Musings on The Road to Emmaus

The following account (in italics) is contained in Luke 24:13 - 35.

And behold, two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was about seven miles from Jerusalem.

Why were they going away from where the action was? Perhaps they were going home, they obviously had a place to stay in Emmaus...but still. There was a lot of “going home” in the resurrection accounts, a lot of each going his own way - thankfully that would change, thankfully some would remain in Jerusalem awaiting the Promise of the Father. Jesus prays that we will all “be one” as He and the Father are one, and yet we have this individualistic pull that makes us want to move away from one another. What does it take to change that?

I suppose if you think what you’ve heard is “nonsense” (see verse 11) there is no reason to remain in Jerusalem. How many times have I been skeptical? How many times have I, if not with words then with actions, thought the Word of Jesus nonsense? I don’t really want to know the answer to that question. Why can’t Jesus just do His kingly thing and make everything better? Why the suffering? Why the Cross? Why the shame of crucifixion?

And they were talking with each other about all these things which had taken place. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus Himself approached and began traveling with them. But their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.

As we see in verse 21, they were “hoping” that Jesus was going to redeem Israel. It is disappointing when God doesn’t do what we want, when He doesn’t redeem us in the sense of making things the way we want them to be. “Here’s the agenda God, now will you please fulfill our expectations.” Of course we probably don’t say “please” to God that often, but you know what I mean. Let’s not minimize the political situation, especially in Israel, a monotheistic people (finally!) surrounded by polytheism and superstition, and by an Empire that often considered its leaders gods - it was not an hospitable environment. Nevertheless, God in Christ chose the Cross...not what the disciples were anticipating - couldn’t Jesus have at least duplicated some of the miracles that God worked through Moses? How about a few frogs hopping over the land, with a few in Pilate’s bedchamber - that would be a hoot. How about some water turning to blood?

How many times have my eyes “been prevented from recognizing Him”? In John’s account of the resurrected Christ, Mary doesn’t recognize Him at first, and then later by the seashore the disciples don’t recognize Him at first. Jesus doesn’t always come to us in ways that we recognize Him. We think He should look and act one way and He doesn’t cooperate with us. How many times have I missed Jesus? Sometimes it is only years later that I will look back and see how Jesus Christ walked and talked with me and I had no clue - He often does this through other people, He most often does this through other people.  

And He said to them, “What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you are walking?” And they stood still, looking sad. One of them, named Cleopas, answered and said to Him, “Are You the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here in these days?” And He said to them, “What things?”

Why doesn’t God know what’s happening in my life? In our nation? He must not know or He would do something. Here these two disciples were “looking sad” when the resurrected Christ was speaking to them. We act as if God is the only one who doesn’t know what is on the news.

And they said to Him, “The things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word in the sight of God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to the sentence of death, and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel.

These disciples were focused on Israel, God was focused on the world. The disciples could not see that the Passover Lamb had been offered for the sins of the world, that the Scapegoat had had the sins of the world imputed to Him, and that in so doing the Lamb was calling them, His disciples, to embrace the Cross and follow Him in the way of suffering on behalf of not only Israel, but on behalf of the world. Jesus had spoken more than once of taking up the cross, of laying down one’s life, of sacrificial loving and living - and then Jesus Christ demonstrated the ultimate expression of His Word on the Cross. We would rather have a prophet mighty in word and deed than a suffering Messiah - after all, what kind of Messiah is a suffering Messiah? We want someone to lead us in the way of prosperity and victory rather than in the way of suffering and defeat. We want God’s power to be displayed in our strength, not in our weakness. Well, we can always recreate Jesus in our own image so that others will be attracted to Him, Jesus needs a good advertising agency and we are just the people to help Him out.

Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things happened. But also some women among us amazed us. When they were at the tomb early in the morning, and did not find His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that He was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said; but Him they did not see.”

In verse 11 Luke tells us that the eleven apostles and other disciples considered the words of the women “nonsense”. Luke makes a special point of focusing on women in his Gospel (see Luke 8:2; 23:49, 55) which cannot have been lost on the first century reader - for women had little value in Jewish and Gentile culture. It was women who first spoke the Gospel of the Resurrection. It was a woman who first heard the resurrected Christ speak her name, “Mary” (John 20:21). Aside (for the moment) from the question of church leadership, it is incongruous that the voice of women should not be heard and respected in the church. To treat the voice of women as “nonsense” is nonsensical.

Jesus elevated all of humanity, and that humanity includes women. Dorothy L. Sayers gave a lecture (and then published it) titled, “Are Women Human?” One of her points is that we talk of women as if they are not human, as if they are something “other” than men in terms of humanness. While this may be less so in our time in the West than when Sayers lived, in some churches things have not changed. To be sure there is confusion in society about men and women, but I’m not writing about society, I’m writing about the Church of Jesus Christ - Christ came to elevate humanity in Him to relationship with God, and that includes women. So on the First Day of the New Creation it is women who first witness to the Resurrection and it is women who bring the first message of the Gospel, of the Good News, to the eleven apostles and other male disciples. However we choose to process this fact, we ought not to ignore it, to shove it aside, to treat it as an aberration, or to mitigate it.

And He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

Jesus reveals Himself through what we call the Old Testament, He does it with these two disciples and He does it (Luke 24:44 - 47) with the apostles. The writers of the New Testament letters, including Revelation, reveal Jesus again and again through the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (the Old Testament). When the Church read the Old Testament they looked for Christ, they saw Christ, from Genesis to Malachi they saw Jesus Christ. Sadly, more often than not, we only see Christ in the Old Testament in isolated and disjointed passages, it is the work of an abstract painter more than it is of a portrait artist, or of an realistic landscape painter who brings various elements together into focus. The Early Church saw Christ when they saw the Old Testament - we seldom read the Old Testament, we seldom “see” it, we seldom relate to it, we seldom hear the voice of Christ, see the image of Christ, touch the person of Christ. And since we seldom do these things, we seldom see ourselves, the Church, in the Old Testament, for to see the Head of the Body is to see the Body.

The New Testament writers showed us the way to read and see the Old Testament, are we faithful to their example? The “text” without Christ is just a text - and to treat the text as something isolated from Christ is to miss Christ, to miss the sacramentality of the Word of God; the text is to become Word, it is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh profits nothing.

And they approached the village where they were going, and He acted as though He were going farther. But they urged Him, saying, “Stay with us, for it is getting toward evening, and the day is now nearly over.” So He went in to stay with them.

There is a lot to be said for hospitality. As the writer of Hebrews tells us (Hebrews 13:1-2), “Let love of the brethren continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.” He might also have said that “by this some have entertained Christ” for we read in Matthew 25:

“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ ”

We ought to pay attention to the people around us, we ought to treat them as royalty. Who knows how Christ comes to us through others? Through the most unlikely of others? When the two disciples first met the stranger they thought He knew nothing, then they came to realize He knew something, they would come to realize that they knew nothing, then they would know Him. They thought the stranger was uninformed, but it was they who were uninformed. When we are arrogant in our knowing we know nothing. I have been arrogant more than once - what a fool have I been more than once. Well, as Paul counsels, we ought to be nothing that Christ might be everything, including in what we think we know (1 Corinthians 1:18 - 31).

When He had reclined at the table with them, He took the bread and blessed it, and breaking it, He began giving it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished from their sight. They said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?” And they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found gathered together the eleven and those who were with them, saying, “The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon.” They began to relate their experiences on the road and how He was recognized by them in the breaking of the bread.

Our fellowship with Christ and with one another is centered around “the apostles teaching, the breaking of bread, and prayer” (Acts 2:42). As Christ is broken bread and poured out wine, so He calls us to be such, for as the Father sent Jesus, Jesus sends us (John 20:21). We are one loaf in the Lord (1 Corinthians 10:14 - 17). This is a holy fellowship, a holy communion, a communion with and in the Trinity. As we partake of Christ, we partake of one another, and the world - let us hope - partakes of Christ in us.

A congregation that is too busy for Holy Communion is a congregation that is too busy. Holy Communion is neither vertical nor horizontal; it is both - it is cruciform. I cannot partake of the Head without partaking of the Body; I cannot partake of the Body without partaking of the Head. Our eyes are opened in the breaking of bread, O God open our eyes.

When Christ Jesus speaks our hearts ought to burn, they ought to be on fire. To be sure  there are times when this may not be the case, and in those times we walk by faith and not by sight, for what we see we see...whether we “feel” what we see or not. And even when fog and darkness surround us and we don’t see or feel - we still “know” that He walks with us in the Valley of the Shadow of death, and we will trust Him even if we have the sentence of death upon us (Psalm 23, 2 Corinthians Chapter 1).

Our hearts are altars and there ought to be fire on altars, there ought to be sweet incense rising from our hearts to God, a fragrance that others sense (2 Corinthians 2:14 - 17). The Word of God should move us, it should animate us, it should stir our passions - and our lives should be ones of praise and witness. If we are passionate in earthly love, how much more ought we to be passionate in our heavenly Love - our Lord Jesus Christ. The church ought not to be a place or a people for entertainment, but it should be a place of fire and excitement, with altars ablaze with the Word of God set afire by the Holy Spirit. (The exuberance of many Psalms would be out of place in many of our gatherings, just as the solemnitude of many Psalms would be out of place in others - will we ever learn the Way of the Word and the Holy Spirit?)

“The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon.”

Has He really risen? Has He appeared to us?

Is He appearing to us, to me, to you, today?