Tears over Emmaus

I'm finishing up the Gospel of Luke in my daily (sort of) time of Bible study and prayer. Last week I read the account of Jesus' resurrection, the meeting of the husband and wife on the road to Emmaus.

Being a good Sunday school kid, I knew this story. But the Spirit really captured me up in the wonder of it all last week when I read it. Consider these two people walking just outside of Jerusalem after a good friend of theirs and their hope of God's Messiah meets this gruesome, humiliating, catastrophic death. Perhaps they had left homes, friends, family to follow this man. And now it's all over.

And then Jesus himself appears. And they walk and talk with him, not recognizing him as he explains that it all had to go down exactly as it had. And then he reveals himself. And they rush back to Jerusalem (about 7 miles) and tell the disciples that it's true! He's risen! Overjoyed!

My study Bible had a very thoughtful reflection on this passage:

"It is God's way to come cloaked, and also for his greatest promises to come cloaked. It is his way to come when the storm is peaking or fear deepest or when hope is almost gone...It has always been his way. No resurrection without Golgotha. No freedom without Gethsemane. No Christmas Eve without a Good Friday....

But the other truth is that the world is interstitial--he will fling back his hood, he will throw off his robe to make obvious his heraldry....Our task is not to figure everything out or imagine every angle God might come at us from, but to stay on the roads of our years, plodding on, encouraging one another with the voices and the mysteries of heaven. It is only that. To stay on the road until God in Disguise joins us and eventually comes to sit at our table. Or we at his."