At Winchester Vineyard church we have recently finished a series in Luke’s gospel with the well-known account of two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus from Luke 24.  

The protagonists, most likely Cleopas  and Mary, are walking home from Jerusalem with ‘sadness etched across their faces’.  They had joined the wider crowd of Jesus’ disciples (perhaps they were among the 72 he sent out to minister), but things had not turned out as they had expected.  Instead of leading a revolution and overturning their Roman oppressors, Jesus had been publicly murdered as a common criminal, putting a swift & cruel end to all their hopes & dreams. 

They are joined on the road by Jesus himself, but even as he walks with them they don’t recognise him.  This is actually consistent with other accounts of the risen Jesus appearing to his followers (think of Mary in the garden or the disciples fishing in Galilee). It seems that his ‘resurrection body’ has been transformed, and although he has many of the same characteristics, he is different enough to be mistaken.  

Nevertheless, he draws them into a detailed conversation where, having listened to their pain & disillusionment he begins to explain how they have misunderstood God’s purposes and how the events of Easter were 'clearly predicted’ in the Hebrew Scriptures. 

Like everybody else in Israel, they had interpreted the scriptures as the long story of how God would redeem Israel FROM suffering. But the Old Testament actually describes how God will redeem Israel THROUGH suffering, and in particular, through the punishment which God would take on himself through his son, Israel’s representative, the Messiah.  As Tom Wright describes, “It's a very short distance from ‘They crucified him – but we had hoped he would redeem Israel’, to ‘They crucified him – and that was how he did redeem Israel.’”

As they reach their village, Jesus acts as if to go on, but they beg him to stay for supper.  It is as he breaks bread around their table that they finally recognise him and as they realise that he is indeed risen, he promptly disappears. With their hearts completely reignited, they ran all the way back to Jerusalem to report their experiences to the other disciples. 

As I reflect on this story, a couple of important truths come to mind that are really worth thinking about in relation to how we relate to Jesus for ourselves; -

Life can be hard and our dreams and expectations are shattered in many ways. As we walk through challenging times with our questions & our heartaches, we can fail to see that Jesus is always walking with us, even when we don’t recognise him.  

And even though the two disciples could better understand his word, it was actually in the simple, relational, intimate act of sharing food together that they finally recognised & connected with Jesus on a heart level. 

Whatever you are going through today, I pray that you will encounter the risen Jesus as he walks alongside you on your journey.