As He had predicted several times, Jesus was crucified and died on the cross. He was buried in the tomb of a rich man. And early Sunday morning, when some women went to wrap His body in spices before saying final farewell, He had exited the tomb. So said two men in dazzling clothes who appeared at the tomb.
Excitedly returning from the tomb, the women, (whom Tonia says I am not to call the original “spice girls”) reported their discovery, but almost everyone they told considered it an “idle tale.” Nah…you’re imagining things.
We can pick up the story in Luke 24: 13ff:
Luke 24:13 – That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even 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 as the women had said, but him they did not see.” And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem.
What an interesting account Luke has given to us. Two people with dashed hopes. A mysterious stranger who, Colombo-like, starts out as a clueless bumbler but ends teaching others a thing or two. Finally, a vanishing.
The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Today in the 21st century throughout the globe – North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, people are saying with their mouths “The Lord has risen indeed.” More importantly, they’ve committed themselves – resources, time, energy, hopes, dreams – to this Resurrected Lord. People in 2024 are still walking down the roads of their lives with Jesus. This account of this seven-mile journey with the Resurrected Jesus conveys important truths about our journey with Jesus today. I’d like to draw out four of those:
- How our journey with Jesus sometimes begins.
If this passage doesn’t demonstrate that God has a droll sense of humor, I don’t know what does. But it’s a puzzle. Why doesn’t Jesus reveal Himself right away? At the end He’ll reveal Himself…ironically by vanishing – so why not do something spectacular when He first joins them? Perhaps: first He’s talking to them on their right side, then He suddenly appears on their left; next moment He’s in a tree that’s they’re passing…
Wouldn’t some theatrics be more efficient than playing dumb? Get their attention?
But then our mind goes back to the beginning of this book, to the account of Jesus’ birth, and we make a connection. From Heaven came Jesus, of whom the ancient hymn says:
Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day…
Yet, we recall, that Light of light is born in a barn. No glitz. Out of the way. In a sense, incognito.
We go on and a pattern emerges: Jesus picks fishermen to continue his teaching and be his proclaimers. Also Paul, who is a scholar, but listen to the scouting report on Paul: “His bodily presence is weak, and his speech is of no account.” In one word, overlookable. Such were the early Christian proclaimers.
We have to wonder if perhaps God is not such a good marketer!
And we haven’t even considered the most egregious advertising failure of all: at the center of Christianity is a state execution. The prevailing symbol associated with Christianity is a cross – grisly, violent, degrading.
Is that really the profile we want out there? Imagine the success of a marketing campaign that had an electric chair front and center!
Learn the lesson, friends – Jesus might, very possibly will, come into your life weakly, unimpressively. Someone awkwardly invites you to a service. You go to a church that rents a school gym. You drink bad coffee there. A wrinkly pamphlet hangs in a grocery store inviting you to a service…
Someone tells you about Jesus and His death and resurrection, and frankly, the message and the messenger can sound a little hokey, primitive, not much to look at. Well, there’s the point: that happens. The Light of light often shows up in disguise.
I read one time about the conversion of Bob Novak, for so many years a CNN journalist. He grew up a secular Jew but some circumstances had him going to a Christian church. But he remained on the fringe, just an interested skeptic. One day he was at a banquet and found himself sitting across a young woman who was wearing a necklace with a cross. Their brief conversation went to religion, and he told he her had been attending church services but wasn’t planning to become a Christian. She said something simple to him: Mr Novak, Life is short; eternity is forever. This worldly-wise, cynical journalist late wrote in his biography: that was the Holy Spirit speaking to me. He was baptized into the church.
Life is short; eternity is forever. What a homely, clichéd sentence. And Christ showed up in it!
I want to teach my kids this: don’t wait to be bowled over before thinking something is worthwhile. Don’t demand theatrics. Don’t despise the day of small things. Look for Christ in small places and small people.
TRANSITION: BUT HOW TO KNOW IF THIS STRANGE AND FLIMSY THING IS CHRIST, OR JUST A STRANGE AND FLIMSY THING.
- How the journey with Jesus goes on.
Listen again to their words in vv. 20, 21: “Our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and they crucified Him. But we had hoped that He was the one to redeem Israel…”
They naturally saw the crucifixion as a failure (full stop). It was especially a failure because it dashed their hopes: they thought Jesus might lead a great liberation and their nation could finally get back on track.
But Jesus pushes back on their disappointment: the crucifixion wasn’t a failure. Hadn’t he said all along that his death would be a ransom payment, His life for the world’s life, the only means by which human could get out from under crippling debt? This crucifixion wasn’t instead of liberation; the crucifixion was the only means that deep liberation could happen.
But it doesn’t feel necessary!
We do want some things changed. Oh God, get me to the place where I don’t lack money, fulfil my desire for a good woman to share life with, make me healthy, safe, did you hear me say “money”?
God, here’s what I need to get from you. (And I don’t know what a crucifixion has to do with anything.)
And what is Jesus’ reply to these pleas for God’s help? V. 25: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe.” Or as the Message paraphrases: “So thick-headed! So slow-hearted!”
Friends, how does the journey with God go on? With a rebuke, always with a rebuke: You’ve been wrong. At the root of your thinking, in the heart, you haven’t kept pace with reality, you’ve been slow. Shallow.
And where exactly have I been thick-headed and slow-hearted? Basically in ignoring God.
We’ve rather outrageously set aside the fact that a personal Creator made us… as persons… to stay close to Him… and thereby reflect His wise and loving rule into the world. We have broken trust with him, strayed from Him, and thus don’t reflect Him. And this failing is a fundamental failing, a deep injustice. “We had one job…” as the saying goes. And we’ve fallen short of fulfilling that one job, which is the very definition of sin, and sin entails guilt, and sin has us in a debt of guilt that we cannot possibly ay. That’s your truth.
The journey goes on with the realization that what I thought I needed most from God was actually not the most pressing. What I need first, and most, is for someone to pay for my sin and clear my account with God.
Have you ever stopped telling God what you need from Him, and listen to Him tell you what you actually need? That’s what the Lord means by repentance – to realize: Oh shoot, I was wrong.
For the rest of their journey, let’s guess for about five miles, which at a leisurely pace would take about 1 hour and 45 minutes, Jesus “interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” These Scriptures are what we call the Old Testament. Genesis – Malachi.
Can you imagine, a two-hour walk with someone who’s talking about himself while sprinkling in some Old Testament quotations! Sounds pretty tedious, right? But their attention is riveted on Jesus’ words. They reflect later that, while he talked to them on the road, their “hearts burned within them.”
Because in those two hours Jesus retold the story of the world from God’s perspective. He clarified what it’s all about. Reminded them where things first went wrong. Where everything had been leading. How all that history pointed to and even set the stage for Jesus. From the beginning Jesus is the focal point of Heaven and Earth.
Jesus reviewed all this background to emphasize what we said above: the Crucifixion is the great crisis in the story of the world. My death and Resurrection signal the monumental turning point!
What was Jesus doing with this history? He was reorienting them to reality. That has to be your north star by which you direct your life. This is where you’ll find the great liberation and all lesser redemptions.
The journey goes on as we stop trying to get God into our story but rather let God tell us His story and how we fit into that. In other words, the journey goes on in repentance.
- How the journey with Jesus has decisive moments
Notice the detail Luke provides in v. 28: They drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther…” The episode could have ended right here…prematurely…without resolution.
Jesus’ abruptness will strike you as odd only if you haven’t read other parts of the Gospels. There’s a great scene recorded in Mark 6 when the disciples are on a boat in the middle of the lake during a storm, manfully struggling against the waves but going nowhere fast. Listen what happens: “And about the fourth watch of the night, [Jesus] came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them…”
What! “He meant to pass by them.” They’re in trouble, obviously in trouble, and He’s prepared to just saunter by?!
Evidently, yes.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus walks up to a man who had been an invalid for 38 years. Jesus, the Great Physician, had looked at the mans’ chart: he knew his health history. So, what were the first words out of his mouth? Just listen: Do you want to be healed? What!! Rude!
In the Gospel of Matthew 15, a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus and asks him to heal her daughter who is demon oppressed: “Lord, help me.” His reply: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Interpretation: I have bread, but it’s for the Israelites, and it wouldn’t be good to give it to non-Israelites, aka ‘dogs.’
Well, I never. She could stomp away, offended.
In some moments we could too.
And Jesus won’t run after you.
What’s the truth here? There are plenty of people just playing with religion, going through the motions. So, there are moments on the journey with Jesus when He will test you to discover how serious you are. How much you actually want help. To measure your faith. To humble you.
There are decisive moments when you obviously need help, when you’re asking for help, been doing all the right things… and God “repays” you with increased hardship. Like, he’s suggesting you back away from Him! Are you going to stomp away? Or will you keep engaging?
Here’s the truth: Jesus often will not press Himself on you. He’ll make Himself scarce. He’ll make it easy for you to drift away. He’ll start fumbling for his keys and say ‘well I need to get going, go home and let the dogs out…’
But you need Christ…now!
There’s an old story about a man who wrestled with an angel of God all night. As morning was breaking the angel says, Ok, time for me to move on. And the man, who had been permanently wounded by the angel of the Lord, says, NO. YOU’RE STAYING HERE UNTILL YOU BLESS ME.
And the angel whistled under his breath and said to the man, ‘Ok I’m changing your name to mean, “he strives with God.” You’ll now be known as…Isra-el.’
To quote Eminem: Will you capture the moment or let it slip away?
CHRISTIANITY 101
- How the journey doesn’t have to end
Jesus’ vanishing is cool and I wish that I’d been there to see it. But in itself it’s not that important; in the scene it functions more as a pointer, an exclamation point.
And what does His vanishing point to? Well, Jesus disappeared from the table after blessing and breaking the bread. So, it’s the meal that comes into focus. This is confirmed in their report to the disciples in v. 35: Jesus was known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
Have you ever considered that Jesus’ eating meals is a focus of His post-Resurrection appearances? In the next scene with the disciples, Jesus appears and asks, “Have you anything here to eat?”
When Jesus stands on the seashore and calls to the disciples who are out on the boat, next to him is a charcoal fire with fish laid out on it, and bread.
And lest we think that His eating and drinking couldn’t possibly be a theme, listen to a sermon excerpt in Acts 10 when Peter refers to Jesus’ resurrection: “God raised him on the third day, and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” Acts 10: 39ff
Why this emphasis on meals?
Meals are great signifiers of… enjoyment. Especially the way they ate then. Reclining, unhurried, plenty of conversation. Phones on airplane mode.
Post- resurrection meals then, become a token that Jesus has brought peace into the world. We have peace with God through the liberation that is secured by faith. We can then, with composure, enjoy fellowship – with God our Father, and with Jesus Christ, and with one another.
Also, meals point forward. We eat, not simply for enjoyment or for fellowship, but also to keep going. After His Resurrection Christ sits down several times to eat as if to signify, I’ll join you at the next meal. In fact, I’ll be in charge of supplying your next meal. You’ll need energy for what’s next.
And there’s a lot of next. The future has opened up in My Resurrection, you’ll walk with me on a road extending into the age to come, and into the ages to come, world without end.
Friends, my wish is that each one of you is on the road with Jesus. Or that today you’ll see reason to join Him on His journey which never ends.
AMEN
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