. God’s insistence that love can be lived fully and that the sacred is accessible - a vital presence in our lives.

It would be great sustenance for those times of fear and frustration and loneliness for those called to teach, preach, and live the stories of Jesus.

And wouldn’t it be great sustenance for us. How is it we carry on this opening to the stories of faith?

And again, this is not a rhetorical question. This is a vitally real concern. I’ll say it another way: how will Wally, the brother we welcome in the faith through baptism. How will he know the teachings and ways of Jesus?

Writer Anne Lamott will help us to answer that question. She shares her insights about this business of opening to the story of Jesus in her book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.

I did not mean to start a Sunday School, and did not have a speck of confidence that I could do so: I have only mediocre self-esteem when I am doing things that I am good at or that don’t require any self esteem. I grow anxious on my way to the dump with a car full of garbage, convinced that my garbage and I will be rejected, either because I am throwing out perfectly good stuff, or because it is so disgusting that the people who run the dump wouldn’t want it.

I suffer from what a psychiatrist friend calls clinical sensitivity; she recommends that I avoid too much stimulation.

I do not particularly like large groups of children, which is to say, more than two at a time, and I could not bear to miss any of the regular service, with which Sunday school would be concurrent. There was one more problem. There wouldn’t be any children, except Sam.

But six years ago I came to believe that I was supposed to start a Sunday school. .. One day I could feel something tugging on my inside sleeve, which is the only place I ever hear from God: on the shirtsleeve of my heart. I understood that someone needed to start a school, because it was the right thing to do, and most important, I needed to make church more fun for Sam.

(I didn’t know where to start) I know that with writing, you start where you are, and you flail around for a while, and if you keep doing it, every day you get closer to something good. Carolyn Myss said that we are responsible not for the outcome of things, but only for the ingredients, so Kris, (my partner in this adventure) and I bought everything we could think of that young children would need to learn about God: juice boxes, blankets, beach balls, moist towelettes, a children’s Bible, a boom box, and art supplies.

“And what will we teach them?”, Kris asked.

This was the problem. I don’t know much about God; only that He or She is love, and is not American, or male. Mary Oliver said something to the effect that the best sermon she ever heard was the sun. I thought, that’s the sort of thing we’ll teach.”

She later reflects about how hard it was, this building of a program where the stories of Jesus were shared with children:

“Someone long ago said that God is not a boss or a judge, God is a purpose, and I tried to live by this. My purpose was to show up and offer myself to people who were having a hard time, and part of doing that was to run this funky school.

We kept lurching forward. It reminded me of driving through the rain gto do an errand in the rural parts of Marin, on the road that leads to the ocean, past farmland and forest: you drive worriedly through poor visibility on a slippery surface, and you think you’re heading to one place, for a certain efficient reason, but you space out for a while, and there’s slippage in the sky, and all at once a long, low beam of sun slants through.”

Jesus opened the minds of the disciples to the sweep of the scriptures.

And Anne Lamott opened the minds of the disciples in her care to the way the sun preaches scripture, the way it testifies to God’s presence and power.

And we, we have our own opening to do.

Wally is going to rely on us to teach and tell and live the stories of Jesus. Stories he can turn to when the road is slippery and he’s not sure where it is headed. Stories that remind him that the long, low beam of light will shine through.

Some of those stories he will learn because we tell them to him, in Sunday school and at home.

But he’ll learn what our real story is by watching us. By seeing how it is we live our faith every day.

May we be a people of open minds.

Amen