For the first time ever, Randy and I attended our church’s Saturday evening Easter celebration, rather than our traditional Sunday morning. We took my mom, who at 89 doesn’t have the energy to get moving early in the morning. Our pastor preached from Luke 24 about the men on the road to Emmaus. My mom has a picture of those men on that road hanging in her living room, one she has loved for years.
These men were obviously Jewish followers of Jesus. They had hoped that Jesus would rescue Israel from her oppressors, the Romans. But when their chief priests and Romans had Jesus crucified, Jesus’ followers suffered a crushing blow. Where was their hope now? He lay in a borrowed tomb, during their nation’s Passover. Their hopes for Messiah dashed. Can you imagine how they must have felt? Have you ever had high hopes for something or in someone and had them fail you, ruining your expectations?
Then suddenly rumors surfaced. The source–a few women–was suspect because what man could take a woman seriously? Still…what if the rumors were true? Dare they hope? So they discussed all that had happened as they walked a seven mile journey from Jerusalem.
A traveler came upon them as they walked and talked, and he asked them what they are discussing? They seem totally shocked, and replied, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
Our pastor mentioned Jesus’ sense of humor in the next question. (Can’t you just hear it in his tone?) “What things?”
So Jesus listened as they explained to Jesus all the things that had happened to him. Then after patiently listening to them, he asked them, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Our pastor suggested, it was like Jesus was saying to them, “Have you never read Isaiah?” That prophet spoke many words about the Messiah’s sufferings. But these men missed that part, caught up as they were in the miracles and the hope for physical redemption from their Roman oppressors.
But Jesus came to earth as a human baby to give Israel and all of the Gentile nations (even the Romans) a chance first for spiritual redemption. Physical redemption would come later. But not then. Easter, which is really our name for the fulfillment of Passover, had to come first. A perfect Passover lamb had to come, and his blood had to cover the lintels of our hearts so that His Father could “pass over” our sins and allow us eternal life with Him.
This past Wednesday, I went with my son to a Passover Seder meal at his church. Though I knew the symbols and what they meant to Israel after the Exodus from Egypt, I was able to grasp some of the smaller details of how Jesus fulfilled each one of those symbols by his first coming. The broken matzah bread, hidden for the children to find, represents the broken body of Jesus on the cross.
Why do we celebrate Easter, and why was it necessary? To fulfill what God had promised would come to pass. To send His Messiah to suffer so we don’t have to suffer eternal separation from Him. To reconcile what was lost in Eden. To forgive us our sins, and we don’t need anyone to show each one of us the depths of our own brokenness.
But perhaps we are like the men on the road to Emmaus, still discussing these things, thinking Jesus was a good man or a great prophet, or even a son of God. We may talk to His Father, God, in prayer, but perhaps we have not yet met His Son, Jesus.
Jesus said that he came to give us abundant life, everlasting life, and that that life is in Him. He came at a time when the world was ripe for a Messiah. But many of them didn’t see that their Messiah came first with a spiritual message. He will come again with a physical one, to destroy the evil that will not bow to him now.
But at this time, we still celebrate Easter, Resurrection Sunday, Passover’s fulfillment, and Jesus still beckons us to come to Him that we might have life. The men on the road to Emmaus were slow to believe all that their own prophets had foretold. May this Easter be the time that we are quick to hear His Word, to listen to His voice, and heed His call to come to Him.
Because “The Lord has risen indeed.”
Selah~
