The Road to Emmaus - Some Thoughts

I preached a sermon this morning that one of the church stewards said deserved a wider audience; so here it is.

For two thousand years, all across the world, Christians have faithfully proclaimed, “Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!”  This has been proclaimed confidently, with faith, with a firm conviction that Jesus indeed lives.  Yet two thousand years ago the two companions on the road the Emmaus did not proclaim “Jesus is risen”.  They had heard reports that Jesus was alive again but didn’t believe those reports.

Just over two years ago a ferry called ‘The River Dance’ ran aground on the beach in Cleveleys (near Blackpool) during strong winter storms.  I saw the BBC television news report about it the following morning, but somehow it didn’t seem quite real.  I read the report in ‘The Gazette’ (the local newspaper) and saw the photograph, but still it didn’t seem quite real.  Only when I went down to Cleveleys on the following Sunday afternoon and saw the forlorn sight of that beached ship with my own eyes did it seem real.

I’m sure that most of us can think of times in our lives when we’ve heard or read about things, but they only became real when we saw them for ourselves.

The two travellers on the road to Emmaus, Cleopas and an unnamed companion, had heard about something they couldn’t quite believe in.  They’d heard that some women had been to Jesus tomb and found it empty.  Those women were claiming that they’d seen a vision of angels who said Jesus was alive.  Some others had been to the tomb and confirmed it, but as far as they knew nobody had seen Jesus alive.  Cleopas and his companion had heard that Jesus was alive, but they couldn’t believe it; it didn’t seem real to them.

The companions are joined by Jesus, but they don’t recognise him.   The New International Version says that this was because, “they were kept from recognising him.”  The Revised English Bible has “something prevented them from recognising him.”  In ‘The Message’ Eugene Peterson translates this passage as “they were not able to recognise who he was.”

No translation gives us any real clue as to why they couldn’t recognise Jesus and I’m told the original Greek is just as ambiguous.  Why couldn’t these two travellers recognise Jesus?    The clues are in the rest of the passage.

The unrecognised Jesus joins them on their walk and asks them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”

They begin to talk about Jesus and about who they thought he was.  “He was a prophet.”  That is how the two viewed Jesus.  They had recognised that he was somebody sent by God but they saw him as somebody like Isaiah, Jeremiah or John the Baptiser; a prophet and not the Messiah.  They said that they had hoped that Jesus would be the Messiah, “the one who was going to redeem Israel” but their hopes had been dashed by Jesus death.  They’d heard the reports that Jesus had been raised from the dead but obviously didn’t believe them.

There are a lot of people in the twenty first century who have a similar view of Jesus, both outside and inside the church.  Even those who follow other faiths recognise Jesus as a prophet, as a great teacher sent by God, perhaps the greatest ever religious teacher; but they will not or cannot see him as Messiah or Son of God.  Because they have this view of Jesus, that he was a great religious leader but nothing more, they cannot believe that he was raised from the dead.

Cleopas and his companion were Jews who had almost certainly known Jesus for a while and heard him teach.  They were not among the twelve, but might have been among the seventy two Jesus sent out with his message.  As Jews they would have known their scriptures far better than most Christians know their Bibles today.  They knew the scriptures that said what would happen to the Messiah, they had almost certainly heard Jesus himself preach and yet they just saw him as another failed prophet; not the Messiah who would bring salvation to God’s people.  People today, too, can read the Old Testament, they can read the New Testament as well and still not believe that Jesus was and is the Son of God who rose from the dead on that first Easter Day.

So we have Jesus, Cleopas and his companion walking towards the village of Emmaus.  The two travellers tell Jesus about their feelings, about their disappointment that the man they thought was the Messiah who would save Israel was now dead and their confusion over reports that he had been raised from the dead.

Jesus’ response is to take them through the scriptures that they knew well, to help them perhaps to see those scriptures in a new way.  We don’t know exactly which texts Jesus used, but clearly the passages he chose and the way he explained their meaning made a difference.  As they were later to say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us.”

Without the living Jesus to help us understand, the scriptures can seem confusing, contradictory even, hard to understand.  When the living Jesus speaks to us, maybe through the words of ministers and preachers or in our minds and hearts as we meditate, the scriptures come alive in a new way.

I am always inspired by the account of John Wesley’s conversion.  Reflecting on the experience later, Wesley wrote, “I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to The Romans.  About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.  I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”  No doubt Wesley had read Paul’s Epistle to The Romans many times, he may even have read Luther’s preface to Romans many times, yet something that night was different.  Through William Holland’s reading of Luther’s commentary John Wesley heard the voice of the living Lord Jesus and found in it salvation.

As Jesus finished explaining the scriptures they reach Emmaus.  They still hadn’t recognised him, they still hadn’t realised their travelling friend was Jesus, but they invited him in for the night.  After Jesus exposition of scripture they were very close, but hadn’t quite got there.

There are many people in our churches today who are very close, but haven’t quite got there.  John Wesley called them ‘Almost Christians’.  Wesley described an ‘Almost Christian’ in the most glowing terms, as somebody who is of good honest character, a charitable person who is outwardly religious, a devout person who prays and goes to church and is attentive throughout the service.  An ‘Almost Christian’, says Wesley, is sincere, they really intend to serve God and do his will, for His sake and not their own.  They sincerely desire to please God in every way, yet they are only almost Christians.  Wesley confesses that, before his conversion on Aldersgate Street, he himself was only an ‘Almost Christian’. 

So what changed for Wesley?  How did he go from being what he called an ‘Almost Christian’ to being what he called an ‘Altogether Christian’?  What is the difference?  The difference is love for God, a love for God that fills heart, mind and spirit; and faith in Jesus, faith that he is the way, the truth and the life; faith that Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins and that he rose from the dead bringing us the assurance of eternal life.  As John Wesley himself wrote, “an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Jesus sits down to supper with Cleopas and his companion and breaks the bread.  As he does this, Cleopas and his companion suddenly realise who Jesus is, and as they realise he vanishes from their sight.  On the brink of understanding, it is the breaking of bread by Jesus that brings the final certainty of faith; they know that Jesus is their travelling companion and that he has indeed been raised from the dead, just as they had been told.

It is hard to accept, this idea of Jesus rising from the dead.  All kinds of theories have been suggested as to what happened on that first Easter Day.  The traditional Christian view is that Jesus’ physical body was literally brought back to life.  In Luke 24:39 Jesus himself says, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your mind?  Look at my hands and my feet.  It is I myself.  Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones; as you see I have!”   That physical body was changed in some way.  The risen Jesus could still eat food, as he demonstrated on more than one occasion; he could be touched and could cook fish.  On the other hand he could enter a locked room without opening the door; he seemed to be able to move from one place to another very quickly and even to vanish into thin air.  There was something essentially different about Jesus’ resurrection body.

Some Christians doubt a literal physical resurrection.  They would say that the resurrection of Jesus was a spiritual resurrection and that the meetings the disciples and others had with the risen Jesus were essentially inner spiritual experiences.  I have no doubt whatsoever that meeting Jesus was an intensely spiritual experience, as the account of the travellers on the Road to Emmaus proves.  They didn’t recognise Jesus for who he was until their spiritual eyes were opened.

I believe Jesus physically rose from the dead, but I believe that it was an overwhelmingly spiritual experience for those who met him following his crucifixion and death; an experience that was so profound that it changed them forever.

The significance of Jesus’ resurrection is a spiritual one, because it is through spiritual experience that we meet the risen Jesus today.  It happened to me in my early twenties at a Christian youth camp.  I was entranced by a powerful evangelist who spoke the simple message of the risen Christ we can know personally and at that moment, when the gospel message came into my heart as well as my mind, when the risen Jesus spoke to me through the voice of another I believed!  Ever since then I have wanted others to know that spiritual encounter with the risen Jesus for themselves, to share in that faith in Christ Jesus and love of God.

Our passage from Luke ends with Cleopas and his companion sharing that intense desire to make known the reality of an encounter with the risen Jesus.  Despite the fact that it is evening, that it is going dark and that they risked attack from robbers on the road between Emmaus and Jerusalem, the two companions set of straight away to Jerusalem to tell then eleven remaining disciples that they had seen Jesus.

As Christians we should have a burning desire to tell others about Jesus; about how he died for them on the cross to bring forgiveness of sin and then rose from the dead bringing us assurance of eternal life.  We can be used by Jesus to assure them that through faith in him, even though our bodies may fail and die, we can be sure that we will live on forever.

Jesus himself told us to pass on the good news of liberation from sin and the promise of everlasting spiritual life.  The final words of the risen Jesus, as reported in Matthew’s gospel are, “go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

In the passage in Luke that follows on from the account of the encounter on the road to Emmaus Jesus says, “The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.”

In the Acts of the Apostles, just before his ascension, Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Jesus does not call us all to be evangelists, any more than he calls us all to be ordained ministers, local preachers, church stewards or whatever.  But we can all be witnesses for the risen Jesus in the way we live our lives, in the love we show to others and by having the courage, if the opportunity presents itself, to be open and honest about our faith.  We never know, the risen Jesus could use us to bring that person to faith.

Like Cleopas and his companion we too may have, or have had, doubts about Jesus being the Son of God and rising from the dead.   Like Cleopas and his companion the risen Jesus comes to us and leads us gently to the truth of who he is; and like Cleopas and his companion we must be fired with enthusiasm to tell others about Jesus.  May the risen Jesus meet us and meet us again in glorious powerful resurrected life and bring us these blessings.