Matthew 11:16-19
One morning I walked into one of my college classes and took a
seat. It was an 8:00 a.m. class
and the professor was Ed Nelson.
Professor Nelson taught a number of my classes and was a great
teacher. This particular class met
in a basement classroom of the science building. It was a concrete block room that had a noticeable echo. Because it was an 8:00 class I had a
tendency to fall asleep in the class quite often.
On this morning I noticed a really large book sitting on Professor
Nelson’s desk. It was a really,
really large book. It didn’t take
long to find out the purpose of the book.
About ten minutes into the class I was asleep, and Professor Nelson
picked up the book, walked over, and dropped it on my desk. In that concrete block classroom it
created quite a boom as the echo bounced around the room and made it even
louder. I bolted upright and
knocked everything off my desk and there was Professor Nelson, standing in
front of me grinning. He turned
around, went back to his desk, and resumed teaching. I remained very much awake for the rest of the class.
I’m sorry to say I was not a very ambitious student. I very much regret that now and wish I
had taken advantage of the opportunities presented to me. But I am grateful I had teachers who
made me think, teachers who poked and prodded at my mind even as I tried to let
my mind wander to other things. I
was blessed to have teachers who would not allow my mind to remain static or
unchallenged. Those teachers made
sure I carefully considered what I believed and they challenged me to examine
closely every one of my beliefs, because they wanted to be sure they could
stand up to scrutiny and challenges.
I believe one of the most important things we can do for our
children and our young people is to challenge them to think and to teach them
to think, to analyze their positions and their beliefs carefully, and with an open
mind. I believe we should not do
what some told me. There were some
people in my life who told me everything about God was always very neatly tied
together. They had a complete
package – which were just a collection of their opinions – and said that if you
take away just one part of that package, it all falls apart. Here’s
how you interpret this passage and that passage, and you can’t interpret it any
other way. Here is what you must
believe about the origins of the universe and mankind and you can’t believe any
other way, because if you question or change just one part of this whole
package you make the entire package of faith no longer valid.
That’s not a very healthy way to look at faith, because when someone
walks into a classroom and part of that whole package of beliefs is challenged
they decide they must throw away faith.
Some people criticize colleges and universities as places that take away
the faith of some students, but it’s more likely that we have not prepared
those students for when a different perspective of faith is presented or their
particular interpretation of faith is challenged.
We’ve been going through a series of messages about historical
events and how they shape our thinking, and this morning there are many that
could go with this message.
Today’s message is The Tragedy of A
Closed Mind. In our Scripture
passage for this morning we find Jesus is in a very familiar situation – he is
under criticism. It seems almost
every page of the gospels finds Jesus being criticized for something. How wearying that must have been for him.
In today’s passage he is responding to that criticism. No matter what he did, someone out of
his group of critics was going to find fault with him. His response is very pointed. He said John was criticized because he
would not eat or drink; he led a very rigid life, so he was criticized. Jesus came eating and drinking and he
was criticized. He was accusing them
having minds so close they couldn’t hear what God himself was saying to them
when he was standing right in front of them.
One of the problems that can arise in faith – and in all of life,
really – is the closing of the mind.
This was a problem very evident in the critics of Jesus. It was a problem later with the critics
of Paul. And it has continued
throughout history. Several
centuries into the life of the church a turn came about, when the church began
to enforce a uniformity of belief.
It was an attempt to force the closing of people’s minds by saying here is what you must believe. Creeds were developed and adopted that laid
out beliefs that were required for everyone.
This attempt to enforce the “correct” beliefs reached its height
during the Middle Ages when the Inquisition came along. The Inquisition lasted, in various
forms, for over five hundred years.
It was five hundred years of putting people on trial because of what
they believed, or didn’t believe.
It was five hundred years of persecuting, and sometimes putting people
to death, because they would not think the way they were told to think. The Inquisition is a terrible blot on the
history of the church, because church leaders sought to control what people
believed and punished them if they dared to stray from what they were told they
must believe. It was a tragic
closing of minds.
One of the things I most value about Disciples is we don’t
complicate things with a long creed and list of requirements. We don’t tell people if you don’t agree with us you can’t be one
of us. Disciples churches are,
I think, one of the few remaining places where people of differing views can
still gather. People often ask me
what Disciples churches believe. I
guess they are looking for some list of things we require people to accept,
which we don’t have. We gather
around the great affirmation of faith – I
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. When you begin requiring anything beyond
the recognition of this central confession of faith, you run the risk of
imposing personal opinions upon others as a required tenant of faith.
It is sad that we have become so stratified as a society, and in
churches as well. We gather with
like-minded people and live in a bubble with other like-minded people. We become unable to hear what anyone
else is saying. Left, right,
Republican, Democrat, believer, nonbeliever, affiliated, unaffiliated – there
are lots of closed minds in all those groups. Politically and religiously we stay safely entrenched in our
own particular camps, assured our side is correct while the other side is
wrong. Those with no faith stay
behind their walls, smugly looking on in condescension at those silly enough to
believe, while those with faith stay behind their walls and judgmentally look
at those who they find foolish because of their lack of faith.
It’s not that beliefs are unimportant, but you run into problems
when you start imposing a set of beliefs upon other people. Beliefs, ultimately, don’t necessarily
change your life. James 2:19 says even
the demons believe and shudder.
What good do their beliefs do?
Here is the point – beliefs don’t necessarily open a person’s heart, and
that is what God’s work is about.
What Jesus was seeking in people was for them to open their minds to
what he said so they could then open their hearts. I’ve known people who, if there is a list of all the correct
beliefs, were perfectly lined up in their beliefs. And yet some of those people were some of the most unkind
and unloving people I’ve ever known.
It is an open mind that will lead to an open heart. Until our minds open to the truth that
every other person is a child of God and loved by God we our hearts cannot open
to them.
In 1984, when I was finishing seminary, I had an interview with a
church looking for a Student Minister.
I knew there was one particular question coming at some point in the
interview, and when it did I started explaining my answer. One of the committee members stepped in
and said it’s a yes or no answer. I said I didn’t think it was. He said we’re done, and the interview was over. That bothered me for a while, but I realized I was better off
in the long run.
Faith asks us to open our minds, so that we can open our
hearts. May our hearts, and our
minds, remain ever open.
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