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Faith's Ancient Strength city of hero downloadsText:
Luke 24:13-35 Our third Sunday of Easter takes us back to that first Easter Day through the witness of the Evangelist Saint Luke. In fact it centers around the very climax and entire purpose of Luke's Gospel, and the hinge to his second volume, the Book of Acts, as he relates the account of two disciples on the road to Emmaus. For Luke began his Gospel stating that his purpose is “that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught” [Luke 1:4 (ESV)]. “The things” he has in mind of course include the preaching, teaching and healing ministry of Jesus but are primarily his suffering and death and his mighty resurrection. The “certainty” he has in mind is not just in the sense of an accurate knowledge of the facts. The disciples on the Emmaus road knew the facts, yet it only confused and depressed them. The “certainty” Luke is talking about is the certainty of faith, and that faith is given only as a gift worked in our hearts and minds by God himself. Without the facts there is no faith. And without faith the facts don't add up or seem to make sense. Just as the first disciples could not believe until and unless Jesus himself burned his Word in their hearts and opened their eyes in his table fellowship, so we in our day need that for which we pray in the hymn of the day: Rekindle for this end-time stress Faith's Ancient Strength and steadfastness. That we keep pure till life is spent Your holy Word and Sacrament. [[LW 344:2]
First of all, who are these two disciples? We're told the name of one of them, Cleopas. Remember that Peter and the other Ten of Jesus' special choosing, having run back and forth to the empty tomb earlier in the day, are in Jerusalem in the evening (John 20:19) with the women and other disciples (Luke 24:9-10) hiding behind locked doors for fear of the Jews. So these two disciples are not of The Eleven, but of that extended group that Luke identifies as the seventy-two (Luke 10:1, 17). Luke tells us they were taking the roughly two-hour walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, maybe shuffling their feet and gabbing to one another about the tragic events of Holy Week. When Jesus himself comes up from behind and joins them Luke tells us, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” [Luke 24:16 (ESV)]. God intentionally did this for a purpose, as we shall see shortly. But Luke also means to say to us and to all that, apart from Christ, sinners remain spiritually blind and faith is impossible.
First, the facts. The Stranger joins the two on the road and, at first, appears to be the questioner. “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” he asks. Luke says they stopped in their tracks, “looking sad,” gloomy [Luke 24:17 (ESV)]. The one named Cleopas vents his frustration assuming The Stranger is only a visitor to Jerusalem who, somehow, must be the only one in the whole world that doesn't know about “the things” that have just happened there in a very public way. The Stranger asks another question. “What things?”
They relate the facts to him. But in the way they speak they also reveal their confusion, disappointment, doubt, unbelief and inward blindness. They begin hopefully enough, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth,” they said. In mentioning Nazareth they speak what we might call a “Christmas” faith. They believed Jesus to be the virgin born, the one whose inaugural sermon was in Nazareth where he laid out his messianic mission. They called Jesus “a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.” They believed in Jesus because of his miraculous works of healing, his masterful teaching and his claims to be the Son of God. But then they related the other things, the depressing things, the things that now dashed their hopes and faith: “how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him.” Then come the sad words, “But we had hoped…” “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” By saying they “had” hoped means that those hopes were now gone. How could he be that One, after all, now that he was dead? They were convinced that they were wrong to put their faith in him. Then, one more strange thing, “some women of our company astonished us” for they say his body is no longer in the tomb and that they had even seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. “Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see;” “WE haven't seen him” they said to Jesus standing there right in front of them! Here we have what we might call “Christmas and Easter Christians.”
So there's the facts concerning Jesus, his works and claims, his death and burial, and concerning these two, their hopes and dreams and now their total disappointment and disbelief.
Suddenly, the questioning Stranger turns into the Teaching Stranger. “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures how it was necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory.” Notice the totally inclusive words, Moses, “all the Prophets,” “all the Scriptures.” What was missing was their understanding that everything in the Old Testament Scriptures, everything, points to the Christ. Without | |
