Sermon Seeds: Opened Minds

Sunday, June 1, 2025
Ascension Sunday| Year C
(Liturgical Color: White)

Lectionary Citations
Acts 1:1-11 • Psalm 47 or Psalm 93 • Ephesians 1:15-23 • Luke 24:44-53
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?z=s&d=50&y=384

Focus Scripture: Luke 24:44-53
Focus Theme: Opened Minds
Series: Building Up a New World (Click here for the series overview.)

Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay

One of my favorite “girl” vocal groups, En Vogue, had a hit single, “Free Your Mind.” The song challenged the listener to expand their perspective and beliefs beyond racial stereotypes. The lyrics stated, in part,

Before you can read me
You got to learn how to see me
I said
Free your mind
And the rest will follow
Be colour-blind
Don’t be so shallow

While anti-racist best practices rightly reject the goal of colour blindness, the essence of En Vogue’s message actually encouraged appreciation and acceptance of the humanity of the individual while recognizing their distinctiveness that may form from cultural and ethnic traditions. They did not suggest becoming oblivious and myopic as a solution; rather, their approach challenged the listener to adopt a mind open and released from the bounds of assumptions, erroneously formed judgements, and limited understanding.

For a mind, or anything else for that matter, to be opened suggests that it was closed. A closed mind may occur by choice or by concealment. Both are acts of will. In the case of choice, the individual closes their own mind to information that confronts their tightly held beliefs or even their privileged status. When concealment exists, the closure results from the willful withholding of information for the benefit of the one who holds it like a weapon, prize, or threat. A closed mind is an adversary of truth, freedom, and love as well as a virtually insurmountable impediment to participation in the kindom of God.

Each of the gospel writers, in their own way to their own audience and with their own perspective, crafts their account to open the minds of their audience to the truth of the good news. For Luke, the last chapter of the gospel begins the transition to the second half of their work, the Acts of the Apostles. The Ascension ties them together. In the last chapter of the gospel, Jesus promises the disciples they will receive the accompaniment of the Spirit. At the same time, that is only a portion of the message.

A concluding scene in two parts brings closure to the Gospel narrative, even as it prepares for future developments beyond the story. First, Jesus interrupts conversation at a gathering of his followers (vv. 33–35) and ushers them, one more time, from fear and doubt toward confident, perceptive faith, informed by a rereading of recent events in the light of Scripture and of Scripture in the light of recent events, and previewing their future role (vv. 36–49). Then, finally accomplishing the exodos (departure) to which 9:31 has pointed, Jesus leads his disciples out and parts from them. Returning full circle to the narrative’s beginning, the Gospel ends in the setting of the temple, on a note of continual worship and praise of God (vv. 50–53).
John T. Carroll

The focus passage recounts the latter part of the concluding narrative. Jesus has concluded their incarnational ministry and shares his valedictory message with their followers. During their time together, Jesus has been preparing them for the ministry they will inherit. The recorded narrative informs the reader that Jesus has used the scriptures to point to the purpose and ends of his life on earth. In this discourse, Jesus connects himself to the prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures, including the Law, Psalms, and the Prophets. This time, Jesus not only shares the mystery of his mission; the disciples receive an exegetical accounting and analysis of the life and ministry of Jesus through the lens of the scriptures…and vice versa.

This backward look (or audition) to words spoken “while I was still with you” underscores again the continuity of identity between the precrucifixion Jesus and the risen Lord (cf. Dillon, Eye-Witnesses 193)….. Crucial to their preparation is fresh understanding of the meaning of Scripture, in the light of recent Scripture-fulfilling events that provide the focusing hermeneutical lens….The disciples will therefore continue Jesus’ own ministry of release (aphesis), which was anticipated already in the ministry of John the baptizing prophet (3:3), as his father Zechariah had foreseen (1:77), and which Jesus programmatically announced in his hometown synagogue (4:18–19). It was then carried through in Jesus’ mission, which again and again delivered “release” from oppression, debt, and sin—extending a gracious welcome and forgiveness that then opened a reordered life built on transformed perception and understanding.
John T. Carroll

An opening is also a release. Ignorance makes way for knowledge. Clarity replaces confusion. Truth overwhelms mendacity, misinformation, and misunderstanding. Mystery is not inherently bad, and the disciples would still have more to explore and learn. Jesus provided enough for them to move forward in their assignment—to continue the work of organizing, engaging shared power, and building a new world.

In the Lukan account, the call to repentance and the corresponding promise of forgiveness is explicitly associated with the nations. When Jesus reveals the truth of the biblical witness, they frame salvation in communal and political terms. This is no individualized offer of redemption; the scriptures reflect that the Holy One has always been full of grace and mercy. Jesus comes for creation—the world and the fullness thereof. The location of Jerusalem contributes to this point.

In contrast to the other Gospels, Luke locates all resurrection events in the environs of Jerusalem. Mark has no resurrection appearances, but anticipates them in Galilee. Matthew and John mix the locales. Luke’s focus on Jerusalem likely has to do with the biblical perspective on Jerusalem as the center of the world, the point of contact between heaven and earth. When Gabriel appears in the temple, the first locale mentioned in Luke (1:8), he steps down from heaven at the central point of contact between heaven and earth. Although Gabriel also appears to Mary in Nazareth, the appearance in the temple emphasizes the direct contact of heaven and earth. At the end of Luke, Jesus ascends to heaven, also in the environs of Jerusalem. Further, Jesus’ followers await the fulfillment of the promise of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem, which in Acts, indeed, happens in Jerusalem (Brawley 1987, 118–32). When Acts is taken into consideration, it is popular to argue for a shift of the center from Jerusalem to Rome. True, Paul winds up in Rome, but to make his destiny the destiny of the gospel is simply a category error. Beginning and ending the narrative in the temple, resurrection appearances in and around Jerusalem, and the ascension in the precinct of Jerusalem are part of Luke’s emphasis on the validity of the good news as deriving from and centering on God.
Robert L. Brawley

Jesus ascends not in repudiation of his embodied life. Rather, the ascension indicates a shift in leadership succession. Just as each era before their life eventually concluded as Moses (Law) gave way to the Psalmists’ composition (Wisdom) which led to the ministry of the Prophets, the Incarnation birthed the empowered ministry of the Church. Each iteration of agents of the kindom of the God has been charged with the ministry of release—opening minds (and hearts)—to the freedom of new life and the hope of a new creation. The church stands as a New Jerusalem, not in geographic or even political position, but located as a connector between heaven and earth. The church testifies to the already-not yet reality of the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven.

The church, as a collective, has historically had moments when its own need for repentance has overwhelmed any good it has produced (i.e. the Crusades). At the same time, the church has also commended itself through responding to human need, establishing other institutions to feed the hungry, to house the homeless, to tend to the sick, widowed and orphaned, and to educate and inform with steadfast commitment to truth. In perilous times, even as some factions of the church supported the evil purposes of the powerful and privileged, an organized and spirited force within the church became abolitionists, opposed the Nazi regime, and embraced the Civil Rights Movement.

Faced with the rise of White Christian Nationalism, the church has a choice to make. Will we continue Christ’s mission of release in the world? Will we be faithful to the witness of the Law, Wisdom, and Prophets? Will our actions and attitudes emulate Moses, known and unknown psalmists, prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah…and most of all, Jesus Christ? Or, will we claim those role models and servants of God while reacting and interacting like Pharoah, the faithfulness and feckless kings of Judah and Israel, and Herod? Will we isolate ourselves from the problems of the world and focus on the anxieties around our own survival? Or will we respond to the needs of the world and match our ministry to meet the moment?

The choice is before us, and our release to be the church that Jesus calls us to be begins with opened minds.

Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
I was graduated from high school at sixteen, and I talked of “Wendell Phillips.” This was my first sweet taste of the world’s applause. There were flowers and upturned faces, music and marching, and there was my mother’s smile. She was lame, then, and a bit drawn, but very happy. It was her great day and that very year she lay down with a sigh of content and has not yet awakened. I felt a certain gladness to see her, at last, at peace, for she had worried all her life. Of my own loss I had then little realization. That came only with the after-years. Now it was the choking gladness and solemn feel of wings! At last, I was going beyond the hills and into the world that beckoned steadily.
There came a little pause,—a singular pause. I was given to understand that I was almost too young for the world. Harvard was the goal of my dreams, but my white friends hesitated and my colored friends were silent. Harvard was a mighty conjure-word in that hill town, and even the mill owners’ sons had aimed lower. Finally it was tactfully explained that the place for me was in the South among my people. A scholarship had been already arranged at Fisk, and my summer earnings would pay the fare. My relatives grumbled, but after a twinge I felt a strange delight! I forgot, or did not thoroughly realize, the curious irony by which I was not looked upon as a real citizen of my birth-town, with a future and a career, and instead was being sent to a far land among strangers who were regarded as (and in truth were) “mine own people.”
Ah! the wonder of that journey, with its faint spice of adventure, as I entered the land of slaves; the never-to-be-forgotten marvel of that first supper at Fisk with the world “colored’ and opposite two of the most beautiful beings God ever revealed to the eyes of seventeen. I promptly lost my appetite, but I was deliriously happy!…
I suspect that beneath all of my seeming triumphs there were many failures and disappointments, but the realities loomed so large that they swept away even the memory of other dreams and wishes. Consider, for a moment, how miraculous it all was to a boy of seventeen, just escaped from a narrow valley: I willed and lo! my people came dancing about me,—riotous in color, gay in laughter, full of sympathy, need, and pleading; darkly delicious girls—“colored” girls—sat beside me and actually talked to me while I gazed in tongue-tied silence or babbled in boastful dreams. Boys with my own experiences and out of my own world, who knew and understood, wrought out with me great remedies. I studied eagerly under teachers who bent in subtle sympathy, feeling themselves some shadow of the Veil and lifting it gently that we darker souls might peer through to other worlds.
—W. E. B.. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

Building Up a New World Liturgical Resources
Book Chapter: “Dismantling Christianity for Indigenous Self-Determination”
Scripture: John 17:20-26
Book Quote:
“Discussions of ‘truth and reconciliation’ with Indigenous Peoples are common today. We cannot resolve or ‘reconcile’ until the truth has been fully realized, told honestly, and publicly…There is still quite a lot to say regarding violence perpetrated by religious institutions and invader-state governments against Indigenous Peoples, predominantly because this onslaught of violence has never ceased…Colonization by invader-state governments has largely been enabled by collusion with religious ideologies and institutions…Although some small steps and gestures have been made…more radical structural transformations inevitably still need to take shape, such a giving land back to Indigenous Peoples” (97-98).
Theme Notes:
If we are honest with ourselves, calls to unity like the one we find in Jesus’ prayer in John’s gospel “that all may be one” are often used coercively to require acquiescence with the status quo, normative, or the systems and structures with the most power. This kind of “oneness” has been used by Christians, historically and presently, to justify colonizing violence, now often continued as “inclusion” without structural change. But true flourishing and collective resurrective liberation requires a oneness built through solidarity and accountability, rather than power and compliance. How might we hear Jesus’ desire for oneness as a longing for truth-telling and reparations that can bring about genuinely collective liberation?
Building Up a New World Liturgical Resources written by Dr. Sharon R. Fennema, who serves as Join the Movement toward Racial Justice Curator with UCC National Ministries.

For Further Reflection
“Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.” ― Virginia Woolf
“Vulnerability is the only authentic state. Being vulnerable means being open, for wounding, but also for pleasure. Being open to the wounds of life means also being open to the bounty and beauty. Don’t mask or deny your vulnerability: it is your greatest asset. Be vulnerable: quake and shake in your boots with it. the new goodness that is coming to you, in the form of people, situations, and things can only come to you when you are vulnerable, i.e. open.” ― Stephen Russell
“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.” ― Frank Zappa

Works Cited
Brawley, Robert L. “Luke.” Gale A. Yee, Ed. Fortress Commentary on the Bible: Two Volume Set. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014.
Carroll, John T. Luke. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.

Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection
During the season of Easter, the suggested congregational response will come from the All Church Read Group Engagement Guide found on Frontline Faith.
Neighborhood Walk/Roll/Cruise
Take some time to walk around the land and the neighborhood where your community
has space. How much do you know about the people who live there and what kinds of
things are important to them or where they are struggling? What businesses and
organizations are serving the community and how? What’s missing? What landscapes,
plants and animals shape the community? Notice what judgements come up about the
community as you walk (drive, motor, scooter, etc.). Notice what dreams or
imagination emerge as you journey.

Worship Ways Liturgical Resources
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/easter-7c-june-1/

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.