I think Amy may be the only one that heard me. That same day, two of Jesus' followers were walking to the village of Emma Mass, seven miles from Jerusalem. As they walked along, they were talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them.
But God kept them from recognizing him. He asked them, what are you discussing so intently as you walk along? They stopped short, sadness written across their faces, then one of them, Kalea, his replied, you must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn't heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days. What things, Jesus asked?
The things that happened to Jesus, the man from Nazareth, they said. He was a prophet who did powerful miracles and he was a mighty teacher in eyes of God and all the people. But our leading priest and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death. And they crucified him.
We had hoped he was a Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago. Then some women from our group of his followers were at his tomb early this morning and they came back with an amazing report. They said his body was gone.
They had been angels who told them Jesus is alive. Some of our men ran out to see and sure enough, his body was gone just as the women had said. Then Jesus said to them, you foolish people, you find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the scriptures. Wasn't it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?
Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the scriptures the things concerning himself. By the time they were nearing MMS and the end of their journey, Jesus acted as if he was going on. They said to them, stay the night with us since it is getting late. So he went home with them.
As they sat down to eat, he took the bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly their eyes were opened and they recognized him and at that moment he disappeared. They said to each other, did our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the scriptures to us.
And within the hour they were on their way back to Jerusalem. There they found the 11 disciples and the others who had gathered with them who said the Lord has really risen. He appeared to Peter. Then the two from MMS told their story of how Jesus had appeared to them as they were walking along the road and how they had recognized him as he was breaking the bread.
Thanks, Julia. So the most interesting member of the Brooks household is not Meredith or not I, but it is Emma, our 17-year-old miniature Doxon. This is Emma the Doxon. Emma's 17.
She was upset last year when we didn't buy her a car for her birthday. She's excited about going to college next year. You know, Meredith and I bought Emma with the last of our honeymoon money when we first got married. We never thought whatsoever at all that she would still be in our lives or maybe controlling and running our lives.
And the way this topic of discussion over the last year in the Brooks house about Emma is can she or can she not still see? You know, there will be those nights where we take her outside of the bathroom before we all go to bed and we're very thankful that she can't see the frog or the lizard that's a foot away from her because if she could it'd be an all-night long reptile party in the house. But then right when we think that she can't see anything anymore, we'll be out in the front yard and she'll see a cat nine houses away. You know, we find ourselves saying often in our house a lot.
Emma, how did you miss that? How did you miss that? It's right in front of you. In our passage that deal you're read for us this morning.
We see people missing things. This is Easter. This is the big day. You can't miss Jesus on a day like this.
You know, certainly you can't miss the resurrected Christ on a day like this. There's a preacher. This is one out of the two days a year. You know what you're going to be speaking on.
You can't miss Jesus on a day like this, but these folks in this story did. But in the story of their missing, we were able to find the things that we're looking for. You know, if you're looking for relief, we find relief. We're looking for comfort in life.
We can find comfort. We're looking for assurance in life. We can find assurance in this passage. We're looking for truth.
We can find truth. And if we're looking for whatever we're looking for, we're going to find it in this story because we see Jesus offering Himself to these folks in an amazing specific way. So adventures in seeing Jesus. The first thing is this is, so who are these people in the day of their resurrection?
Some followers are leaving Jerusalem. They're hearing the stories about this empty tomb. They're thinking about things. There might be some conjectures going on.
So a couple of folks, we're going to high-tail it out of town because it's a dangerous place for us to be right now. That's not something we think about on Easter, but this was a dangerous morning for those folks thousands of years ago. So they're on the way to Emmaus. They're walking there.
Scripture tells us that one of these people is named Cleopus. Now Luke, the doctor who wrote the book of Luke and Acts was really detailed. Luke cared about truth. Luke is the book that you can look at more than anything else and realize he cared about the details of his telling us something.
There's a reason he's telling us this. So who is this Cleopus character? Church tradition tells us. So Eusebius, the church is storing living in the second century.
A hundred years after this says that Cleopus was the brother of Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus. So Jesus is uncle. Now Luke doesn't tell us who the other person is, but early church tradition says it might be his wife, whose name was Mary. We see a lot of interesting Marys pop up in the gothars.
It might be one of his children, but what we know from the story from a church tradition is that A, these people were really, really close to Jesus because they were following him during that when he was alive. So Scripture tells us in church tradition, it tells us, this is his family. So how are you missing? Jesus.
How do you miss people? You know that well. And what does it mean when Scripture says that they were kept from recognizing him? The translation deal here read, said God kept him from recognizing him.
And we can read this and depending on where we might think that this is like some exterior force that God said, I don't want you to see Jesus for some reason. You know, does that not seem like that's not a very fun Easter side of that message right there to assist it? But what was stopping them from seeing, experiencing Jesus in this way? I think Scripture actually answers that force and a space that many of us have been in our lives.
The passage says that they were standing still in their tracks and there's this interesting play on words of what's going on here, but it's talking about a situation where they are so confused, they are so sad, all of those things that they really can't respond. It's like their mind and their body can't work at the same time because it is just simply too much going on ever been in a place like that where it's taking all of your energy for your mind to work or all of your energy for your body to work and when the two have to work together, you just shut down. I think the conversation that they might have been having the one that Jesus jumps into gives us a picture of this. They've experienced something tremendously disappointing, something stressful, something they cannot believe and they keep turning it around and over and over and over in their heads and they've got a person to talk with.
If you ever had something bad happen to you or frustrating happen to you and all you want to do is find somebody to talk about it with and you don't shut up about it for a few days. It keeps, like, every time the loop gets deeper, it gets worse and it just kind of goes on and on that sort of situation. There are a couple of days after the fact they've probably been doing this on Friday and on Saturday and they get this weird news on Sunday morning and that just kind of changes all the looping all together and they're walking seven miles in process. Now I thought that sounds horrible.
I do not walk seven miles that often if you can't tell. But I'll tell you what I do on the telephone at pace. Is anybody else pacing the phone? Like, thank you, Jesus, for apple air pods.
I don't get tangled up in a corner anymore because I also hand talk on the phone. Sometimes that walking and processing is easier than doing this for seven miles. It's going around and around and around when your body is now operating off of muscle memory and you're asked this question by an outside party and you just can't even. I think that starts to let us realize what might be happening to where they can't see and fully understand that Jesus is right in front of them.
And we see in this passage that Jesus is being gentle. He's asking simple questions. It's almost as though Jesus is allowing them to exhale all of the air of anxiousness that they have built up in their bodies over these last three days. They know that layer of overwhelm that's taken over every part of their being is now being shed off.
And if we think about the kingdom of God that Jesus spent years talking about and we think about the spiritual realm and that being real and I completely believe it is, we have to think about the words that scripture tells us and how the supernatural world of the kingdom, which is now because of the resurrection, the primary manifestation of God on earth, how that seems to overlap and overwhelm the world that we live in. That very same space of in between that these two followers of Jesus are living in next morning is the exact same space of in between that we live in and how they find themselves in this place of doubt, of frustration, of questions, of overwhelm to where their mental and their physical capacities are stretched beyond being and they kind of end up forming this blockade to the kingdom where it can't intertwine, where it can't overwhelm, it can't do these things because it's providing just that hard boundary there. So how are they not seeing Jesus? They're not seeing Jesus because they're so wrapped up in what seems immediate in their life.
And I think there's a really easy way for us to understand and explain this right now. One writer talking about this passage says this, we are seeing them either dwell in the past or live in the space of what might have been. Two things, the space of the past or the space of what might have been in friends, these are two places we can get to quickly. The past or what might have been.
You know what this is? It's Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. The space of what might have been, the space of the past. We all know that guy.
That guy's also Wooderson in Days and Confuse. That could have happened, man. It could have been there. It could have been great.
I just would have had that chance. That was a good one. If Coach would have just put me in. I could have put all of that mountain right now.
That space of the past, that space of what might have been. And we get it, it's pathetic in this movie. It seems sad. But think about this.
Uncle Rico never understands how the place of the past or the place of what might have been constantly is affecting his presence. Now we live in a world right now where everybody dreams of living in a van and traveling the world. But honestly, this is not nearly as glamorous as we say it is. Rico lives inside that space.
In verse 21 of our passage it says, we had hoped he was the one that was going to redeem Israel. They say that we had hoped. All these things we put up, we had hoped. We're seeing their blockade right there that's not allowing the spirit to come in and overwhelm and overtake that presence.
We had hoped they're building up that firm boundary there. In this story, we see longing that is not met. Every one of us has that story in our life. This story in this passage is told as though they are absolutely absorbed in the facts of what has happened.
They do this with facts over and over and over and they get into this conversation with Jesus about fallen hopes. They do this with facts. They start laying out all these things that happen. Jesus even plays this game with them.
They're depending on facts and Jesus begins to spell out facts for them. He says in the scripture that he opened up Moses and the prophets which is Jewish shorthand for all the Bible. He dug into all the scriptures to talk about these things and they finish off their conversation while they're walking in a way that's intriguing enough for them to invite Jesus to stay the night with them, that usual Jewish form of hospitality. But they still don't recognize him.
They see and they encountered. They played the fact game. They still didn't see. Friends they had it right in their heads but they were struggling with it in their hearts.
It was only when they came to the space of the table, the space of relationships, the space of care, the space of the words and the actions of Jesus to the space of mercy. This is where they were able to see Jesus. This is where they recognize Jesus. This is where they experienced his mercy.
And scripture tells us the moment they knew this, the moment their eyes were opened, they recognized him and Jesus disappeared. And then they spoke to each other about how their hearts were absolutely burning. As he was speaking to them earlier, his presence was fully around them and absolutely with them but they didn't recognize it. It was there fully.
God wasn't turning his back on them. They just weren't seeing it yet because their hearts were closed off to mercy. Friends on this Easter, all I want to ask you to do is to accept mercy in the way Jesus gives it to us. In the way that we need to see it, in the way that we need to process it, in the way that you've got stuff going on right now, it might be short things, it might be long things.
It might be new things, it might be old things. But where have we not let mercy in? And on our home sheet this week, we put this together every single week, it's a way for you to take Sunday morning and apply it to your personal worship time throughout the week. The home sheet this week is all about mercy.
It's all about experiencing and seeing mercy. So grab on those in the back table and your way out. But how do you need to experience the mercy of Jesus today? The mercy that comes with this sacrifice after the fact.
It's not a mercy of we hope, but it's a mercy of saying, this is what I know to be true. You know, mercy can also be tough because to expect to accept mercy and to experience mercy, we have to admit that we need mercy. We might have been walking down the road and needing and wanting Jesus all along. We might have been walking down the road and needing and wanting and even talking about Jesus all along.
And many different spaces in life, but the beauty of the cross, the beauty of the resurrection, it's about the absolute comfort and how it gives us the very thing that we need and we want. And that mercy is freely given to us without our work, without our sacrifice, without our striving, it's freely given to us. And radically full of the goodness of God, full of the presence of God, full of the love of God, all of this for us, this mercy is for us. And so a moment we're going to celebrate communion together, come to the table, to the breaking of bread, the experience of his presence.
And let us do this together with full eyes, looking toward the author and the perfecter of our faith, with anticipation of the mercy and the goodness of Jesus.