The Emmaus Road and Bible Study

Easter is behind us now and because I like to look at the crucifixion and resurrection as a historical event in addition to a spiritual experience, I've been looking at the scriptures that describe the days after in Luke 24:13-34.  They were awful days for people who put their faith in the man, Jesus.  They didn't understand, even after everything he had been telling them, that he would rise again.  Even the disciples hid in fear and confusion, disbelieving the reports that Jesus had appeared to witnesses here and there.

On Sunday Jesus made an appearance to two despondent travelers on their way out of Jerusalem after what had to have been the most bizarre and violence-filled Passover in history.  The men didn't recognize Jesus as he walked with them, and they described to him the horror that had transpired over the weekend.  They said, "We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel."  They must have seemed so disappointed.

"Then Jesus said to them, 'You foolish people!  You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures.  Wasn't it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?'"

Jesus probably could have stopped there.  The men would have been familiar with Psalm 22, when David prophetically described the anguish of crucifixion hundreds of years before the Romans would invent that form of execution.  And Isaiah 53, which describes the Lord's servant--despised and rejected, pierced for us, beaten, whipped, led like a lamb to slaughter.  There are so many more.

Maybe that should have been enough for these men.

But Jesus didn't take for granted that they could connect the dots on their own because sometimes we just need things spelled out for us.  Even when we've seen events with our own eyes, they don't always add up.  We are often left confused and disappointed when things don't turn out the way we expect them to.  It can take years--sometimes a lifetime--for us to be able to look back on the events of our lives and make sense of them.  Sometimes we die bitter, still confused.

Jesus wanted these men to know that nothing that happened to him was by accident.  In the same way, nothing that happens to us is by accident.  God will make things clear and Jesus gave these men on the road to Emmaus the same tool that we have at our disposal today.

"Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself."

When I study this story, I see it as a teaching for me, right where I am, in my humble little life.   It is God's way of saying to me, "Is something not adding up, dear one?  Are you confused about the crooked path you've been on?  Open up your bible.  I will make all things clear to you whose eyes are open to my teaching."

After Jesus made himself known to the men, and then disappeared from them, they said to each other, "Didn't our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?"  Every single day I can walk that Emmaus Road with Jesus when I lay my bible open on my lap.  My heart can burn with the same exhilaration of discovery as I search the scriptures to understand where I am in redemptive history, why the world is so screwed up, how deeply the Father loves his creation, and yes, to make sense of my own crooked path.

It's all in there.  Let us not neglect it.