Their Eyes Were Opened

Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him… Luke 24:31

This verse marks Jesus’ climactic revelation in the story of the Walk to Emmaus. This story strikes a chord with me for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s odd; the resurrected Jesus walks along with his former disciples and they don’t even recognize him. Second, it speaks to our moment, this period between Easter and Pentecost, as well as the current situation we’re facing.

As it opens, the disciples are expressing their regrets. Their hopes are dashed. Their lives had been turned upside down overnight. As they walked along, they were struggling to pick up the pieces, trying to make sense of their experience and move on. The amazing thing is that they were expressing their disappointment to the one who had already accomplished what their wildest imagination couldn’t begin to comprehend.

They were dealing with death:

• The death of their political messiah. Jesus had been on their side, and, just the week before, he had been riding into Jerusalem. All that was left, they thought, was to determine who would sit on his right and left.
• The death of their professional status. As Jesus’ disciples, they had access to resources: funds, houses, front row seats to all of the exclusive events. The shameful death of their leader had turned the tables on them. They were now the accomplices of a condemned criminal. There was only one sensible thing to do: get out of town.
• The death of their personal savior. When Jesus was with them, he was calming the storms, healing their sick relatives, and providing their food. Now, it seems, they would have to fend for themselves.

The cross had killed their messiah. The amazing thing was, he was standing right in front of them, and they didn’t even recognize him! We ask ourselves how could they have been so blind? Yet perhaps this moment shows us to be more like them than we’ve realized. 

As I reflect on Jesus’ activity during this Coronavirus pandemic, I can’t help but think of a scene from the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In that particular scene, Indy saves his father who had been held prisoner inside a tank. Just as he succeeds in getting his dad off the tank and fighting off his attackers, the tank goes over the cliff. As it crashes on the rocks below, we wait with bated breath, thinking that he’s gone over with it. At that point, Indy’s father and their friends gather at the edge of the cliff, straining to see a glimpse of his dead body among the wreckage. We think he’s been killed. But, just as his father stands to eulogize him, the camera pans out and Indy appears, standing there looking at the same wreckage.

We’ve been asking, “where is God in all of this?” wondering if we’ll see him tangled amidst the disaster that is the Coronavirus. We stand, looking out over the wreckage, only to conclude that the Coronavirus has killed our messiah.

• It’s killed our personal savior, the one who we thought was at our beck and call.
• It’s taken away our ticket to professional status, the one who made us look good when he “showed up” at our events and worked on our behalf.
• It’s overthrown our political messiah, the one that supported our American exceptionalism and partisanship.

Or at least it’s killed what we thought was our messiah. In reality, he’s here standing before us.

There’s a song that our MKs know fairly well: ‘Little white box”

“If I had a little white box
to put my Jesus in,
I’d take him out and kiss his face
and put him back again.”

While I understand the intention of the song, I’m not a fan. Whenever I hear it I ask myself, “what kind of Jesus is this one that we can put in a box?”

• He’s one that’s decidedly small, one that’s our very own, personal, even miniaturized to meet our needs.
• He’s one that acts the way we expect.
• He’s one that we can take out and put away when we decide.

Perhaps that Jesus is similar to the messiah that the disciples had created: one after their own image, one they expected to save Israel. It should be no wonder, then, that they failed to recognize the risen Lord. It should be no wonder, then, that we too may find ourselves looking for our Lord when he is standing right here with us.

And so, there on the road to Emmaus, Jesus explains the necessity of the cross to his disciples:

• It was necessary to remove our sin and our shame from us.
• It was necessary to restore our relationship as a corrupted people with a holy God
• But it was also necessary to destroy the misconceptions both past and present of a God limited by race, nationality, political persuasion, professional aspiration, or personal expectation.
• As they said of Aslan, “He’s not a tame lion.”

Yet that same Jesus arose. He stands now before us. And as he reveals himself to us anew, we are left asking, who is this one that now greets us on the way? How do we recognize him?

• He’s still our personal savior, but instead of working for us, we find he’s working through us.
• He’s still granting us professional status, but instead of leaning on him to prop up our self-esteem, we find he’s redefining our purpose.
• He’s still our political messiah, but instead of believing that he’s on our side, we set aside our prejudices to work with him in his program to redeem the world.

Instead of trying to bend his ear to agree to our plans, we bow our knee to submit to his command.

In this Eastertide 2020, we walk with the disciples, identifying with their sense of loss, but my prayer is that we too might discover their wonder as we see Jesus truly risen, having conquered death and the grave and perhaps even our preconceived notions of who he was to us before this Coronavirus pandemic. I believe that, if we seek him, we’ll find him, like they did, to be far more powerful and far more capable than we’d ever imagined him to be.

These words are simply a devotional. There isn’t a lot of opportunity in this type of media to develop some of the ideas that I’ve brought up, but I welcome your questions or comments in the upcoming days and weeks. Maybe we can pursue some of these arguments to their logical conclusion or perhaps discover some new ones.

Still, I know, I’ve besmirched what some might consider a beloved song of their youth, and far be it from me to leave you without a proper replacement.

Here’s one I’ve heard, some 25 years ago. If I remember the title correctly it’s called “God in a Box.”:

“You can have a big box,
you can have a small box,
but if your god is in a box,
your god is very small.
You can have a plain box,
you can have a fancy box,
but if your god is in a box,
he isn’t God at all
he isn’t God at all.

Photo Credit: Neil Alexander McKee on Flickr.com