Like the two disciples, Cleopas and his anonymous companion, we too can be kept from recognising the Lord as we walk along the highway of life. What kept the disciples from recognising the risen Lord is what prevents us also. But more of that later! Luke, gifted and inspired writer that he was, captures in a most beautiful and striking way all the events surrounding the resurrection of Jesus, compressing both the facts and the mystery into a few verses.
We can see that these two disciples were on the road to faith themselves as they believed Jesus to be merely a prophet and not the Son of God. Perhaps this is why the Lord appears to rebuke them: ‘How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter in glory?’ Then these disciples receive probably the most privileged Bible study ever – Jesus himself, beginning with Moses (the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament) and moving on to the Prophets (which ones we don’t know but very likely, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel), unpacked the Hebrew Scriptures so that they could see how they pointed to the Christ. Yet despite this incredible Bible study, they still didn’t fully recognise the Lord. It was almost as if he was playing a game of ‘cat and mouse’ or hide and seek’ with them.
When Jesus made as if he was going further than Emmaus, the two disciples urged him to stay, and it was only when he was at the table with them and broke bread that they fully recognised the risen Lord. The breaking of bread is a reference to the Eucharist, and their ‘hearts burning within’ is the work of the Holy Spirit bringing the Scriptures alive. What keeps us from recognising the Lord is our failure to immerse our minds in the Scriptures. Just as Jesus led the disciples on the road to Emmaus to a deeper faith through immersing their minds and hearts in the Scriptures, so we too enter the mystery of faith through becoming ever more familiar with the power of God’s Word.
