3 April 2024 Luke 24:13-35
So, Cleopas and his buddy didn’t recognize Jesus on the road to Emmaus, just like Mary Magdalene hadn’t recognized Him at the tomb. They only saw a stranger who strangely seemed not to have any idea about the events that had taken place over the previous couple of days (Luke 24:18). They didn’t recognize Him even while he was walking them through the scriptures that showed Jesus was the Messiah. They didn’t recognize Jesus until He took the bread, blessed and broke it.
It is tempting to see the breaking of the bread as a reference to the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, and maybe it was. Still, that was a curious association to make because Cleopas and his buddy weren’t there at the Last Supper, and there hadn’t been time for them to find out about it (less than three days, and they had been busy days), still less time for them to see it as a reference to the Eucharist. The meaning of the Last Super wouldn’t sink in for a while yet – in fact it is still sinking in. It may be more likely that when Jesus took the bread, blessed and broke it, they were thinking of the Feeding of the 5000 (cf. Luke 9:10-17). It is far more likely that they were witnesses to that.
Cleopas and his buddy, however, certainly draw one right conclusion – they immediately looked back on their experience of Jesus on the road, and found the beginning of their recognition of Him in the Bible Study He had just led them through: “Were not our hearts burning within us while He spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” (24:32).
Cleopas and his buddy went to exactly the right place to begin understanding what was happening to them. They went to the Bible.
Secularists for the last generation have grown accustomed to dismiss the Bible as no more significant than Jack and the Beanstalk, to assume that there are no valid ethical domains, and that what we call morality is reducible finally to interactions of power and domination. Such assumptions have become so common that many feel they need not be defended – they are simply the “givens” of our common experience.
In fact, however, they are not “givens,” but acids that have been dissolving the culture around us, distracting the young, and making conversation practically impossible. Psychologists like Jordan Peterson are coming to regard this trend as civilizational suicide, and so have been looking at the Bible again to see things they may have missed before. Peterson has proposed that the Bible, far from being a tall tale like Jack and the Beanstalk, is actually the text fundamental to culture, the text from which all other texts have sprung. It was the first book widely available for purchase, reading, and study, and still provides the core concepts that enable us to make decisions of value and morality. We have long since known that it is impossible to derive moral direction from a list of facts – philosophers call this the folly of trying to get an “ought” from an “is.” Moral direction means you have to prioritize facts, and the Bible is the primordial set of insights that makes it possible for us to do that. In that sense the Bible is not just “true,” it is the precondition for being able to discern all other truths.
In other words, we need the Bible to be sane and intelligent moral agents. And we need to be sane and intelligent moral agents to be happy.
Cleopas and his buddy realized as well that they needed Jesus to understand the Bible. Jesus was making it possible for them to understand everything that was happening to them, everything they needed to be sane, intelligent and happy.
Jesus still is.
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