Luke 24.13-35

His story, our story

(Luke 24.13-35)

Jason Procopio

We’re almost finished, friends—just a couple more weeks until we finish our nearly three-year trip through the gospel of Luke.

And it so happens that today’s passage is one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible.

So let’s remember where we were. Jesus finished his ministry; he was arrested, falsely accused, condemned and crucified. He died on the cross, was buried, and—as we saw last week—he was raised from the dead on the third day.

But as we left things last week, we haven’t actually seen Jesus yet: all we saw was the empty tomb. The women who come to the tomb find it empty; they see two angels sitting there who tell them that Jesus is risen; they run back and tell the disciples, who think they’re nuts—all except Peter, who runs to the tomb and finds it empty himself.

That’s where we left it off—and that’s exactly where our texts picks up today.

In v. 13 we find two "of them” walking toward a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, Luke says. 

So first of all, who were these two people? They were two of the “all the rest” Luke mentioned in v. 9. All we know is one of them is named Cleopas—that’s it. (They are often described as two men, but they could well have been a man and a woman, maybe a husband and wife; the Greek is ambiguous.) 

At any rate, they were two unknown people in this story; they weren’t among the apostles, they weren’t leaders. They were just two people who had followed Jesus along with everyone else.

So they’re going to Emmaus, and they’re talking about everything that had happened, and along the way Jesus joins them on the road. But Luke tells us (v. 16) that their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

Now some people will imagine that’s because Jesus’s physical appearance has changed—and that may be true. We know that now that he has been raised, his body has been glorified—made perfect, freed from the effects of sin in this world. So he may have looked a little different.

But Luke’s language is more specific than that: he describes a kind of blindness that God sends on these two so that they don’t know it’s Jesus they’re walking with. I think there’s a reason for that, which we’ll see a little later.

So (v. 17) Jesus basically walks up and asks them, “What are you guys talking about?”

They obviously presumed everyone knew about Jesus, so when he seems to be ignorant of the situation, they explain to him about Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.

I don’t think this means they misunderstood whom Jesus had claimed to be. I think they call him “a prophet” because they had hoped he was the Messiah whom God had promised, the one to redeem Israel; but he died, so he couldn’t possibly be the Savior they thought he was.

They explain how Jesus was crucified, and then in v. 21-24, they basically give a recap of everything we saw last week: how the women went to the tomb and found it empty and claimed to have seen angels, saying he was alive. But clearly these two weren’t entirely convinced by the women’s story: they say the women saw “a vision” of angels, and they specify that the women did not see Jesus.

And this is where we get to the heart of the passage, which we’ll come back to more than once. 

V. 25-27:  

25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. 

In these verses, we see a pattern that actually occurred before, with the women at the tomb, and which will happen again in next week’s passage, when Jesus appears to the disciples.

Bewilderment and Rebuke (v. 13-26)

The first thing we’ve already seen, and it’s simple bewilderment. They don’t understand what’s going on. Jesus couldn’t have been the Messiah, because he died. That’s what they’re talking about.

Next, we see a rebuke. 

Jesus says (v. 25):  O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?

There are a few things here worth noting.

The first is that these two, apparently, should have known better. Like the angels said to the women in last week’s text, Jesus seems surprised at their bewilderment. Haven’t you read the Scriptures? Don’t you remember that it was NECESSARY for the Christ to suffer these things and enter into his glory?

This is like the rebuke that Jesus leveled at the scribes in chapter 20: in the Scriptures you had everything you needed to know that I was indeed the Messiah, that things did have to happen this way.

The big difference is that with the scribes, Jesus knew their hearts, and so left them in their ignorance on the heels of that rebuke. But he loves these two; he knows they aren’t looking for power or position, but genuinely don’t understand—indeed, he knows they can’t understand without his help.

Teaching (v. 27)

So he teaches them—which is the next step in the pattern. We have bewilderment, then rebuke, then teaching. 

V. 27:  

27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. 

This is just wonderful. How many times have you heard us say that all of Scripture is about Jesus? So here you can see that I’m not making it up; that isn’t just a catchy phrase to say, to get people to read their Bibles.

When Jesus teaches them in order to convince them that these things had to happen, he doesn’t use his own teaching; he doesn’t use his own powers of persuasion. 

He uses the Old Testament.

He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

He begins with Moses—Israel’s first “Savior,” deliverer sent to rescue them from slavery in Egypt, through whom God communicated his will by means of the law.

Then he goes to the Prophets—for example, Isaiah 53.5-7, 9-10:   

5  But he was pierced for our transgressions; 

he was crushed for our iniquities; 

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, 

and with his wounds we are healed. 

6  All we like sheep have gone astray; 

we have turned—every one—to his own way; 

and the Lord has laid on him 

the iniquity of us all…  

9  And they made his grave with the wicked 

and with a rich man in his death, 

although he had done no violence, 

and there was no deceit in his mouth. 

10  Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; 

he has put him to grief; 

when his soul makes an offering for guilt, 

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; 

the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. 

All of Scripture tells the story of Jesus Christ. 

All of the OT either explicitly looks forward to him, or builds the story which would culminate in him. You cannot understand the story of the gospel if you don’t understand the story which led up to it—clearly. These people—the scribes and the Pharisees, the disciples who don’t believe, and these two on the road to Emmaus—prove that fact.

When Jesus wants to convince them of what he came to do, he uses the Scriptures to do it.

He walks these two through the biblical story, showing how every step of the way, Scripture was pointing toward Jesus. 

(Remember, at this point they didn’t know it was him.)

So what happens next? They “persuade” him to come eat dinner with them. This respected the rules of Jewish decorum, but there was more to it than that. Imagine these men, who had seen their hopes dashed that Jesus was the Messiah, suddenly being shown in all of Scripture that this was no accident—no fluke of disobedient men—no defeat. 

Imagine what it must have been like to realize that everything they had seen happen to Jesus had been predicted. These people are the first whom Luke records as fully understanding that the cross wasn’t a defeat, but the means by which he entered into his glory.

So he comes to dinner, and at the end of the dinner, the most extraordinary thing happens—v. 30:  

30 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.

OK, at the risk of belaboring the point, take a minute to picture this moment.

Your Messiah is dead. Your hopes are shattered.

And then someone comes along, someone who is clearly a genius in regards to Holy Scripture, and as he’s speaking, you begin to realize little by little that maybe you had it wrong. It seems like your hopes may not be dead after all. This is how it was supposed to happen; what seemed to be defeat wasn’t defeat at all.

And then, as you’re thinking these things over, you realize that the guy you’ve been speaking to all this time actually is Christ.

And then he disappears.

(I’m reading between the lines, but I have a hard time not imagining Jesus winking just before he disappears.)

What would you do in that moment?

You’d turn to your friend and say, “IT WAS HIM!!! It was him this whole time! Can you believe it? And did you see that? He gave us the bread, he winked at us, and then he just DISAPPEARED!”

That’s what I’d say—but that’s not what these two say.

V. 32 is an absolute bomb of a verse:  

32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”

This is incredible. The most extraordinary part of this exchange, for these two, was not taking the bread and realizing they’d been talking to Christ all along. It wasn’t him disappearing right before their eyes. Once they’re alone again, they don’t talk about these things; they talk about what he taught them.

Did not our hearts burn within us…while he opened to us the Scriptures?

That’s why I think God didn’t let them see they were speaking to Jesus before the moment when he broke the bread. I think he wanted to let the Scriptures convince them rather than a visible miracle. 

In other words, even before they recognized Jesus, they already had everything they needed to be convinced. The testimony of Scripture alone confirmed their hopes.

They had everything they needed to make them full-fledged believers, before they recognized him for who he was. His appearance to them was icing on the cake. The Scriptures alone were enough.

So we have bewilderment, rebuke, teaching, and finally—the last step in the pattern—witness.

Witness (v. 33-35)

So they go back to Jerusalem right then—it would be quite late in the evening by that point—and they find the eleven apostles and all of the others gathered with them in a frenzy. So the two who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus (v. 35):  

...told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. 

Now if you’ve been following the gospel of Luke up to this point, these verses sound decidedly odd. Apparently Jesus has been busy—now the eleven are convinced that Jesus has indeed been raised, and he has appeared to Peter (“Simon”). Were the eleven convinced because of Peter’s testimony? Probably—hearing it from the women earlier could have been chalked up as a kind of mass hysteria, but now hearing a separate account of the resurrection from Peter, who has seen Jesus…they can’t discount it anymore.

But here’s why it’s odd. Luke doesn’t give us details of any of those things. He doesn’t tell us about Jesus’s meeting with Peter (which would have given his story some closure); he doesn’t tell us what convinced the apostles in the end. He doesn’t tell us about the circumstances which led to this frenzy. 

Instead, he takes more than twenty verses—one of the longest narrative portions in this entire gospel—to tell us this story about Jesus meeting with these two inconsequential disciples (one of whom isn’t even named). 

Why would he do that? It’s not as if he didn’t have access to the same eyewitness testimony he’s had since the beginning. He’d have been able to speak with at least some of the people who were there, to find these things out.

But remember—we’ve said it many times before—Luke is not just a historian telling a story; he’s doing the work of a theologian.

And one of the recurrent themes of the story of the church (which we’ll continue to see in the book of Acts and in the letters which follow it) is that God saves his people through the witness of his people.

This is a beautiful reminder that God does not reveal himself only to apostles, and that he doesn’t only use apostles to do his work of spreading the good news of the life, death and resurrection of Christ. He meets all of us in our confusion and our incredulity. He rebukes all of us for not believing. He teaches all of us, and convinces us of the truth of the gospel through his Holy Spirit. And he commissions all of us to be witnesses of the gospel to the rest of the world.

The gospel is not the sole domain of a priest, or a pastor, or a leader; the gospel is the good news addressed to all those who will follow Christ—us included. This is our revelation; and it is our call.

These two people whom Jesus met on the road to Emmaus are all of us.

We have received the same Scripture as these two, who were convinced of the truth of what he was saying, before he revealed himself to be the Christ.

And we have received the same mandate as these two, which for them was instinctive—they went out and told others what they had discovered: that Jesus is alive. He is risen. His death was not an accident; it was the means by which he entered into his glory. 

What more do we need?

We have received everything that anyone after Christ’s ascension has received. We have received the same message, the same mission, and the same Spirit to bring that mission to pass.

The reason why it’s so important to stress this is that Christians today are so often tempted to come to God to receive something new, and then be disappointed when all he gives them is the “same old gospel” they’ve heard a thousand times. We want a “new anointing”, a “new experience”, a “new encounter with the Spirit.” 

Now of course the Spirit meets us where we are and he does new things in us—helps us understand things we hadn’t understood before, helps us to live out the gospel in ways we hadn’t been able to before. But the things he helps us understand, the things he helps us live, are the same old things we were given two thousand years ago: the glorious, good news that Jesus lived our life, and died our death, and was raised to declare us righteous.

We don’t need to receive anything new; we just need to do new things with what we’ve already received, through the work of the Spirit in us.

So as we consider the fact that the teaching and the call to witness these disciples received are the same teaching and call that we have received, we need to ask ourselves, not what else we need, but rather what do we need to do with what we already have?

I’ll leave you with three things we need to do with what we’ve received.

Firstly, we need to know the story.

The only reason the conversation these two disciples had with Jesus on the road to Emmaus was so earth-shattering to them is because they already knew the story. They had all the pieces; they just hadn’t seen before how the pieces fit together.

What about us? How well do we know the story?

I know I keep beating on the same old drum, but this is why reading the entire Bible, on a regular basis, is important. If we don’t know the whole story, we won’t be able to appreciate the fulfillment of the story in the person of Christ, or the effect of that story in the book of Acts, or the application of that story in the letters of the apostles. 

If we don’t know the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy (in the Old Testament), we’ll have a very hard time grasping the letters to the Hebrews and the Romans (in the New Testament). If we don’t understand the Law, we won’t understand how Christ fulfilled that Law. If we don’t understand the books of Samuel and Kings, we’ll have a hard time understanding why Christ is a better King. If we don’t understand the life of God’s people in exile, we’ll have a hard time grasping Peter’s entreaty to live as exiles in this world.

If we don’t know the Old Testament, and what preceded the coming of Christ, we won’t be able to really appreciate most of what we find in the New Testament.

We need to know the story. We need to develop the habit of regularly reading all of Scripture—not just the bits we like. And we need to pray as we read, that the Spirit might help us be changed, not just by the parts that are easy, but by the parts that are difficult as well.

Secondly, we need to pray to realize we have been brought into this story.

We’ll come back to this again and again over the next couple weeks. We need to know this story, not just to appreciate the story for itself, but because we’re in it. Israel’s story is our story. The story Jesus told the two disciples on the road to Emmaus—the story of Moses and the prophets, the story which begins in the Old Testament and continues in the New—is our story.

Part of the reason why people find it so hard to read the Bible is because we imagine these are things that happened to a bunch of people we don’t know, a very long time ago. And while that’s theoretically true, in reality it’s not true at all.

When I was back in Oklahoma for my grandmother’s funeral this past January, I spent nearly an entire day with my mom and my aunts and my uncle, going through old photos in her house. It was like digging for treasure. I found photographs of my family going back three generations—pictures of people I had never met, but who are nonetheless mine. They are part of what I received when I was born into this family, and their stories are mine too. 

When we realize that the story of the Bible is the story of us, the story of our ancestry, the story of our past, we have a similar experience. We feel rooted in something bigger than ourselves. But discovering our past in the Bible has one massive leg up on discovering our biological family history.

When we read the Bible, and finally come to realize that we are a part of this story, we aren’t just brought into our ancestors’ past; we’re brought into the hope of their future. The promise of abundant life in our Savior today, the promise of resurrection and the new heavens and the new earth, the promise of eternal life with our Father, aren’t just promises given to the people of Israel, or the apostles, or the early church. 

These are promises given to us, because we have been brought into their story. We have been adopted by a Father who wants to share with us the blessings of his people, and a vision of his glory.

Why do you think the disciples on the road were so effected by realizing that all this time, their Scriptures looked forward to Jesus? 

Because they finally saw, for the first time, that everything they had based their lives on, all of their collective history and promises, had finally been realized in him! Which meant that their lives were not based on false hopes; that God had heard their prayers; that he had not abandoned his people. The story they knew so well was true, and now they had living, visible, concrete proof of that reality, in the form of the resurrected Lord, walking down the road beside them. 

What else, if not this, could make their hearts burn within them?

We need to know our story.

And lastly, we need to tell the story to others.

It would have been easy for these two disciples to simply sit in amazement of the gift they’d been given: Christ was raised, and he visited them—even though the “main” disciples, the eleven, were miles away! They could have simply treasured that moment in secret.

But they didn’t—they jumped up and went back to Jerusalem to tell everyone else what had happened. They didn’t want their joy to belong only to them. 

When we know the story, and know the story is ours, one thing will become clear very quickly: if the story the Bible tells is our story, it’s everyone else’s too. 

Part of the reason why people find it so hard to understand why they do the things they do is because they don’t know who they really are, or where they really come from. 

When Saint Augustine, some 1600 years ago, discovered the Bible, the reason it so captivated him is because he could see himself, with his own failures and sins and character defects (of which there were many), in Adam and Eve and the people of Israel. He found his own longings and desires echoed in the psalms, and in the teachings of Jesus. He realized that in the Bible, God hadn’t just told him a story about someone else, in the abstract; God was telling him a story about himself.

James K.A. Smith writes, 

“The very notion will scandalize us, we who’ve been encouraged to live ‘our’ truth, to come up with our own story… The notion of a governing narrative that is not your own feels like signing over the rights to your life—which it is! But for Augustine, being enfolded in God’s story in Scripture was not an imposition but a liberation. When you’ve realized that you don’t even know yourself, that you’re an enigma to yourself, and when you keep looking inward only to find an unplumbable depth of mystery and secrets and parts of yourself that are loathsome, then Scripture isn’t received as a list of commands: instead, it breaks into your life as a light from outside that shows you the infinite God who loves you at the bottom of the abyss. God’s Word for Augustine wasn’t experienced as burden or buzzkill but as autobiography written by the God who made him. Scripture irrupted in Augustine’s life as revelation, the story about himself told by another, and as illumination, shining a light that helped him finally understand his hungers and faults and hopes.”

This is the story of humanity entire, whether our fellow humans realize it or not. And so we do not want our joy to belong only to us. We want them to know their story too, and to find their pleasure in its Author, just as we do.

But we’ll only be able to help them see that if we know the story, and if we live the story.

This is the grace of God to us, and this is the mission of the church—which we’ll be seeing even more explicitly in the next two weeks.