Luke 24:13-27 Commentary

On the Road to Emmaus
13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles [a] from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16 but they were kept from recognizing him.
17 He asked them, "What are you discussing together as you walk along?"

They stood still, their faces downcast. 18 One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?"

19 "What things?" he asked.

"About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23 but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see."

25 He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.


Dig Deeper
Disappointment is one of the more difficult things in life to deal with. Especially the disappointment that comes when you put faith in someone and they don’t live up to your expectations. I have seen that so many times in the world of sports where a team will draft a young man and put the hopes of an entire city on his shoulders as the savior of the franchise. Seven years ago, an NBA team named the Cleveland Cavaliers experienced this. They drafted a young phenom named LeBron James right out of high school. He was touted to be the best pro prospect since Michael Jordan and his first few years in the NBA proved those predictions to be correct. But Cleveland didn’t want just a great player. They wanted someone who would single-handedly lead the team to many championships and spark an emotional and economic renewal for the entire city and even the state of Ohio. The expectations were truly unrealistic but they were something that LeBron tried to live up to and even, at times, encouraged. This summer, however, he became a free agent and after a lengthy and poorly handled process on his part in which he had team after team coming to woo him to their team, James decided to leave Cleveland for the Miami Heat. This decision absolutely stunned the Cleveland faithful who had convinced themselves that he would never leave them. He was, after all, from Ohio himself and he was going to be the savior of the whole area. But suddenly, in a flash, he was gone.

The disappointment that the people involved with the Cleveland Cavalier organization and the fans of the Cavaliers was overwhelming. People who had loved him and hailed him as their great hope were instantly downgrading him, calling him over-rated, and claiming that they never thought that highly of him. Ten-story billboards of James were torn down overnight and they quickly scrambled to erase any memories of James. But when reporters would go and talk to the fans on the street, they still seemed confused and hurt. They had no idea where their team was going to go now or how they would ever win a championship. All the hope that they had just a few days before had vanished in an instant.

The events that Luke has been describing are infinitely more important than any basketball player or an NBA championship but there is a parallel in there. It is the disappointment that people feel when something that they have put so much hope suddenly bursts. Luke masterfully built up the tension in the last scene as the women and then Peter came upon the empty tomb. Two angels told the women what happened but we don’t have any details yet. Luke wants us to identify with the confusion and lack of understanding that the disciples had in those moments. Now he will continue to mount the suspense as we join in with two disciples who are full of disappointment. Everything that they had hoped for seems to be gone. What will they do now? Where will they go? How will all of their hopes be fulfilled? Are they now facing a world where their great hopes of what God was going to do through his kingdom are now gone forever? It was all so disappointing. Or was it?

It is interesting as we join these two disciples on their journey to Emmaus, that Luke only gives us the name of one of the disciples, Cleopas. The usual assumption has always been that these two disciples were men, but it is quite possible that this Cleopas is the same person mentioned by John in John 19:25. John tells us of Clopas’ wife named Mary, a woman who is not mentioned by Luke as being among the group of women who went to Jesus’ tomb. So it is rather possible that the unnamed disciple accompanying Cleopas was, in fact, his wife, Mary.

Whoever the other disciple was, they were engaged in a rather lively discussion of all that had happened. The words used by Luke indicate that this was an intense discussion not just a regular conversation concerning the death and burial of Christ and the subsequent status of where his body might have been and just what exactly the women at the tomb had learned from these two angels. In the midst of this heated discussion, as they are trying desperately to figure out what has happened with Jesus and where exactly his body might be, Jesus came to them. But they were still in the dark in more ways than one. They didn’t recognize that the man who had joined them on their journey was the very man they were wondering about and looking for. The fact that people did not always immediately recognize the resurrected Jesus is one of those strange but recurring details of the resurrection accounts (Matt. 28:17; Jn. 20:14; 21:4, 12) that three of the four Gospel writers report but none of them try to explain. We could come up with many different theories but perhaps this is one of those things about resurrection that will remain mysterious until we actually take part in the resurrection ourselves one day (although it is just as likely that the inability to immediately recognize Jesus had miraculous purposes and was not something inherent to a resurrection body). What is apparent is that the body Jesus had was a real and very physical body, otherwise the tomb would not have been left empty. In some respects, his resurrected body was the same, but it was still somehow different. How that can be is something we will have to wait to have revealed to us.

As the two disciples walked along with Jesus, still not knowing the truth of who he is, Jesus asked they were talking about. This question seemed to shock the disciples as they assumed that anyone in the area of Jerusalem would have naturally known the incredible events surrounding Jesus’ last week and his crucifixion. It was the talk of the town so who could this stranger be that had not heard of any of this?

As they began to explain things to this man, the loss of their great hope became apparent. Who was Jesus? Well, he was a great prophet, that much they would never doubt. In declaring Jesus to be a prophet, however, they revealed their inner struggle. They had hoped that he would be the Messiah, the one that was going to redeem and exalt Israel. They had pinned all of their hopes on him but he had been crucified. They just could not envision a Messiah that would suffer and die. They failed to see that his crucifixion did not derail Jesus as the Messiah who was going to redeem Israel and the whole world. No, his crucifixion was the very means through which he was gong to redeem his people. But they just couldn’t see that. Messiahs should be defeating the pagans not dying on their crosses. That’s why they had apparently already downgraded him in their own minds. Maybe he wasn’t a Messiah after all, but just a prophet. To see a prophet suffer and die was no category mistake. That happened all throughout history to the prophets. So maybe he was a prophet, a mighty one at that, but sadly it appeared that that was all he was. Their hopes had been buried with Jesus in that tomb.

But the situation was becoming even more confusing for them by the minute. They had heard the reports of the women that Jesus body was not in the tomb. Notice that they pointed out that the women had not found the “body” rather than “Jesus.” Despite the confusion, they still believed that Jesus was dead. They just did not understand what was going on.

Imagine their surprise when this uninformed stranger began to rebuke them. They were “foolish,” not in the sense that they were unintelligent, silly, or ignorant but in that they were blind to the purposes of God in the world. They were in a haze and Luke is challenging his readers to recognize that and not join them in their foolishness. He is challenging us to see beyond Jesus’ crucifixion and see it not as the end of hope but the beginning.

If they would only return to the word of God and actually believe them, then they would perhaps see what they could not before. Like the women at the tomb, they needed to remember the word of the prophets and understand them in the same way that the women needed to remember and understand the words of Jesus. They needed to look afresh at the Scriptures and seek what God really said about what he would do with and through the Messiah rather than running everything through the paradigm of their expectations. If they did that they would see that God’s servant had to suffer before entering his glory. The suffering and death of the Messiah was not an obstacle for the Messiah to come into his glory, it was the very path he would travel to enter his glory.

Jesus then went through what had to be one of the most spell-binding biblical lessons ever taught as he showed them what the Scriptures said about the Messiah and God’s plans to bless the world. Jesus didn’t just pull out a couple of verses from here and there to demonstrate his point. He took them through the whole of the Scriptures and showed them how the entirety of them pointed to the Messiah that would serve as a representative for all of God’s people, and indeed the whole world, and take on the suffering and punishment that was due all of us. He no doubt left them with a deep ability to understand that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and he had fulfilled God’s will by marching to the cross. No longer would the suffering and cruel death of Jesus on the cross serve as a stumbling block for them. No longer would they think that he was merely a prophet. They were beginning to understand the truth about Jesus and his work in and for the world. But they still only had half the story. They might have understood that Jesus was truly God’s Messiah and that God was firmly in control of the events that had been going on during the last three days, not the chief priests or the Romans. Yet, where was Jesus? How were God’s promises to bring him into full glory be fulfilled now? They would have to spend a little more time with Jesus in order to unravel those mysteries. And perhaps that is one of Luke’s points. To really understand who Jesus is and what he is doing, we have to stay with him. Ask more questions, and keep learning.


Devotional Thought
One of the primary lessons that the disciples had to learn was that just because negative things seem to happen that doesn’t necessarily mean that God’s purposes have been thwarted. During what they thought were the worst of circumstances, God was working the most. Do you need to learn that same lesson today? Is there some trying circumstance that you are going through right now that seems like no good can come from it? It seems like the end of the road and makes you question God. If you can identify with that, take some time to return to the accounts of Jesus death and resurrection. The reality is that God can and does work the most through situations that seem the least likely. What is doing in your life right now?