Luke 24:13-17
Now on that same day two of them were going to a
village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with
each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed
these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them;
but they were kept from recognizing him.
He asked them, “What are you discussing together as
you walk along?”
They stood still, their faces downcast.
On the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor,
President Franklin Roosevelt began his address to a grieving nation with these
words, “On December, 7, 1941, a day that will live in infamy…”
Most of us have experienced at least a few other
“days of infamy.”
November 22, 1963.
September 11, 2001.
We each have our own personal days of infamy as
well. Most of us have suffered the trauma of losing a loved one, and the date
of their death lives on in us as a day of infamy.
We pick up this beautiful story of Cleopas and
his walking companion just two days after the most traumatic event in their
lives. Jesus of Nazareth, their Rabbi, their teacher, their friend; the
miracle-working prophet they had hoped would be the redeemer of Israel, was now gone. In a matter of hours he was arrested, tried, and executed in the most
brutal manner imaginable – crucifixion.
They had to be experiencing the kind of shock
and grief that every human being feels at such a time of trauma and loss. You
feel like the weight of a mountain has fallen on you and crushed your heart
under a black weight of sheer pain. You struggle to think; you struggle to
pray; you struggle to take the next breath, the next step, to get through the
next moment. You struggle to get on with life at all, and despair to ever know
joy as you once did.
This is how these two friends must
have felt as they trudged the road to Emmaus. And notice again what Luke tells
us:
They were talking with each other about everything
that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other,
Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from
recognizing him.
Do you see it?
Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but
they were kept from recognizing him.
The Bible is telling us that at the very worst
time of their lives; as they walked through their “day of infamy”; when they
felt hopeless and very alone, Jesus walked with them.
They did not recognize his presence, of course,
until later, but he was there. He joined them on the way of their pain. He
walked with them to comfort them, to listen to them, and to remind them of the
truth and hope of the scriptures.
And he does the same for us today, in the person
of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said:
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you
another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world
cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him,
for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will
come to you.
(John 14:16-18)
Thank the Lord Jesus for the gift of his Holy
Spirit, who meets us in our pain, reminds us of his presence, and walks with us
along the way.
Pastor Brian Coffey
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