The Dusty Road to Emmaus
I have been meditating a lot on the story of a man named Cleopas from the Bible. He and another (unnamed) man were walking to a town called Emmaus after it was discovered that the body of Jesus - who was killed 3 days earlier - was no longer in its tomb. I can only imagine the amount of decompressing these two were undergoing with all that had happened, not only in the last 3 days, but in the entirety of the last two and a half years.
Before Jesus was crucified, he had walked the earth, demonstrating powers that backed his claim to be the son of God. He showered those who walked among him with miracles of love. This attracted both the attention and the disdain of the Pharisees. The Pharisees claimed blasphemy, while the citizens found every word of Jesus to be true. Jesus challenged people to think outside of their antiquated boxes and to meet with God in a different way then had been taught in the synagogues. People were evolving in their theology, and Jesus’ divine love was the catalyst to this change. He challenged who was in and who was out, he challenged the laws of the day, and let everyone know that people will always come before the law of the land. So those who were observing Jesus were likely to have found their doctrine turned upside down.
As Jesus walked the earth he was constantly speaking of a new kingdom, and in this new kingdom, he was to be king. The hopes of the people were rising at the notion of this man of love overtaking the throne of oppression and empire. And at the height of their belief when all of these new ideas of God were challenging them and changing them, a time when they came to trust the word of this man named Jesus, that’s when he was killed. For 2 and a half years their beliefs were in constant movement: from skepticism and doubt to confusion and wonder and ultimately to belief and certainty. And just like that, Jesus was crushed by the empire he claimed to one day overtake. He was crushed by the oppression of the very people he was to rule. The disciples were told this would happen, and even they were confused when it came to pass. They saw the broken body and believed the incompleteness instead of seeing past the physicality of the body to the sweet fulfillment of a promise.
So Cleopas and his friend are walking the 7 miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus and trying so hard to make sense out of their disorientation. How disillusioned and devastated these men had to have felt when all that they believed seemed to have come untied, and to be proven false. They were discussing the events when it says that Jesus came to them in their speaking. In the midst of their disappointment and confusion, their disenchantment, in the midst of wrestling with their darkest hour, Jesus appears and walks alongside them. The men were shocked when this mysterious man hadn’t heard the scandalous news of what had happened. They shared the story. They shared that they had hoped Jesus was really the one to redeem Israel. They hoped. Past tense. They were already giving up. Eventually, they saw that this man walking with them was, in fact, Jesus. He had been good on his claims, they had just been disappointed by their own expectations.
The road to Emmaus is such a beautiful story to me. One that gives me so much hope. A hope and a reassurance that God will come to me when I am disoriented, in the depths of sorrow, and even when I am nothing but doubt. He will show up for me when my theology is all wrong and when I’ve missed the point entirely. He will show up on the journey and he will reveal himself just as he did the two confused men on the dusty road to Emmaus. This story shows us that in our pursuit of Truth, Truth Himself walks beside us.