There is a particular kind of walk home. You have been to the hospital, or the bank, or the lawyer’s office, or the funeral. The news was not what you hoped. The road is the same road you always take, but you do not notice any of it. You talk about what happened, over and over, as if saying it again might change it.
That is where Luke 24 finds two of Jesus’ followers, on the road from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles. Their teacher had been crucified. They had heard a strange report from some women that the tomb was empty, but it had not lifted them. “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel,” one of them says (Luke 24:21, NIV). We had hoped. Past tense.
When hope goes into the past tense
Many households know that grammar. We had hoped the business would do well enough to finish the upstairs. We had hoped the visa would come through so the family could be together. We had hoped our son would settle down, that the land dispute would be resolved while Grandpa was still alive, that we would be in our own place by now.
Disappointment does something to a home. It lowers the voices at the table. It makes people stop mentioning the plan, because mentioning it hurts. It can make us quietly settle into a smaller story, where God is real but not expected to do very much.
The sharp word on the road
A stranger falls into step beside them. We know it is Jesus; they do not. He asks what they are discussing, lets them tell the whole sad story, and then says something that sounds almost rude: “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” (Luke 24:25, NIV).
It is a strong word, but it is not a cruel one. It is the kind of thing a loving parent says to a child who is crying over a problem that has already been solved. The very thing that had crushed them, the death of Jesus, was not the end of the plan. It was the plan. Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He walked them through the Scriptures and showed them that the Messiah had to suffer these things and then enter His glory.
Sometimes we need that sort of word too. Not a pat on the back, but a gentle shake. We can be so taken up with what we can see, the arrears, the cracked wall, the empty bedroom, that we forget what God has already done and said. The risen Christ does not scold us for being sad. He scolds us, lovingly, for thinking the sad part is the whole story.
An invitation at the gate
Then comes one of the most homely moments in the Gospels. They reach their village, and the stranger acts as if He is going on. They urge Him strongly: “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over” (Luke 24:29, NIV).
Tired and grieving, they still open the door. It is plain Caribbean hospitality: you do not let a traveller walk on in the dark. Come in, eat something, sleep here. They had no idea who they were inviting. They were simply being decent.
And it was at their own table, in their own house, that everything changed. He took the bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. “Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him” (Luke 24:31, NIV).
Recognised in ordinary things
Not in the temple, not on a mountain, but over supper in a village house. That is worth holding on to. The risen Lord is often recognised in the most ordinary places: at the kitchen table, in the act of giving thanks before a plain meal, in bread broken and passed around.
For a disappointed household, that suggests some small practices. Keep eating together, even when the conversation is heavy. Keep giving thanks for the food, even when the thanks feels thin. Keep opening the door to the traveller, the lonely neighbour, the young person far from home. Keep reading the Scriptures aloud, slowly, the way Jesus did on the road. These are not magic. But they are the places where, again and again, people find their eyes opened.
Afterwards, the two said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?” (Luke 24:32, NIV). And though it was late and dark, they got up and walked the seven miles back to Jerusalem. The road home had become a road out again.
For reflection
- What has your household stopped hoping for? What would it mean to bring that “we had hoped” to Jesus honestly?
- Who might you invite to “stay with us” at your table in the coming weeks?
A prayer
Risen Lord, You walked beside two tired friends when they did not know You. Walk beside us on our slow road home. Where we are foolish and slow to believe, speak to us plainly. Stay with us, for it is nearly evening. Come to our table, and let us know You in the breaking of the bread. Amen.
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