Take A Wonderful Walk With Jesus

4.26.20 Luke 24:13-35

He said to them, “How foolish you are and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and to enter his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

The Way to Emmaus is one of my favorite paintings. My parents had a large picture of it in our basement, and I have a smaller version of it in my office. Jesus is standing in the middle with the two disciples on either side of him. There are large trees surrounding them, and Jesus is walking along side of them explaining exactly what happened to Him.

Take a Wonderful Walk with Jesus

Luke tells us it is a 60 stadium walk, which would be about 7 miles. That’s no short trek. If you go down to Hotchkiss on the other side of the river there is a nice river walk there which goes all the way to the bridge. It is 5.7 miles one way. When we walk a little over two miles at an average pace it takes us about 45 minutes. So seven miles would probably be at least two hours to walk.

I love the way that Jesus approaches the disciples. He hides His identity from them. They have no clue who He is, and He doesn’t want them to see who He is. Why is that? I’ve heard that some celebrities love it when they have to sit by people who they don’t know on an airplane so that they can have a normal conversation with them and treat them like normal people. Jesus was able to have a somewhat NORMAL conversation with these disciples so that they wouldn’t be freaking out over being in His resurrected presence and they could actually LISTEN to what He was saying. He was able to just let the WORD do its WORK.

Isn’t that a testament to us then too? If the resurrected Jesus didn’t rely on His own resurrection to convince Cleopas and the other disciple that He was the Messiah, then we can just use the Word of God too and trust in it to convince people who Jesus is too.

Jesus comes meandering up to them and basically plays dumb. “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” The disciples stop walking. They look at Jesus and basically accuse Him of living in a box, assuming that He must be completely clueless. How could He be walking from Jerusalem and NOT know what was going on. All Jesus has done is to ask a question. It wasn’t as if He didn’t know, but He wanted to get in a conversation with the disciples, so He asks a question He knew the answer to.

When you deal with sickness and death and mass destruction in this world, it might seem to you that God is clueless as well. Don’t imagine as if God didn’t know what was going on or was off visiting another planet and had his back turned for a minute. That’s not how God works. Just think of how we pray. We explain things to Him. “Dear Lord, I’m having a very difficult time here.” And I suppose God could say, “Don’t treat me like an idiot. You don’t have to EXPLAIN it to me. I’m not an idiot. I know what’s going on.”

Yet here we see how Jesus deals with us, right? He asks the disciples questions because he WANTS them to explain. He wants us to express what is making us sad or anxious or afraid. He likes us to have conversations with Him and pour out our thoughts and emotions to Him. Just because God knows everything doesn’t mean He doesn’t want you to talk with Him about it. Think about a child that has just learned a Bible verse. He wants to recite it to you or sing a song to you. You don’t say, “I already know that!” You love to hear it from your child’s mouth and heart. You even say, “Can you sing me Jesus loves me?” It brings joy to your heart to hear them speak and confess. Well, Jesus’ question gives them an opportunity to confess their faith, or lack thereof.

Sometimes the best thing you can do with people who are struggling with their faith is to first just ask them questions about it. Get them to express it. Let them hear themselves speak. Sometimes you will also run into someone who is adamantly against Christianity for some reason. Instead of answering all of their objections, first ask a few questions. Make them express WHY they believe or don’t believe what they do. A question can be like putting a pebble in their shoe - to make them realize that maybe their reasoning isn’t the best - to open up a door to share God’s Word. Jesus does that with the disciples because He wants to calm their fears.