Three days after Jesus was crucified, some men are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus and talking about the crucifixion of Jesus and their dashed hopes. A man joins them and they share these things with him. It is Jesus, but they don’t know him. He stops for dinner with them in Emmaus, and later that night, they head back to Jerusalem, breathless to tell “about the things that happened on the road and how He was known to [us] in the breaking of the bread” (~Luke 24: 13-35 NKJV).
The disciples have something to talk about too: “The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon!” (Luke 24: 34).
The “things that happened there” are also reported by Matthew, Mark, and John, each in his own chosen details. In Mark, the women flee terrified after finding angels at the tomb. In Matthew, a scene of worship—Mary Magdalene and another Mary are at the feet of Jesus. In John, Mary Magdalene mistakes Jesus for the gardener till he calls her by name.
Though the door was closed and locked, Jesus comes, eats with the disciples, and welcomes Thomas, the disciple who would not believe. “I will not,” he’d told the others. “No, not till I touch the wounds.” Now he’s at the Lord’s feet . . . “my Lord and my God.”
The tone is fear, joy, and astonishment, doubt becoming amazed realization.
What does this mean?
When Jesus of Nazareth walked out of that tomb, those questions became the province of every person who would hear and connect—every person in every place, in every age.
What does this mean? What does it mean for me?
Some won’t bother to ask, arguing that absolute truth cannot be known. Others will plead unreliability. Old stories can’t be trusted—inflated and conflated with this and that, exaggerated, shaped and reshaped by storytellers’ skills and whims. Some will go to God and say: What does this mean?
God answers prayer, and if asked that question might repeat what he told John to put in the opening of his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. And the Word became flesh . . . grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
We have to answer the second question ourselves.
This is an invitation. Look for an answer to that second question and then, like the men walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus and back, do what they did when the answers came. Go and tell somebody. I’m sharing with how these things played out in my life.
I had questions, I can assure you! After a life-altering move before my senior year of high school, I spent some time as an angry atheist.
It wasn’t working, so I went to God.
I can’t say I just had questions. They were more like angry demands, something like a theological temper tantrum, and I can‘t defend myself in that posture except to say I was looking for the truth.
God answered and keeps on answering. Every year the meaning and the answers, as well, become broader and deeper.
Jesus Christ is the meaning.
For me the first answer was this: The God whose Book taught me to go to him with my questions is great, great beyond description and I am a sinner. But there’s more, more from the Book: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul” (Lev. 17: 11).
The verse is easy for me to find because the numbers fit my birthday. God’s greatness, our sin and redemption are the beginning: The Lamb of God accomplished redemption for the whole world . . . and for me.
When these things become personal, meaning begins to open in floods.
from The Edgefield Advertiser, oldest newspaper in South Carolina
April 25, 2019
Image Credits: The bread by Raul Angel, the dark highway by James Zwadio, the sorrowful girl by Andrew Neel, the night sky by Mahkeo, the birthday candles by Nikhita Singhal.
All from unsplash.com
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