Yearning Minds and Burning Hearts Second Essay Luke 24:13-35

The disciples' narration of the things that the "stranger" apparently doesn't know leaves out several things about the story of Jesus and, in addition, shows that their sadness is tinged with hopelessness. They show their mental processes and struggles as they talk to Jesus. Their "shorthand" story about Jesus is that he was a "strong prophet in word and deed," whom the high priests gave over to death. But then the confusion sets in. Some of the women went to the tomb, finding it empty. This story was confirmed by the male disciples, to the effect that Jesus was alive. The one word which captures their sentiment, however, is in v. 21. It is translated "we had hoped," but a better rendering of the imperfect tense of the verb is "we were hoping." Indeed, the imperfect tense describes an action that happened over the course of time but ended in the past. Thus, their conundrum or predicament is summarized in one word, "We were hoping (but we are hoping no longer--implied)" that he was the one to redeem Israel. It is a kind of wistful word, and the sense is that they kept up the hope for quite a long time before giving in to the hopelessness which now envelopes them. Like the lowering clouds and approach of evening, so they are in their own crepuscular state of psychological gloom.

Jesus bursts through their darkness with abrupt and rather unexpected words in v. 25:

"Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!"

The word translated "fool," is not a word evaluating the mental capacity of the hearers. Thus, he isn't calling them "morons" or intellectually feeble. Rather, it suggests a certain "obtuseness" or inability to put two and two together to get four (Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke, p. 848). It is a word that says, as it were, "Can't you guys add up what you are saying to me and come up with the answer--that I am the Christ who rose from the dead and is standing before you..?" The one thing the disciples had left out of their calculus was the Scriptures. They probably had talked together about Jesus' work, about the story of the women and Peter. They were good at assessing credibility and possibly coming up with alternative explanations of what may have happened to the body. But, for some reason, they didn't put the Scriptures with the experience of the day, didn't construe the events of the last three days through the lens of the Old Testament. This is understandable, especially if they really never focused very thoroughly on the subject while Jesus was alive. But we see that they had just ignored a crucial, if not the most crucial, "document" or "interpretive help" for them in their dilemma.

And isn't that our life in a nutshell? Often when we are in our sadness and gloom, when we have discussed and talked about an issue until we are all "talked out," our real problem is that we have not taken into account a crucial factor which will allow us to interpret the event from a completely new perspective. Like Job, who interpreted his suffering as an unerring sign that God hated him (rather than that God might have been wanting to "get his attention" to speak specially to him), we tend to constrict or constringe or restrict our intellectual space and interpretive possibilities to our disadvantage. The disciples had done the same thing here. But Jesus will bring in the fresh air of new interpretive possibilities, even though he has to upbraid them as being "obtuse" to do it. It was a sort of verbal slap in the face for them to "wake up" to what was really at issue here.

III. The Passionate Revelation

Still they don't seem to understand Jesus, but something nevertheless has happened to them. It is like the feeling we sometimes have when we hear or see someone, or read something, and realize that there is truth in it, big truth, truth that we only ignore to our peril and to which we ought to pay attention lest other kinds of disaster impend. But we aren't quite ready to adopt the truth of what we have learned; we need to mull it over; we need to let our head catch up with our heart; we simply can't yet decide. Augustine's Confessions provides a great narrative of one who, for a long time, just couldn't make up his mind to come to faith, even though he was quite convinced it was true. The mind worked against he mind; the will was unable to respond to the demands of the mind. The disciples face a similar conundrum in this instance and so they compel Jesus to come along with them. "Stay with us" or, as the hymn says, "Abide with me; fast falls the eventide."

Then comes the time of revelation. Jesus' earlier exposition of the Scriptures, and how they pointed to the fact that the Messiah would be raised from the dead, could have been partially viewed as an intellectual exercise, but now when he breaks bread with the disciples, he is appealing to them on a different level. Luke uses the words that are familiar from the Gospel tradition, that Jesus took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Surely this recalled the upper room Last Supper, when Jesus greatly longed to be with them.

Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him (v. 31). Now everything was becoming clear. Like an intellectual tsunami, the realization burst on them with a flash, but the second it came upon them, Jesus disappeared from their sight. It was almost as if he wanted to give them the experience of his presence but to get them used to the notion of absence.

The disciples' words to each other are noteworthy. Rather than focusing on the moment of revelation, they returned in their minds to the time with Jesus "on the road" and when Jesus opened the Scriptures to them. Last year may have been the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, a Beat Generation classic, but this week is the anniversary of a different kind of being "on the road," where the heart burns and the mind yearns.

Conclusion

Through this encounter Jesus has not only revealed something about himself, but he has opened up a door into the disciples' own hearts. They know that they have been touched in a way unlike any previous "touching," and that their lives will never again be the same. The lessons from this touching are profound for us; about engagement with the events "of the last three days"; of blindness even when thinking that we are the ones who see clearly; of hearts being warmed but unable to recognize and, finally, of full recognition of the Lord. May your heart be alert to the signs of Christ's presence and special interpretive word to us today; your life will never again be the same.

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