Sam was a Minister who had charge of a number of small chapels in rural Suffolk. Obviously she couldn’t be in every chapel every Sunday, so many services were led by lay preachers who were, I have to say, of varied quality and diligence! Arriving at one chapel three or four weeks after Easter, she was confronted by a group of members who asked, “Are you going to preach about the Road to Emmaus?” “No”, she replied. “Thank goodness for that”, said the chapel people, “The preachers every Sunday since Easter have spoken about that Road to Emmaus, and we’re heartily sick of it”. Well, the story is a bit of a “hardy perennial” at this time of year, isn’t it!

Well, you’ll be pleased – or perhaps disappointed – to hear that I’m not going to preach on the Road to Emmaus either, although it’s very much the setting or preamble to what I do intend to say. So we’ll skip over the story of those two disciples who walk to Emmaus and are joined by a mysterious stranger who they come to recognise as Jesus; we’ll assume that they’ve already rushed back to Jerusalem to tell their colleagues the exciting news, only to find that they already knew; we’ll accept that Jesus himself had appeared among them as if from nowhere. We’ll recall, too, how the disciples thought that Jesus was a ghost until he ate some of their dinner and they touched his wounds; we’ve also heard him gently upbraiding them for not having believed his promise of resurrection. In other words, all those things had taken place before we come to the one verse I’d like us to think about today: “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” – which, of course, he’d already done for his companions on the road.

This comment is very interesting. Jesus’ disciples were all Jewish so, although they weren’t an academic group, they would have been well-versed in the Torah (the five books of Moses) and probably had a passing knowledge of what we call the Old Testament. They’d have heard readings from it and sermons about it during their weekly visits to the synagogue; they’d also have heard Jesus teaching the crowds and debating with the scribes and Pharisees (who were academics) for a period of up to three years. Yet, somehow, nothing had really ‘clicked’ with them; they hadn’t made the mental link between what they knew of scripture and what they knew of Jesus. It was only as they were huddled in that room on Easter evening, that everything came together and lights started going on in the disciples’ thinking. And, says Luke, this wasn’t an intellectual process: it was Jesus, or perhaps the Holy Spirit (who is of course the spirit of Jesus) opening up their closed minds. For hadn’t he said, “When, the Spirit comes, who reveals the truth about God, he will lead you into all the truth”?

Paul takes up this theme in his second letter (which was probably his fourth, in fact!) letter to the church in Corinth – one with a rich mixture of people from both Jewish and pagan backgrounds. Speaking of his own kinsfolk and, perhaps, of the Pharisees (for he was one himself), he writes, “Their minds were closed; and to this very day their minds are covered with the same veil” [he’s alluding to the veil which covered Moses’ face when he came down from Mount Sinai] “as they read the books of the old covenant. The veil is removed only when a person is joined to Christ”. Luke and Paul are both saying the same thing here: you can know the Bible inside out, you can be the most erudite religious scholar: but you need something more if you are to meet Jesus. There has to be a spiritual process just as much as, indeed more than, a cerebral one. Jesus has to open our minds.

The problem for us is that he can’t – at least, not in a physical sense. I’m sure that those two disciples at Emmaus who finally recognised their fellow-traveller, and also the whole group of disciples who were at first transfixed by the ghostly appearance of their Master, had their thoughts prompted by Jesus’ words and actions. Was it his prayer before breaking bread, was it the fact that this “ghost” could eat fish, was it the way in which he expounded the Scripture, that made things clear? Or did less tangible things, such as a familiar turn of phrase or mannerism, jolt their minds? We cannot know – but what we can be sure of is that Jesus cannot reveal himself like that to us today, simply because he isn’t here in a bodily form. That means that we must depend on Scripture and the Holy Spirit if our minds are to be opened. And this is where we so often run into trouble. For, so often, what the Spirit seems to be saying to one group of people seems to be the opposite of what he’s saying to others – which can’t be right!

So how do approach Scripture, in particular (but not only) to obtain a correct picture of Jesus? Clearly prayer for the Holy Spirit to open our minds is a priority – I remember from my youth the Scripture Union prayer, from Psalm 119: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law”. That’s important because, although we may sincerely believe that our minds and spirits are open to fresh insights and understandings, that isn’t likely to be true. We’re all conditioned by our backgrounds, by the books and newspapers we read, by the sermons we’ve heard, by our experiences: these all tend to trammel or restrict our receptiveness to new insights. We’re also a bit frightened of putting aside beliefs or values which we once held dearly; it feels as if we’re letting go of our security blanket. And we may fear our friends’ reactions: “Are you out of your tiny mind? You’ve always believed that, how could you possibly change your mind, you heretic!”

At this point we need to stop and think. I’m sure we’d all agree both that “open-mindedness” is a good thing and that we can all learn new things about our faith. But that doesn’t mean that we Christians are free to believe anything we like: for we are people of a book, the Bible; we are people who respect the Creeds and historic traditions of the Church; above all, we believe that in a God whose character doesn’t change. Just as I am “me” and each one of you is “you” with our own DNA, and there’s nothing that we can do about that, so we’re not free to make God up as we go along. We may come to understand him in new ways as our faith matures, indeed we should. But, as God said to Moses all those centuries ago, “he is who he is”, we’re not at liberty to redefine him in ways which make us feel more comfortable about him.

I’d like to make two further points. One is to mention what Jesus said when his disciples asked him why he taught in parables. Quoting the prophet Isaiah, he told them that he used them because “people look but do not see and listen but do not hear or understand; their minds are dull, they have stopped up their ears and closed their eyes”. In other words he needed to pique their interest: like many people in churches (but not, I hope, any of you!) they had got used to switching off and disengaging their minds when the Rabbi started his sermon, they were happy to muddle along with the babyish ideas about God that they’d retained from childhood. By telling amusing stories with meanings that weren’t immediately clear, Jesus aimed to get them thinking, to open their minds.

I’d also like to say that I’ve discovered a curious thing about what Luke wrote. He didn’t say that Jesus “opened the disciples’ minds” – please notice the “s” at the end of the word “minds”. In fact he was rather ungrammatical and wrote, “he opened their mind” – singular. That may seem a mere technicality, but it’s not. For Luke isn’t saying that Jesus opened the minds of each disciple one by one, which is what we might think. No: he gave the group a collective understanding; or, as one writer puts it, “The truth was revealed to them as a unit, not as individuals in the unit”. This reminds me of what Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” – he’s thinking about a mindset for the whole church community. Also, in Acts, the circular letter written by church leaders following an almighty row began, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” –again we see God inspiring a united mind. Although it’s a step away from today’s verse, can I suggest that this is what should happen in Convocations, Synods and, yes, Church Meetings. The Spirit of Jesus ought to be revealing his truth and guidance to us jointly; it’s not a case of “the voice that shouts loudest carrying the day”.  

So Jesus “opened the disciples’ minds”. I’m sure that all of us, in many ways, need our own minds to be opened. We all have our blind spots, our prejudices, our cosy assumptions: about life, about people, and about God. I do, you do – and we don’t even know what those blind spots are! But we don’t open our minds to everything, especially when it comes to our faith. Yes, our interpretations and understanding may and should change – after all, some Christians used to believe that the Bible gave them mandates for the Crusades, for apartheid and for slavery – which all now seem hard for us to credit. But the basis of our faith must remain solid; and perhaps we can muse on some words of G.K. Chesterton, the Catholic philosopher (and creator of “Father Brown”): “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. Otherwise, it could end up like a city sewer, rejecting nothing.”

We speak about our minds in many different ways: we may set aside a time for mindfulness or say that we’re engaged in a mindless task; we may tell people that we can’t make up our mind, say that worry is making us lose our mind, or declare that a friend must be out of her mind to do what she is doing. (I can’t resist adding that passengers on the London Underground are told to “Mind the gap” when they get on and off the trains!). God has given us minds, and I’m sure that he wants us to use them to think through our faith and apply it to the complexities of life. But faith isn’t just a matter of the mind, it more than an intellectual exercise: we need the Holy Spirit’s illumination to aid and guide our thinking. We’ve been hearing how Jesus opened the disciples’ minds as they studied the Scriptures; let’s believe that he can still do the same for us, today.