Jesus is everywhere trying to open our minds

"When we live in a state of hyper-vigilance toward our sister and brother Christians out of mistrust, we expose our lack of faith and cannot enter fully into God's joy. I can't imagine how anyone finds such disbelief life-giving. For our own health as well as for the health of our community, we need to confront our disbelieving and wondering and invite God's Spirit to get us out of that upper room in which we're hiding.

	Whatever it was the disciples thought about all that had gone before, or for that matter about one another, was subsumed in Jesus' opening their hearts and minds and pointing the way forward.

This week in the upper room, the disciples are getting a report from the two who met Jesus in the breaking of the bread at Emmaus. Jesus appears and they run that same gantlet of emotions we just saw in John's upper room story. Jesus has to eat fish to demonstrate he is real, but then he opens their minds to understand how the scriptures have pointed towards him and towards God's work of repentance and forgiveness. Whatever it was the disciples thought about all that had gone before, or for that matter about one another, was subsumed in Jesus' opening their hearts and minds and pointing the way forward.

I would invite you to reflect on whether or not our disbelieving and wondering about one another might not actually be a challenge to return again and let Jesus open our minds to understanding. To remain engrossed in determining who might or might not be theologically or politically correct (and isn't the latter often a subset of the former for us?) is to remain trapped in the upper room by our need to make others conform to us and rather than to Jesus. Worse yet, such mistrust lays bare our continued disbelieving in Jesus, who we imagine has somehow failed to open the minds of those we distrust.

Jesus is everywhere trying to open our minds. On the road or in Emmaus or anywhere else, in our meals together where Jesus eats fish or breaks bread, in Jesus' willingness to let us finger the nail marks his enemies thought proved his shame --in all of these places and more, over and over, Jesus comes among us to urge us out of our disbelief and isolation and into the joy of being his witnesses in the world. Our real and deep joy will be found as we live into that mission. We will find it as we live into into the love that John so eloquently describes in his epistles, in the mission to all the nations Jesus entrusts to his followers after his resurrection, and in love's finding flesh in deeds of kindness as described by Peter. We may find that joy even in moments of being tempted to doubt our sisters and brothers as we choose to step out in faith, making our prayer "I believe, dear Christ; help my disbelief."

http://www.thewitness.org/article.php?id=1057

and Jesus opened their minds ....

" in verse 45. It says, “then Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” Jesus opened their minds. And it was only with their minds opened that they could understand the scriptures. What does that mean? Well what do we usually mean when we talk about being open-minded? We usually mean that a person with an open mind is open to more than one possible interpretation of things. They may have their own view but they don’t dismiss out of hand other views. They are willing to hear and consider and perhaps reevaluate their own views in light of what others think.

So if Jesus has to open people’s minds in order that they can understand the scriptures, that would suggest to me that if your mind is closed on certain issues, if it is too made up and settled, then you’re going to have trouble understanding what the scriptures are saying. And further more, and perhaps even more importantly, if you have a genuine encounter with the risen Christ, it will be an experience that opens your mind rather than one that narrows your theology.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is, first and foremost, an incredible mystery. It will always be a mystery. God is a mystery and God’s workings among us are full of mystery. No matter how much we manage to know about it, it will still be a mystery. And at the end of the day, those whose minds are opened by Christ embrace the mystery and entrust themselves to the mystery, and don’t lose too much sleep over trying to reduce the mystery to something they can get their minds around."
http://www.laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html