Easter Monday

EPILOGUE

Easter Monday

The Road Home…

There are roads sometimes that go nowhere, nowhere but away, nowhere but far from all we want to leave behind us, far from all we fear and cannot face. Wandering roads, retreating roads, roads that give the illusion of forward motion while all the while leading nowhere. Nowhere but away.

Because let’s face it, there are seasons of the soul when hope fails to find us and confusion rises around us like a mist. Our minds can’t hold all the pieces together. Nothing makes sense. 

When hope fades our feet begin to wander, searching subconsciously for forward direction, any direction, any road to anywhere but here. Here where all the pain is. Here where disappointment cuts like glass. Motion gives the illusion of meaning, but it can never take us where we need to go. Fragmented and lost we find ourselves at the end of the road, this road going nowhere but away.

That’s where they had found themselves, these followers of Jesus, this day long ago.

^‘Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.’ Luke 24:13

From Jerusalem. These disciples they were on this road from Jerusalem, leaving behind Jerusalem, leaving behind them the confusing, awful spectre of the cross, leaving behind them the bewilderment of the empty tomb that morning. But they could not leave behind them the cut of disappointment, the open wound of hope smashed and fears realised.

Nothing had happened as they had assumed it would, had known it should. This man, He was meant to change everything. So many prophecies had been fulfilled: the donkey, the miracles, His teaching. It all pointed to one thing; Jesus was the Messiah, Israel’s Messiah. He was the one who would bring salvation to all Israel, He was the one who should have restored them into a covenant nation, God’s nation. He was supposed to have freed them by defeating their oppressors. But He had failed. 

They couldn’t get the image out of their minds; this person in whom they’d laid all their hopes hanging dead on the symbol of all their oppression. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. Not this way. His humiliating death on a cross, a pagan Roman cross. What was left to hold on to now? The road yawned wide beneath their feet, each step taking them further from Jerusalem, but no closer to the answers they craved. 

All their hopes died with Him, the crucifixion of all their aspirations, their certainty, their vision of the future. And now this extra blow. His body taken. Stolen? Bewilderment hung like a mist in their minds. Confusion hung over their hearts like an ever rising fog. Their minds couldn’t hold all the pieces together. Nothing made sense. Fragmented and lost they were at the end of the road, this road going nowhere but away.  From Jerusalem. 

And here on this road He joined them.

^‘They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognising him.’ Luke 24: 14-16

Sometimes the very thing that is before us is the very thing we miss. Eyes are strange things, far more governed by our heads, hearts, minds and emotions than we realise. We see things not as they truly are but as we feel them to be. We feel to see and so often fail to see. Fail to see the crisp raw reality existing all around us, the truth dwelling right there just above our skin. Truth dwelling in human skin.

^‘He asked them, ‘What are you discussing together as you walk along?’ Luke 24:17

Jesus, He does the thing He usually does. He begins with a question. Questioning not because He doesn’t already know the answer but to help us find the answer for ourselves. To help the lost begin to name their lostness. “Where are you?” God had said in the Garden, “Where is your brother?” He had said to Cain, “Why are you crying?” Jesus had said to Mary, and now on this road He asks, ‘What are you discussing together as you walk along?’.\

Name it out loud. Name your confusion, your despair, your hopes dashed, your fears realised. Name your disillusionment with God. Name that God hasn’t fulfilled the assumptions you had of Him.

Continue Reading >