‘Then their eyes were opened and they recognised Him and He disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us as He talked with us on the road?’ They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem.’ Luke 24:31-33
I love this story of the resurrected Jesus meeting with two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus. They were traumatised following His death and reeling from the way their hopes had been shattered. Earlier, the story tells how they talked on their journey of all that had happened. They were full of pain and despair and when Jesus came up to them, their faces were downcast and they were kept from recognising Him. I am sure that they were kept from recognising Him because their faces were downcast. They were literally looking down, repeating all the terrible things they had experienced. There was no room for hope, no memory of the specific promises Jesus had given them before his death. Promises that although He would be betrayed and killed, He would rise again on the third day. They’d even heard that this had already happened, but all they could think of was their loss and even when Jesus stood before them they could not see Him.
How many of us feel and act in a similar way? We get hurt in a relationship and can only think about the those hurtful things; We are unwell and become over anxious; We face a difficult situation and believe that everything is hopeless. Like the disciples, our faces become downcast as we focus on the negatives.
But the message of Easter is that there is always hope because Jesus' death on the cross means He overcame the devil and broke the power of all his schemes. He triumphed over the grave and rose again and is alongside us always.
When grieving the two disciples couldn’t recognise Jesus, but He was still there speaking to them of wonderful truths from Heaven. They realised afterwards that their hearts had been responding, just as ours always respond to His voice and presence.
Through Jesus’ simple action of breaking the bread, their eyes were opened and they saw Him truly as He was. How wonderful. Their faces were no longer downcast, they were looking properly at Jesus and responding to the warming of joy as Jesus opened up Scripture to them.
With that moment of revelation, the two disciples immediately returned to Jerusalem. They took positive action, a literal new path in both their thinking and their ways. How important this is for us too.
Jesus loves us and never gives up on us. He comes alongside us and keeps speaking to us even when we are blind to His presence and deaf to His voice. He wants to show us His love through the simplest of things and renew our faith in the promises He has given us.
The challenge is not just in recognising Jesus but in taking positive action to change our thought life and ways. For those disciples, this meant returning to Jerusalem and learning to talk in a whole new way.
What will it mean for us?
