1-30-22 “Open Hearts, Open Minds, and Open Doors”
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Luke 4:21-30
Pastor Jenny Lee, Ph.D.
“Open Hearts, Open Minds, and Open Doors”
I want to start with something funny. I heard about this story through an internet site. An elderly lady walked into the local church. The friendly usher greeted her at the door and
helped her up the flight of steps. And he asked her politely, “Where would you like to sit?”
She answered, “The front row, please.” He said, “You really don’t want to do that because the pastor is really boring.” The lady asked him, “Do you happen to know who I am?” He said, “No.” She replied indignantly, “I’m the pastor’s mother.” He asked her, “Do you know who I am?” She said, “No.” He answered, “good.”
Today, I want to talk about “open hearts, open minds, and open doors.” You may have heard that recently related to how the non-denominational churches are prospering more than denominational churches. When I hear that, I wonder why people like non-denominational churches and why people prefer to attend megachurches. They might want to get benefits somehow, but might not want to be responsible for the work of the church. Like the story, perhaps they don’t want anyone to know who they are. However, I hope you know that Christians are those who are building a good relationship with God and with their neighbors. As you may know, Jesus’ great commandments are “love God and love neighbors.” If what we want is for nobody to know who we are, how can we build up a good relationship with our neighbors? If we’re going to build a good relationship with God and our neighbors, we should open our hearts, minds, and doors first. As you may remember, our parish’s mission statement is: “Let us make the disciples of Jesus Christ through all generations with open hearts, open minds, and open doors for the transformation of the world.” Yes, it is essential to open our hearts, minds, and doors to God and our neighbors to be good Christians. Otherwise, we cannot say, “we are Christians.”
Christians are those who live in good relational lives with all creation, all kinds of people, and defiantly with God. For doing so, we should open our hearts and minds to God first, and communicate with God through the means of grace, such as prayer, reading the Bible, praising songs, Bible study, worship, communion, fellowship, meditation, reaching out, and sharing and caring mission work. Furthermore, we should open hearts, minds, and doors to everyone to proclaim the good news so that many people know the good news through us. If we don’t open hearts, minds, and doors, we may be isolated from God and the people. Isolation is one of the characteristics of modern society. So, isolation leads many people to suffer from loneness, depression, and addiction. Well, you may say, ‘we know everyone in town even though we don’t open hearts, minds, and doors. Somehow, we know too much about one another, and it causes us to hurt one another.’ It might be true. However, we should think about why knowing each other causes us to hurt each other. Opening hearts, minds, and doors is a little different from knowing others. We may find it in today’s Scripture.
Today’s Scripture continues from last Sunday’s Scripture. On the Sabbath day, Jesus went to the synagogue and read the scroll [Scripture] as was his custom. The Scripture he read is from the Prophet Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19). After he read the Scripture, he said, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And he preached to them about how it would be fulfilled today. As I mentioned last Sunday, the passage is the core of the Gospel, the good news, which Isiah proclaimed before Jesus was born. Jesus said that the prophecy of Isiah is fulfilled by Jesus himself through his sermon. Verse 22 says, “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Some well-accepted his gracious words, but some doubted him, saying, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”
As you may know, the Galilee of Nazareth was a small town, similar to towns like Grantsburg, Atlas, and St. Croix Falls, or even smaller. You may imagine the old town when we didn’t have any transportation. They knew well about one another. As much as they knew one another in town, many gossips went around the town. The gossip led them to have a prejudice against Jesus, such as him being poor, the carpenter’s son, uneducated, the son of Mary, and so on. The prejudice blocked them from receiving the good news. They not only rejected the good news but were also angry with Jesus. It is as if when I heard the good news that I may walk again if I read the Bible, I was upset with the pastor and the pastor’s wife. Furthermore, as if I had thrown the Bible away toward them, the people of Galilee got up, drove out Jesus, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff (Luke 4:28-29).
Through my experiences, I knew that if people reject the good news and are upset about it, it’s because they think of it as a curse, not the good news. We wonder why they think of the good news as a curse. The Gospel of John explains to us, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:17-18). Because they didn’t believe in Jesus, they think that Jesus condemns them.
Remember that the good news work for those who believe in Jesus and accept him as the savior and the Lord. The two examples here are given by Jesus. One is a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon, and the other is Naaman the Syrian. They both were gentiles who didn’t know about God yet. But, as soon as they heard about the good news, they accepted and believed in God. Finally, they had experienced God’s miraculous work, the power of the good news. In the case of a widow in Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8-16), she was poor and didn’t have enough food for her Son. She planned to die after eating the last bread with her Son. But the Prophet Elijah visited her and asked her to feed him with the last of the bread. If we see the Prophet, or a pastor, who did something like this, we may call him, ‘a terrible thief.’ However, she gave him the last of the bread. After that, she was blessed with abundant bread and oil, and she never suffered again for food. The other example is about Naaman, who had leprosy (2 Kings 5:1-19). He heard from a girl from Israel about that the God of Israel and how he may heal him and went to Israel to see the Prophet of Israel, Elisha. Elisha said to him, ‘if you wash your body seven times in the Jordan River, you shall be healed.’ He suspected the first time, but he obeyed Elisha and got healed.
The Good news is open to everyone, but it works for only those who believe and accept Jesus Christ. The way we believe and accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior is by opening our hearts and minds to God. Furthermore, the way we open our hearts, minds, and doors to others is that we love others without any prejudice as if God loves us first when we are yet sinners. So, let us open hearts, minds, and doors to God and to our neighbors so that the good news works for us and through us. Thanks be to God. Amen!