When your mind’s made up, you don’t often change it, because, well, change is hard. Our history as individuals and communities proves the point. Yet look back even a mere handful of decades in our lived experience to discover that certain beliefs are changeable and attitudes do change: Many for the better, others not so much.
Change is fed and watered, for good and for bad, because truths once regarded as absolute and unquestionable are challenged with motives and agendas both benevolent and malevolent. Those truths we hold self-evident rest on foundations of shared reality and common experience, held fast with assumptions borne of collective certainty and mutual familiarity.
Problem is, as we’re learning the hard way, reality and experience – certainty and familiarity – run far afield. Your reality and experience differ from mine. To the table of community each brings a variety of gifts intended to serve common good.
You grew up on a farm within sight of Lansing Ridge; I came of age as a city kid with quick access to shopping malls. My parents were Eisenhower Republicans; yours were Kennedy Democrats. After high school, you joined the family business, or learned a trade, or served in the military; I went off college and became a journalist. Then to seminary and parish ministry. One is not necessarily better, or more blessed, or more important than the other; they’re simply unique experiences that create different understandings and perspectives.
So also divergent, then, are those beliefs that feel certain and familiar, and everyone’s mind is made up. And it’s darn-near impossible to discuss or even consider opposing beliefs when too many minds are closed.
When your mind is closed – full of beliefs, convictions, thoughts, and ideas carved in stone, that mindset informs your understanding of others and shapes all your relationships. Sometimes we enjoy novelty, a change of pace, something different. But when it comes to our thinking, we prefer consistent, predictable belief, and tend not to entertain easily other perspectives. Human nature tends to favor a daily existence that’s contentedly stuck in the mud of the familiar, perhaps even comfortably numb to the plights of another.
A closed mind does have an upside. A closed mind, if nothing else, is efficient. You quickly arrive at one answer or readily adopt a particular belief. But the downside to such mental efficiency is a learning trap that abruptly halts the exploration we need for creative problem-solving. Simply put, a closed mind stops considering other possibilities or exploring better solutions. Closed mindsets are vulnerable to distortions that reduce reality to black-and-white, all-or-none thinking. And clinging to unevaluated, rigidly held beliefs often morphs into a self-defeating death grip on gridlock.
But when the mind is flexibly open, you hold fast certain beliefs while remining open to new information.
An open mindset of curiosity incorporates beliefs that are adaptable to evaluate new or complicated material. Evaluating your thinking promotes creative exploration of ideas and solutions. As the renowned physicist Albert Einstein maintained, no problem can be solved with the same level of consciousness and understanding that created it.
My quick primer in social psychology is a helpful lens for viewing this morning’s scene in the Old Testament story of the exodus, the epic tale of God’s people freeing slavery in Egypt through parted seas: A baptism, of sorts, as much by fire as by water.
When they first arrive on the west shore of the Red Sea, the minds of God’s people are closed. Caught between the devil of Pharoah’s army and the chaos of the deep blue sea, God’s people are cranky, irritable; frightened, hopeless; closed to the notion that God is still leading the way, as he promised, by heavenly pillars of cloud and fire.
But by the time this motley crew reaches the safety of the eastern shore, the Holy Spirit opens minds once closed to the reality and experience that God really and truly remained at, with, and on their side. Minds change about the Lord God Almighty who – ruled by motivations of peace, freedom, justice, truth, and love – most definitely and absolutely is doing a new thing, drying every tear and making all things new. (Revelation 21:4-5)
The Israelites have changed their mindset about God. They now see the relationship between God and God’s people in an entirely new light. Their past, present, and future suddenly look radically different and potentially quite fruitful. And the Israelites celebrate God’s Good News with thanksgiving: Lifting high resounding praise, for grace and joy abounding.
Listen to the Word that God has spoken; listen to the One who is close at hand.
Listen to the Voice who began Creation; listen even if you don’t understand.
Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD:
“I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.
“Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he cast into the sea; his picked officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power – your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrew your adversaries; you sent out your fury, it consumed them like stubble. At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up, the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.’ You blew with your wind; the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
“Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them. In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode.” (Exodus 15:1-13)
When it comes to God’s grace, when you’re an unworthy recipient of God’s peace, freedom, justice, truth, and love, the only faithful response is gratitude. You sing songs of thanksgiving for God’s glorious triumph:
“The LORD is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation. The LORD is my God, and I will praise him. My LORD is the God of my ancestors, and I will exalt him.” (Exodus 15:2)
Singing such songs of prayerful gratitude are always good and faithful acts of praise and exaltation – even when the calendar doesn’t proclaim a season of “thanksgiving.” Yet, just as talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words, so also do lyrics ring hallow when grateful words fail to inspire thankful behaviors.
When pondering in your heart what thankful, Spirit-led behavior means for you, think in terms of the time-honored question of moral imperative, “What would Jesus do?” – WWJD abbreviated on those wristbands buried somewhere in the back of our dresser drawers. When faced with decisions about how to behave, WWJD? What would Jesus do? Does your chosen word or intended deed sound or look like something Jesus would say or do?
Does word or deed sound or look Jesus-y?
Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, teaching the ignorant; welcoming the stranger, feasting at table, nursing the sick. Including and inviting; crying and mourning; praying and resting. Healing, forgiving, and reconciling.
“God has told you, O mortal, what is good,” declares the Old Testament prophet Micah. “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
WWJD? Jesus-y! Thankful behaviors that give integrity to thankful words:
“Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power – your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrew your adversaries; you sent out your fury; it consumed them like stubble.” (Exodus 15:6-7)
The apostle Paul, of course, sweetly measures thankful behavior. “Fruit of the Spirit,” he cultivates for the Galatians: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. “Against such things there is no law,” Paul judges rightly. (Galatians 5:22-23)
WWJD? Jesus-y! Thankful behaviors that give integrity to thankful words:
“Who is like you, O LORD? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed the enemy.” (Exodus 15:11-12)
Jesus himself directs thankful behavior in commandments he calls the greatest: Loving and serving the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; loving and serving your neighbor as you yourself want to be loved. “On these two commandments,” Jesus declares, “hinge all the law and the prophets.” (Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37-40)
WWJD? Jesus-y! Thankful behaviors that give integrity to thankful words:
“In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode.” (Exodus 15:13)
Friends, we all are deeply invested in heartfelt, long-held beliefs about God, about one another, about the ways in which God is working unto good among us. And questioning even one of those beliefs feels especially and particularly threatening, because the vulnerability of loss always precedes the elegance of gain. Closed systems of thinking or organizing experiences need opening, and resets to what we think and believe initially will disorient and distress.
But that, I believe, is why God in Christ Jesus chooses to pitch his tent among us in the first place, bearing the fullness of grace upon grace in human flesh that confronts and challenges the brokenness of what is, opening a more life-affirming way forward through waters of chaos, rescuing all souls caught between the devil and the deep, blue sea. (John 1:14, 16)
“Why does the mother of our Lord come to me?” Elizabeth wonders aloud to Mary. You and I ponder with similar candor, “Why does our Lord come to us?” And the response is likewise: The fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord. Redemption, reconciliation, and reunion really are possible – and best re-kindled with changes of heart and mind all around the holiday table.
WWJD?! Jesus-y! Happy Thanksgiving!
In grateful response to grace, may closed minds be opened. In grateful response to grace, may open minds hold fast to integrity with the Gospel. Listen to the Word that God has spoken, to people looking east, for the dawn of a brighter day.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the Third Sunday of Advent, November 24, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship by B. Janet Hibbs and Anthony Rostain inform the message.