Moments of Recognition

April 18, 1999 (cf April 21, 1996)

Luke 24:13-35

The Walk to Emmaus is one of my very favorite stories in all the world. It brings the story of the earthly life of Jesus to a close in a way that is really a launching pad for a sequel that is still unfolding. Whatever it was that happened on that road the first Easter evening is still taking place.

There are a number of other stories of encounters with God in the Bible. Moses turned aside from his flock of sheep to see why a bush would burn and not be consumed. Jacob laid his head on a stone while he was running away from his troubles, and saw a stairway to heaven, and then, years later, he wrestled all night with a manifestation of God in the flesh. Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up in the Temple. But still I love the story of the Road to Emmaus perhaps best of all.

The Emmaus Road story contrasts with another famous encounter with the risen Savior. Saul of Tarsus first met Jesus on another road, going in another direction. On the Road to Damascus Jesus got Saul's attention by knocking him to the ground. In this story Jesus walked along with the disciples, warming their hearts with scripture, and would have walked on if they had not asked him to come in.

Perhaps those two encounters are examples of the ways some of us here today came to meet the risen Lord. Saul was not at all acquainted with Jesus before he met him on the Damascus Road. Paul was very much NOT a part of the followers of Jesus. But Jesus found Saul, and stunned him with conviction. His conversion story has all the subtlety of a whack on the head with a stick! Saul was blinded for three days, and his life turned around 180 degrees.

No one here has had a conversion exactly like Saul/Paul. But all the same, that confrontation, that shock, is the way some people need to find God if they ever find him at all. My own father never heard of being born again until he was 21 years old. His conversion was night and day, black and white, dramatic change, a break with everything old in his life. Maybe you were not brought up in the fellowship of Jesus, or with the followers of Christ. But God spoke to you, the Holy Spirit showed you where you were wrong and you repented and surrendered and Jesus became your Lord and Savior. There was a dramatic meeting with Christ you couldn't miss.

The two disciples on the Road to Emmaus had an altogether different problem. If Jesus was the last person Saul would have wanted to meet these two disciples were mourning because they loved Jesus so much, but believed they could never know him again. These were people who had spent time with Jesus, and with the friends of Jesus. Maybe they had heard the Sermon on the Mount maybe they even knew the Lord's Prayer by heart, and had been taught to pray by Jesus Himself.

When they met Jesus on their road, there was no light from heaven at least not the kind that knocked them to the ground. There was no persuasion from being against Christ to calling Him 'Lord.'

THE STORY ITSELF is deceptively simple:

The disciples were:

• SAD- which is understandable; they thought Jesus was dead, permanently.
• DISCOURAGED Their faith was in the past tense (If only it could be like it used to be) Jesus described them as sinful, or at least "slow of heart to believe"
• UNBELIEVING: even sinful in their inability to believe

The Savior was

• A COMPANION even as they walked the road. (Illustration: The walk to the hamburger stand??? [where God comes up along side] A FEW times since– YOU have had them, too ??)
• AN INTERPRETER OF SCRIPTURE Jesus demonstrated how we should read the Bible

  *Jesus is the reason for the Scriptures!*

• REVEALED IN THE BREAKING OF BREAD

Their faith brought:

• THAWING HEART (like John Wesley's testimony!) as they walked. (Can it be that when WE talk about Jesus to others their hearts will also feel that warmth of His Presence, be "thawed"??)
• CERTAINTY! Their faith immediately came back into the PRESENT TENSE!!

  The fact that Jesus immediately disappeared was not the least discomfiting; the fact that he was very much alive, very real, totally satisfied their hearts. They would have to walk by faith for years they may never have such vivid assurance again but they knew what they had experienced.

  Then . . .

• AN IRRESISTIBLE URGE TO SHARE THE GOOD NEWS!

  They got up from the table and started back the seven miles to Jerusalem to tell the other friends of Jesus!! The Emmaus Road is the way some of us found the Lord. But the reason I love the story is that the Emmaus Road happens again and again.

This is not just a story about conversion it is a story of the re kindling of faith, of assurance. Even Saul needed this kind of reassurance: he had one Damascus Road experience, but then he went on to have many more encounters much more like the Emmaus Road.

The day his ship was wrecked, and strong men were failing with fear it was Paul who said, "Don't be afraid! God stood by me last night and said we are all going to be all right!"

Where ever you may be on your spiritual journey, Jesus is not very far away! He wants to make sense of the Bible for you. He wants to get to know you in the breaking of bread. He wants to bring your faith into the present tense.

Where do you suppose Jesus is right now?

Prayer

Hymn #606 (one or two vs) In the Garden "And He Walks with me, and He Talks with Me."