I don’t know about you, but there are moments in life when I am thoroughly confused.
My most recent moment of confusion was when I read a message on Facebook from one of my fellow students at college. The message read, “Eek! I have been given a date to do my first ever sermon and in front of my college peers too, yikes! It will certainly help me to discern whether it is my call or not!!!” This message confused me. It is normal for Student Presbyters and Student Deacons who are also Local Preachers to preach a sermon at college. This particular student is a Student Deacon who does not preach. Try as I might I could not work out why she was preaching at college: I was thoroughly confused and ended up asking her what was going on. She replied later the same evening, “Rick, my tutor thinks it will help my discerning a call or not to preach. I have been wrestling with it for a few years. I reckon preaching in front of you lot will help me know for sure one way or the other! Aldersgate day is a scary one to do though!” My friend has been wrestling with a call to preach; which she has kept very quiet, and a tutor at college had suggested she preach at college as a way of testing that call. I was no longer confused; it made perfect sense!
The account of Jesus’ encounter with the two travellers on the road to Emmaus is a very familiar one that e here read out in church every Easter. As I was reading and praying over this passage one word jumped out very strongly, a word I’d never associated with the passage before, and that word was confusion.
One of the things that is blindingly obvious in this passage once you seen it is that the disciples were completely and utterly confused.
We join the disciples walking along the dusty road to Emmaus, talking to each other about the momentous events that had taken place in Jerusalem. Jesus joins them on their journey, but they don’t recognise him. We are told that “they were kept from recognising him” and the implication is that this was a deliberate act by God.
Jesus asks them what they have been talking about and their confusion becomes clear. They begin to talk about Jesus and about who they thought he was. “He was a prophet.” That is how the two viewed Jesus. They had recognised that he was somebody sent by God but they saw him as somebody like Isaiah, Jeremiah or John the Baptiser; a prophet and not the Messiah. They said that they had hoped that Jesus would be the Messiah, “the one who was going to redeem Israel” but their hopes had been dashed by Jesus death. They’d heard the reports that Jesus had been raised from the dead but obviously didn’t believe them. Whether they realised it or not they were very confused people.
I was confused about my friend preaching in college because I didn’t know all the facts; the companions on the road to Emmaus were confused not because they didn’t have all the facts, but because they lacked the understanding that faith brings.
There was no need for the confusion of the companions on the road, as Jesus soon demonstrated to them. He took them through the scriptures that they knew well, to help them perhaps to see those scriptures in a new way. We don’t know exactly which texts Jesus used, but clearly the passages he chose and the way he explained their meaning made a difference. As they were later to say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us.”
These were scriptures they knew, scriptures they had heard many times in the synagogue and yet they had failed to see the truth about Jesus contained within them: just as many people today fail to understand the truth about who Jesus was and is. The difference here was that the two companions had Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, to explain the scriptures to them. Without the living Jesus to help us understand, the scriptures can seem confusing, contradictory even, hard to understand. When the living Jesus speaks to us, maybe through the words of ministers and preachers or in our minds and hearts as we meditate, the scriptures come alive in a new way.
John Wesley was a man who was confused. He was confused by his failure in America and he was confused by his lack of success for Christ despite his rigid and disciplined dedication to Christianity. Confused and not knowing exactly what he was looking for he went unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street. He later wrote of that evening, “one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to The Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” No doubt Wesley had read Paul’s Epistle to The Romans many times, he may even have read Luther’s preface to Romans many times, yet something that night was different. It was through William Holland’s reading of Luther’s commentary John Wesley heard the voice of the living Lord Jesus and found in it salvation.
By the time they reached Emmaus the two companions may have found their confusion easing, but perhaps they hadn’t quite got there yet. Sometimes our confusion doesn’t go away all at once. I think that is why they invited Jesus, who they still didn’t recognise, to stay with them; they wanted to know more. After Jesus exposition of scripture they were very close, but they hadn’t quite got there.
There are many people in our churches today who are very close, but haven’t quite got there. John Wesley called them ‘Almost Christians’. Wesley described an ‘Almost Christian’ in the most glowing terms, as somebody who is of good honest character, a charitable person who is outwardly religious, a devout person who prays and goes to church and is attentive throughout the service. An ‘Almost Christian’, says Wesley, is sincere, they really intend to serve God and do his will, for His sake and not their own. They sincerely desire to please God in every way, yet they are only almost Christians. Wesley confesses that, before his conversion on Aldersgate Street, he himself was only an ‘Almost Christian’.
So what changed for Wesley? How did he go from being what he called an ‘Almost Christian’ to being what he called an ‘Altogether Christian’? What is the difference? The difference is love for God, a love for God that fills heart, mind and spirit; and faith in Jesus, faith that he is the way, the truth and the life; faith that Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins and that he rose from the dead bringing us the assurance of eternal life. As John Wesley himself wrote, “an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
Jesus sits down to supper with the companions and breaks the bread. As he does this, the companions suddenly realise who Jesus is, and as they realise he vanishes from their sight. On the brink of understanding, it is the breaking of bread by Jesus that ends their confusion and brings the final certainty of faith; they know that Jesus is their travelling companion and that he has indeed been raised from the dead: everything that he told them was true.
It is hard to accept, this idea of Jesus rising from the dead. All kinds of theories have been suggested as to what happened on that first Easter Day. The traditional Christian view is that Jesus’ physical body was literally brought back to life. In Luke 24:39 Jesus himself says, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your mind? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones; as you see I have!” That physical body was changed in some way. The risen Jesus could still eat food, as he demonstrated on more than one occasion; he could be touched and could cook fish. On the other hand he could enter a locked room without opening the door; he seemed to be able to move from one place to another very quickly and even to vanish into thin air. There was something essentially different about Jesus’ resurrection body.
Some Christians doubt a literal physical resurrection. They would say that the resurrection of Jesus was a spiritual resurrection and that the meetings the disciples and others had with the risen Jesus were essentially inner spiritual experiences. I have no doubt whatsoever that meeting Jesus was an intensely spiritual experience, as the account of the travellers on the Road to Emmaus proves; but I also believe that Jesus rose physically from the dead.
There are many proofs offered for the physical resurrection of Jesus, but perhaps the most convincing is that suggested by the internationally respected scientist and Anglican minister John Polkinghorne, who wrote, “One of the strong lines of argument for the truth of the resurrection is the astonishing transformation of the disciples from the demoralised, defeated men of Good Friday to the confident proclaimers of the Lordship of Christ at Pentecost and beyond, even to the point of martyrdom. Something happened to bring that about. I believe it was the resurrection and that if Jesus had not been raised it is probable that we would never have heard of him.”
The physical resurrection of Jesus is confusing for some people, even for some Christians, because they cannot accept the scientific possibility of a dead body being transformed and resurrected to new life; their view of science is too high to allow such a thing. If only they would study the scriptures under the guidance of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit their confusion would fade away and they would realise that it is not their view of science that is too high, but their view of God that is too low.
Our passage from Luke ends with Cleopas and his companion sharing that intense desire to make known the reality of an encounter with the risen Jesus. Despite the fact that it is evening, that it is going dark and that they risked attack from robbers on the road between Emmaus and Jerusalem, the two companions set of straight away to Jerusalem to tell then eleven remaining disciples that they had seen Jesus.
As Christians we should have a burning desire to tell others about Jesus; he himself told us to pass on the good news of liberation from sin and the promise of everlasting spiritual life. The final words of the risen Jesus, as reported in Matthew’s gospel are, “go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
Jesus does not call us all to be evangelists, any more than he calls us all to be ordained ministers, local preachers, church stewards or whatever. But we can all be witnesses for the risen Jesus in the way we live our lives, in the love we show to others and by having the courage, if the opportunity presents itself, to be open and honest about our faith. We never know, the risen Jesus could use us to bring that person to faith.
Like the two companions on the road to Emmaus we too may have, or have had, doubts about Jesus being the Son of God and rising from the dead. Like those companions the risen Jesus comes to us and leads us gently to the truth of who he is; and like them we must be fired with enthusiasm to tell others about Jesus. May the risen Jesus meet us and meet us again and bring us these blessings.
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