Let down and leaving town

The following is a reflection on Luke 24:13-36 often know as the story ‘on the road to Emmaus’

Here is a story for anyone who feels let down by Jesus. We follow him, we learn from him, we think we’ve got him sussed out. He will fulfil our wildest dreams, and then… then… suffering, questioning, trial, mocking, torture and death. The Jesus we thought we knew becomes a corpse, our hope gone, our joy departed. Once alive, now dead.
We didn’t imaging it would turn out this way. We were planning the victory, our victory. But Jesus, messed it all up, he started playing to lose. They questioned him, mocked him, and he chose silence as his reply. They hit him and he turned the other cheek. No resistance. He took up his cross beam, and walked another mile.
We know that feeling, when everything we relied on as true dies. When reality doesn’t stack up any longer. We no longer know what to believe. Something dies. Then, to make matters worse, those around us tell us even our sense of loss is in doubt. We can’t even wallow in our sadness. There is no place to call home. Let down, we leave town.
And then, this stranger…
He draws along side us and he asks and he listens…
and asks,
and listens.
We let it all out, we tell it like as we see it, and he listens. And then, having emptied ourselves, we listen and he talks, and he tells a story, the story. The story we lived with all these years, but we’ve not heard it this way before. There’s a new excitement, a new joy, and its full of grace. Jesus comes alive to us again in this telling of the story. We hadn’t seen it like this, we’d not seen the flow, we’d lost track of the ending. But here, now, right before us: new life breaking into the present.
Resurrection.

[blessed are you]


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