When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
~ Luke 24:30-35
And so today we come to the final chapter of Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus rises and his followers reclaim the joy of believing even as they struggle to understand. In reflecting on the previous 23 chapters I’ve tried to bring a fresh eye to the text. This has been an opportunity to ponder passages that aren’t usually read in church, or to dig deeper into the meaning of stories we churchgoers have heard preached again and again. Today I find my heart drawn as it always is to the story of the Walk to Emmaus, which is the centerpiece of this chapter. It’s one of my favorites, always has been, and there’s so much going on here that I don’t think we’ll ever get to the bottom of it no matter how hard we dig. As N.T. Wright, New Testament scholar and retired Anglican bishop of Durham, says, “If Luke is an artist, this is one of his most sublime paintings.”
The whole story runs from verse 13 through verse 32 so it’s relatively long, but I think it’s worth getting out your Bible and reading through it again a few times. Cleopas and his unnamed companion are on their way to a village outside of Jerusalem. They’re discouraged, weary and heartbroken. They had put so much faith in Jesus, and his death seems to have destroyed all their hopes. It’s late in the day on the first Easter, and they’ve heard that some in their group visited Jesus’ tomb that morning and came back with the news that he was alive, but most of them have dismissed this report as unbelievable. Jesus joins these two travelers on the road, but they aren’t able to recognize him. They confide their disappointment, and this stranger proceeds to interpret the scriptures that should make everything clear, but still they don’t get it.
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