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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, the text comes from the Gospel reading of St. Luke. You may be seated. We’re jumping in with both feet, so look at the text. Two verses, verse 16 and verse 31. Verse 16 and verse 31. In verse 16, the text says their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. Then in verse 31, the text says their eyes were opened and they recognized Him. That’s the curiosity. How did they go from having their eyes kept from recognizing Him to their eyes recognizing Him? And that’s the whole purpose of this text that I want to preach to you about.
Now, the verb to recognize in the Greek here means to know with assurance. Not just to know, but to know with assurance. So, they were kept from knowing Him with assurance at the beginning of the text in verse 16. And then in verse 31, their eyes were opened and they knew Him with assurance. And that has great ramifications for you and me, because we’re like these two men. These two men were on their way to Emmaus. And these two men, we know one of their names is Cleopas, the other we don’t. And they’re ruminating over everything that has happened.
Now, what does the text call them? Disciples. A code word meaning they were believers, just like you and me. And though they were believers, they still struggled with the death and resurrection of their Lord, and more importantly, not just the fact of the death and the fact of the resurrection, but what does His death and resurrection mean for your suffering right now that God allows in your life? What does His death and resurrection mean for you as you struggle with your anxiety and fears?
That’s why Jesus found these two men. You remember Jesus comes to them and acts like he’s the student. “What is this you’re talking about?” And they take on the role of the teacher, and they lay out all of the facts of Jesus’ death and His resurrection. And in that recitation, you hear these two men’s hope, but you also hear in these two men their great lament. The hope that Jesus was a mighty prophet, in both word and deed, both before God and all people. That’s their hope. They’re believers, remember. These aren’t pagans.
Their other hope is that He would be the one who was going to redeem Israel. He’s going to fix things. He’s the one in control of chaos in the world. But they also expressed their lament. Their first lament is that Jesus died at the hands of their chief priests and at the hands of their rulers. What does that mean? Does He not control things? Why does He allow such things to happen? The other lament is, they’re not even sure if he’s alive. Yet, they recite by fact all the information about Jesus that neither one of us could disagree with that. Jesus didn’t disagree with what they said to him.
So Jesus, who asks, “What are you talking about?”, coming upon them as if He’s only a student, giving them the opportunity to be teacher. Jesus does to them what He does to you. He asks you what’s going on in your heart, and you pray to Him. And He doesn’t sit there and listen and not say something to you. He turns it all around, and you become the student. And He takes on the role as teacher as He proclaims to you His Word.
These two men are struggling. They’re not just struggling with these specific hopes and laments. They’re also struggling with all the second, third, and fourth effects of these truths, which is the same way you do it. Why is it you wring your hands about finances and buying a house or not buying a house or a job? You’re slow of heart too, just like these men. You know all the facts, right? What does it mean for your life right here and now in the struggle that you’re going through right now as you wait for that consummation someday?
You see, the resurrection faith that Jesus wants to give these men is the same resurrection faith that He wants to give you. And that is, His death has meaning for your struggle and suffering right now. And His resurrection has meaning for your struggle and anxiety right now. It’s not just an insurance claim that you pay out at the end of your life, and in between you just kind of exist. That is not what Jesus did to these men. He gave them meaning in the here and now of their struggle.
Yes, the fulfillment of His death and resurrection would occur in their life at their death, but in between, it is not a pointless existence. It has purpose. He defines the purpose. It has purpose. But we’re like them, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.
So what’s Jesus’ intent? He does not chastise them. He does not belittle them. He does not ridicule them. He strengthens them. It is the same response to you. He strengthens you. He makes you know He’s teacher and you’re student, but He strengthens you. And to what does He turn you to? The Word of God.
And notice, not just any word of God, the Old Testament. Everything the prophets said in Moses and the rest of the Old Testament because the New Testament hadn’t been written yet, had it? So He takes them through a bunch of texts from the Old Testament. But it wasn’t like what you and I imagined. Here’s the proof text for my death. Here’s the proof text for my resurrection. He applies what His death means for their life in the here and now. He applies what His resurrection means for them in their struggle right now.
He applies His death and resurrection to your anxiety, struggle, fear, and all that you have that makes you, like me, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have written. And if you don’t think that about yourself, you’re still trying to be teacher and not student. And Jesus makes it very clear to these two, who is teacher and who is student.
Now, they’re not yet recognized Him. And I said that’s the main thing in this text. They have not yet recognized Him. He expounds all of these texts and they still do not recognize Him. He has not allowed them that yet. Why? Let’s keep working. He makes it clear to them that He has to suffer first and then enter into glory. He does not make it clear to them that suffering is why you get to enter glory. That’s malarkey. He says you suffer before you enter into glory.
Why? Because you’re a sinner. And because we are sinners, we struggle and live with the problem right in our flesh, our self. And if we are our worst enemy, then we will always struggle because our self is always the one preaching at us a totally different word than what God is. Why else do you sometimes not sleep so well at night? Why else do you daydream off in the distance and contemplate and wonder?
But He gives you strength, as He did to these two men, that you may wait for the consummation in hope, certain hope, and not just exist. They get to this town after He has revealed to them everything from the Old Testament that He needed to do. Their eyes aren’t open yet. They get to the town and the men try to be the host. “Stay with us this evening. It’s late. Let us be your host.” And what does Jesus do? You read the text. He becomes their host. He becomes their host. He takes the bread, not they. He blesses and breaks the bread and gives it to them.
Then, verse 31, then their eyes were opened and they knew Him with assurance in the breaking of bread. Jesus is telling His church something very, very powerful. And He’s about to seal the deal. He seals the deal by breaking the bread and then He does what? Poof! Vanishes. Why? Why didn’t He stay there and finish the discussion? He’s making it very clear to these apostles that He’s not working in this world post-resurrection like He did pre-resurrection. What did He say to Mary Magdalene when Mary Magdalene grabbed Him at the tomb? “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father. Go tell my brothers…”
He disappears from their sight as well. He wants them to find Him where He chooses to be found. And this is the most important part. He did not make their eyes open after He finished teaching the Old Testament to them. He made their eyes open only after they had received the breaking of the bread. Is that a coincidence? No.
The church has always taught, long before Luther came onto the scene, the breaking of bread. When you see that phrase in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, and we’re going to hear that in a few weeks from the book of Acts, what the people did, that means the Lord’s Supper. That wasn’t just the potluck supper. That was the Lord’s Supper. And Jesus is not about to put the grandiose opening of their eyes to a potluck. He’s going to put the opening of their eyes into the climactic part of every one of our divine services: The Lord’s Supper.
Two go hand in hand. He didn’t just reveal Himself to them in the breaking of bread. He didn’t just reveal Himself to them in only the Old Testament teaching. He revealed Himself to them, and their eyes were opened and they knew Him with assurance, meaning they recognized Him, in both the teaching and the sacrament together.
And the Christian church, long before Luther, has always had that as a part of her service: The Word and the sacrament, with a homily in the middle to explain the word, to apply the word, and to proclaim the word, and the fulfillment in the breaking of the bread. He doesn’t just open their eyes so that now they recognize Him, because what does the verb “to recognize” mean? To know with assurance.
He’s been doing this to you since you were a little infant sitting in the pew, whether you’re asleep or awake in your mama or daddy’s arm. He’s been doing this to you as jobs have changed, as pay has changed, as houses have changed, as cars have changed, as marriages have divorced, and divorced have remarried. He’s been doing this to you since because He doesn’t want you to deal with the enduring of this life without confidence in His death and in His resurrection.
Think about it. He does not come upon these two distraught men and say to them, “Buck up, little buddies. Jesus loves you.” I’m being sarcastic for a point. It is His death and resurrection that Paul said we preach and we preach alone. It’s not an abstraction. It’s not a confession of merely historical data. It has control over your life because it’s Him who is in control of every facet of your life, especially when you suffer. Because He fulfilled all suffering. No suffering is pointless. No struggle is without a reason. He’s given it reason. He Himself is the reason.
And you enter into glory just like I do, just like He did after we suffer. Not in order to receive glory. That’s malarkey. He’s already won it for us. But that is life, living as a sinner in a sinful world. That’s why you and I deal with all the things that rattle around in the caverns of our mind. And we wish we didn’t let them rattle, but they rattle. And sometimes we think, “Lord, you know… Give me dementia. That way I don’t have to think about me all the time,” because that’s what you and I do think about all the time. And no one else gets that honor except us.
And God still comes to us in the midst of our self-centeredness just like He came in the midst of these two men who were fearful for themselves and no one else and takes them, fearful for themselves, and makes them confident. Right?
So when they go back to the eleven, as the text said, what do they point to? Do they tell the people back, the eleven apostles, back at the upper room, when they come back in the text, they don’t go say, “You’ve got to believe what He said to us about the Old Testament.” That’s when our eyes were opened. He says to them, “Our eyes were opened in the breaking of bread.” That doesn’t discount the Old Testament teaching.
He’s trying to make the point that that is, St. Luke, to you and me, both are a part of it. And this is a part of it. This is how He works in you. And He’s been doing it to you, some of you for scores of years, some of you less than decades, but always through these means. And He will not stop doing it. It’s what gives confidence in the midst of despair and it all centers around His death and around His resurrection.
The necessity of it. Your eyes have been opened. Now come and know Him with assurance.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
