I. Luke 24:13-35
The Emmaus disciples are sad and do not recognize the risen Jesus. For the Scriptures, which speak of Him, are still closed to them. So they believe Him still to be dead. Their eyes are restrained. That’s how it is with our sinful nature; it keeps us from seeing things the way they really are and from grasping God’s Word. All we see is what we want to see, even when the Truth is standing right there in front of us. Without God’s working, we are blind to the things of Jesus.
And the fact is that it was also Jesus who restrained the eyes of these two on the road to Emmaus. Jesus sometimes keeps us from seeing until we are ready, until He has prepared us to take in the truth. That’s why He makes the Emmaus disciples wait; they need to be catechized and taught first. They do not see yet, but their hearts burn within them as Jesus opens the Scriptures to them. Has that ever happened to you, as you can almost feel your heart being filled with life and truth as you hear and take in divine teaching? Jesus expounds to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Wouldn’t that have been a wonderful Bible class to attend! And notice how it says “all.” All the Scriptures have to do with Christ. From the creation forward, they speak of Him who is the Word made flesh, now risen in the flesh. Here you are given to see that Jesus alone is the Key that unlocks the Scriptures. He is their center and substance, the very revelation of God.
Jesus speaks of how it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer before entering His glory. But why was it necessary? Because as the God who is love, He obligated Himself to come and help you in your lost condition. It was necessary so that the sins of the world might be taken away by Him who is the Lamb of God. For according to the Scriptures, there is no remission of sins without the shedding of blood.
The Emmaus disciples were hoping that Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel. Strangely enough they thought He failed in that mission because of His cross. To them, and to every other fallen human being, that looked like defeat. To them, redemption meant deliverance from earthly oppressors like the Romans. We can fall into that trap, too, when we think that what’s most important is what happens in the political or economic realms–temporary, worldly deliverance. But Jesus accomplished a much greater redemption precisely in His suffering, bringing freedom not from temporal oppressors but eternal ones. You, O Israel, are released from Satan and sin and the grave. For Christ redeemed you from them with His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. He now lives and reigns to all eternity to be your strong and merciful Lord.
It is toward evening. The Emmaus disciples ask this man, who is still a stranger to their eyes, to come in and stay with them. Jesus sits at the table with them. He takes the bread. He blesses and breaks it and gives it to them. And then their eyes are opened. Now they are ready to see. Now they are given to recognize who He is. Christ makes Himself known to them in the breaking of the bread, and vanishes from their sight.
Doesn’t the risen Christ still make Himself known to His people in this same way yet today? By opening the disciples' eyes at the table and then immediately vanishing from their sight, Christ is teaching His church where now to look for Him. You aren’t to look for Him in the same way as when He walked the earth during His ministry, or in visions or miraculous experiences. You are to see Him in the breaking of the bread, that is, the Sacrament of the Altar. For it is there that Christ is truly present with His living body and blood. You are to regard every celebration of the blessed supper as another resurrection appearance of Christ. For it is there at the table that the resurrected Lord comes to abide with you and gives you to share in His life, that He may live in you and you in Him forever.
Let us then become as the Emmaus disciples, our hearts burning with the flame of Him who is the Light of the world as He unlocks the Scriptures and teaches us of Himself; and let us especially rejoice when He makes Himself known to us in the breaking of the bread.
II. Luke 24:36-43
There are those who consider the resurrection of Jesus to be something less than fully real. They regard it as an event that is only “spiritual,” not bodily in nature. But there is neither truth nor comfort in such a view.
When the disciples first see the risen Jesus, they are terrified and frightened. Why? Because they think they are seeing a spirit. If Jesus were indeed a spirit, a ghost, we would have as much reason as the disciples to be terrified of Him. For the Scriptures say that if Christ is not bodily raised from the dead, our faith would be futile; we would still be in our sins; darkness and death would still hang over us.
How, then, does Jesus comfort His disciples? By showing Himself to be alive in the flesh, for real. He gives them to touch His flesh and bones, which no spirit has, to handle His wounded but now eternally restored hands and feet. He proves Himself yet to be true man. He is still Emmanuel, God with us, in our midst, God incarnate, one of us.
Only then is there joy for the disciples. And only then is there joy for us. Something less than a real resurrection for Jesus means something less than real salvation for us. But because Jesus truly is raised from the dead, because Easter is not ethereal and mythical but physical and concrete and literal, we know that our sins truly have been paid for, that the devil's head truly has been crushed, that the grave truly has been conquered for us. As Jesus said, “Because I live, you will live also.”
You see, our flesh and the flesh of Christ were tied together in baptism. We were watered and worded into His body. Therefore, just as He rose bodily from the grave, so will we when He comes again. For where the head goes, the body must surely follow. By His power, our lowly bodies will be changed to be like His glorious body. Job declares, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh, I will see God.” Christ’s exit from the tomb, then, is also our exit from the tomb.
And Jesus does one more thing to demonstrate that He truly lives and has brought us salvation: He eats. How fitting that He does this! For wasn’t it through eating that Adam fell into sin and death? But now, through eating, Christ, who is the Second Adam, reveals that He has raised our human nature from death to life. His body is alive. Therefore our bodies, too, shall live, as we confess in the creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body”–Christ’s body now, and our bodies, at the Last Day.
III. Luke 24:44-49
Here again, the risen Christ teaches that the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms all have to do with Him. They all speak of the deeds which He would accomplish in the flesh on earth. As He teaches, Christ opens the disciples’ understanding so that they can comprehend these Scriptures.
To grasp the Scriptures, then, you must know Christ, who unveils them and opens your mind to them. He Himself must teach you and show you how all the Scriptures center on Him and find their fulfillment in Him. Apart from Jesus the Bible is a veiled and closed book.
And notice that our Lord is not just talking about a select, small groups of passages. Rather, Christ is to be perceived in the whole Biblical record of God's people. For the life that the faithful have before God is the life of Christ. Therefore, Christ is truly present in the historical accounts of their lives in the Scriptures.
There He is, the Son of David in weak human flesh, doing battle with the Goliath Satan in the wilderness, fighting off his temptations and conquering him with the five smooth stones of the books of Moses. There He is, praying the Psalms, putting Himself in our place, dealing with man’s sin as if it were His own. There He is in the lion’s den of Daniel, descending into the pit of the grave with a stone sealing the entrance, but shutting death's ravenous mouth for us and coming forth in the morning victorious and exalted over His enemies. There He is in Eden’s Garden, put into the sleep of death in order that His Eve, the Church, might be created from the Sacraments which flow from His side. Christ truly gives His people to share in His life. And, therefore, their lives truly reflect His own, all the way through the suffering and the death to the resurrection.
And so it is with you. For you are in Christ; you have been made one with Him at the blessed font. Therefore, the story of Christ and of His people in the Scriptures is also your story. There you are, buried with Christ in the belly of Jonah’s great fish, but risen again from the baptismal depths and set forth on the shores of new life. There you are, following Christ “with unmoistened foot” through the Red Sea, watching your hellish enemies drown in the sacramental waters as you move forward on your journey to the Promised Land. There you are, sharing in Christ’s afflictions and cross in order that you may also share in His eternal deliverance and salvation.
By water and the Word, Christ pours and preaches into you repentance and remission of sins and thus gives you His life. Through His ministers who speak in His name, He proclaims His condemning Law and His freeing Gospel, so that your old self might be crucified with Him and that He might live in you and raise you with Himself to newness of life. This is what the Scriptures teach: suffering and resurrection, repentance and forgiveness of sins, dying and rising with Christ daily, until that final day comes when it is proclaimed at the graves of His people: “They are not here. They are risen. Alleluia!”
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit