Knowing The Story Is Not Enough
Luke 24:13-35
It was the first Easter Sunday afternoon: two of Jesus’ followers were going to the village of Emmaus and talking over the things that had happened that morning. “While they were talking and discussing, Jesus drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” (Luke 24:15-16)
Have you ever wondered what kept those disciples from recognizing Jesus? One can imagine that there would be no face they would long to see that day more than the one of their beloved Lord. If you have experienced the death of someone whom you loved, you know that everything inside of you desires to see that person alive again. Yet with Jesus next to them, the apostles failed to recognize him. Why?
Luke gives us a clue in verse 17 when he writes that “the two followers stopped, looking very sad.” The word used here for ‘sad’ means ‘gloomy countenance.’ We might say grieving or hopeless. It was the despair of hopelessness that kept them from seeing and believing that for which they had hoped.
The two men were walking to Emmaus without hope and faith. As Jesus walked alongside, asking them what they were talking about, they could only tell the story, much as a grieving husband recounts each event that led up to his wife’s death. They even told the familiar Easter story about the women going to the tomb and seeing angels.
Sometimes knowing the resurrection story is not enough. When my 10-year-old nephew, Michael, was hit by a car and killed 38 years ago on Easter Sunday, I knew the Easter story, and part of me knew that Michael was at peace in the Father’s Kingdom. However, that knowledge did not ease the pain our whole family shared with my sister and her husband that afternoon. It is difficult to hope in God’s promises when reality is screaming the opposite of hope and joy.
If knowing the story wasn’t enough, what finally opened Jesus’ followers’ eyes and rekindled their faith? It was something so simple and ordinary that we would hardly think of it as having the power to open the eyes of faith. It was the breaking of a loaf of bread, an act their Lord had done hundreds of times in the three years they knew him — bread broken on the hillsides to feed the crowd, in people’s homes, and of course, the final meal the night before he died.
How like our Lord to use something so simple and so ordinary to point to the Holy. They met the Risen Lord in the breaking of the bread — and so can we. When we need the healing, guiding, forgiving, loving touch of Jesus, knowing His story is not enough. We need His presence in the breaking of the bread.
