Sometimes the disappointments and hardships we experience can look like evidence that God has abandoned us, when in fact they may be places where God is quietly at work. In Luke 24, two disciples walk away from Jerusalem devastated by Jesus’ death. They had hoped he was the Messiah who would redeem Israel, but his crucifixion seemed to prove that their hopes had failed. Even reports of the resurrection could not yet help them see what God was doing. As Jesus joins them on the road to Emmaus, he helps them understand that they have been looking at salvation too narrowly. The Messiah had to suffer before entering his glory.
We can make the same mistake. We may define God’s salvation primarily in terms of health, wealth, happiness, security, or an easier life, and then wonder where God is when suffering, disappointment, grief, or uncertainty enter our lives. But the biblical vision of salvation is much larger. God is at work saving us from the power of sin and death and transforming broken people into the image of Jesus. Through Jesus, God enters into human suffering rather than remaining distant from it, and the resurrection reveals that even suffering and death can be transformed within God’s purposes.
The story of Emmaus invites us to develop “Emmaus eyes,” learning to recognize God’s presence and saving work even when circumstances do not look the way we hoped. Our struggles can become places where God forms patience, humility, forgiveness, generosity, love, and deeper community. Our response to suffering can also become a means through which others encounter God’s mercy and grace.
When the disciples’ eyes are finally opened, they return to Jerusalem with renewed hope because they realize God was not absent from their tragedy. He was at work in the middle of it. This message invites us to trust that God is still at work in our own places of pain, and to walk through them not with downcast faces, but with burning hearts.
Manuscript
Introduction
Sometimes the things we think are setbacks and disappointments turn out to be blessings in disguise. I experienced this myself about 20 years ago. A choir from Africa had come to do a concert at my church, and I had shot photos of the event (I was in school for Photojournalism at the time). A friend of mine who worked with the choir passed along the photos, and they invited me to come shoot pictures on a tour in Africa the following summer. I was super excited about the opportunity.
But then, to my dismay, I couldn’t get the time off work. The factory where I worked was going to shut down, and I was forced to take my vacation that week. My brother, who was a missionary in Mexico at the time, suggested that the mission there could pay to fly me down to Mexico to take some pictures for them during the shutdown, so at least I could get a trip out of it. That seemed like a nice consolation prize. But, a few months later, I got a job offer for something that was a much better fit for me. The problem is that I would have to work a year before I would qualify for vacation. So, my consolation prize fell through.
A friend had invited me to a college-and-careers camping trip that I had originally declined because I was going to Mexico. Since Mexico had fallen through, I went on the camping trip. While I was there, I met this girl. You could say we hit it off, because less than a year later, I married her. What I discovered is that we sometimes encounter God’s grace in the most unwelcome circumstances. Sometimes the disappointments and setbacks are a necessary part of God’s plan.
So when we encounter tough times, we should remember they don’t mean God doesn’t care. Instead, they show us God’s commitment to us: He loves us and only asks us to walk through hard times because the long-term benefits, to ourselves or others, far outweigh the pain we experience here and now.
In the Bible we witness this in the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion. Today, I want to look at the story of two of Jesus’ disciples who find themselves in a place of bewilderment, that is, until an unknown stranger gives them a different perspective that completely changes how they understand their situation. For context, this happens on Resurrection Sunday before the male disciples have seen the risen Jesus: Let’s read together Luke 24:13-33a
13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles 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 the only one visiting Jerusalem who does 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 they did not see Jesus.”
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.
28 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. 29 But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.
30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem (Luke 24:13-33a, NIV).
Cleopas and the unnamed disciple were dismayed because Jesus’ death looked like a failure; The rumours of his resurrection seemed like a fairy tale, and the salvation Jesus brought didn’t look like the salvation they expected. But when Jesus corrects their perspective, showing that this was always the plan, the two disciples found joy and purpose even in the midst of disappointing and disorienting times.
And while we aren’t witnesses to the resurrection like they were, we also have experiences that echo with reverberations of the disciples’ experience of the first easter. Jesus wants to walk with us on our own Emmaus Journey, helping us to see that in the midst of our hurt and confusion, he is faithfully bringing his plan for our lives and our world to its glorious conclusion. But we need to learn to see the world with Emmaus Eyes. When we do, we’ll find we can find hope even in the hardest circumstances.
I. Our Vision of Salvation
A. Political and Religious Vision of Salvation
The first thing we should note about the disciples dejectedly walking on that journey was that they had an inadequate understanding of the salvation that God was bringing. In their case, the need that felt most obvious and pressing was the understandable desire for freedom from the Romans. The Roman occupation was just the latest chapter in the Jews’ centuries-long national humiliation. While Abraham’s descendants lived in the land God had promised them, they weren’t in control of it these days. While they had previously been ruled over by kings who were from their own people, now they had become a mere province in a series of vast empires ruled over by Gentiles. The Jews resented not being in control of their destiny.
The Roman occupation wasn’t just a political embarrassment; it was a religious embarrassment too. In the ancient world, when one nation conquered another, people assumed that the gods of the conqueror were stronger than the gods of the conquered. So the Jews would have believed their domination by the Romans made their God—the only true God—look weak. No one wants to be seen as belonging to a second-rate nation with a second-rate God.
The disciples on the Road are distressed because they assumed the Messiah’s job was to get rid of the Romans so the Jews could be free. They assumed that what felt most urgent to them was what most needed to change. They defined salvation on their terms, according to their priorities. Because of this, Jesus dying (at the hands of the Romans, no less!) represented the death of their hope for salvation.
B. The Salvation of Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Now we might say, “Jesus came to bring a spiritual salvation, not a political salvation. But this is often grounded in a mistaken understanding of what the Bible means by ‘salvation.’ If we properly understand salvation, then we might conclude that we too can easily be guilty of defining salvation according to our own preferences. Let me explain.
Although we often refer to Salvation as God saving us spiritually after we die, the biblical word means something much broader. Salvation is God’s work to save us from what is wrong in every sphere of our life. So we’re not just hoping that God will raise us to new life when Jesus returns.
If you think about the prayers you pray, you can probably see that you’re inviting God to ‘save’ you from more than just death. I want God to save me from small inconveniences like not being able to find a parking spot, or the headache that I’ve been experiencing for the last two hours. I want God to save me from danger when I travel. I want God to deliver me from the purposelessness that comes from lacking direction in life. I want God to save me from boring work. I want him to save me from material want. The things that I pray for on a regular basis are perhaps the best indication of the kind of salvation I’m hoping for. For many of us, I would say, we could summarize our hopes as health, wealth and happiness in this life, and heaven in the next.
To be fair, I’m not saying that our hopes for God’s blessing in this world are wrong. But when we fix our hopes on the fleeting, when we experience the hard stuff, we’ll fail to see God’s mercy at work. So pray for God’s blessing, but also pray that his priorities would come first. As Jesus prayed, ‘not my will, but yours be done.’
What happens when our experiences in this life don’t align with the vision of salvation we hope for in this life? When our bodies experience sickness, when our kids make tragically harmful choices, when our investments go bad, when our careers stall, when our marriages become hard work, or when we lose interest in the things that used to give us the greatest passion? Do we see it as God’s failure, or can we trust that God could be at work bringing salvation through the hard times?
II. God’s Vision of Salvation
A. The Messiah Suffers As We Do
But our vision of what God’s salvation ought to look like doesn’t always line up with God’s saving priorities. Because when we look at the story of his people, we see God is saving them, but the salvation on this side of the grave isn’t about health, wealth and happiness; it is about transforming broken and sinful people into the image of Jesus.
On the road to Emmaus, Jesus chided the disciples for not discerning from the scriptures that the Messiah would suffer before entering in his glory. If you’ve read the Old Testament (the scriptures Jesus is referring to), that might seem a little strange. While there are passages that clearly hint at the suffering messiah (most notably the suffering servant passages in Isaiah), the scriptures don’t contain many clear prophecies that God would send a messiah to suffer before receiving glory.
But the Bible clearly shows us how God’s people suffer as God works out salvation in the world. Think of all the times in the OT where God’s people are innocent and still suffer: The Israelites suffered slavery for hundreds of years before God sent Moses to deliver them. Naboth tried to follow the inheritance laws in the Torah by not selling a vineyard to Ahab, but Queen Jezebel had him murdered for doing the right thing. King David killed Uriah the Hittite after he failed to help David cover up his affair with Bathsheba. King Joash and his officials put Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, to death for faithfully speaking God’s message. Often God’s work happened through the suffering of his people.
As the Messiah, Jesus is the representative of Israel. This is why, for example, Matthew’s gospel draws parallels between Jesus’ story and Israel’s story. God calls Jesus out of Egypt; Jesus spends time in the wilderness, tempted by Satan; Jesus passes through the Jordan River (at his baptism) on the way to receiving his calling to faithfully embody the wisdom and love of God. Jesus doesn’t just take on our flesh; he enters into our story, standing in solidarity with us.
God’s Messiah doesn’t save us while remaining aloof to the suffering of his people. If the suffering of God’s people is a necessary part of salvation, then why should the disciples suppose God would exempt the messiah from suffering too? Instead, the messiah enters into our pain and suffering for our sake, as Isaiah said,
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:5, NIV).
So the story of the Old Testament Scriptures, which reaches its climax in Jesus’ death and resurrection, is a story about how God takes the suffering, disappointment and adversity his people experience, how he enters into them, and transforms them, swallowing them up in his grand plan of salvation.
B. Understanding Salvation At the Table
In this reenactment of the Last Supper with the disciples at Emmaus, Jesus helps us understand a paradox: Suffering leads to salvation, which leads to celebration.
At the original Last Supper, Jesus transformed the meaning of bread and wine. Bread traditionally symbolized hospitality; now it also pointed to the breaking of Jesus’ body on the cross. Wine was a symbol of celebration, but now it also pointed to Jesus’ blood poured out for us, At the Last Supper, Jesus transformed the symbols of celebration, with an additional meaning tied to his suffering and death.
On its face, it seems almost incongruous: Jesus’ suffering and death hardly seem like an occasion to celebrate. But by the time Jesus sits down and breaks the bread with the disciples in Emmaus, the meaning of his suffering has been completely transformed by the resurrection. We can celebrate Jesus’ death, because his death destroyed the finality of our deaths, and because his suffering shows how God can transform our suffering from something senseless into something that saves us and the world into which we have been sent.
In Jesus, God suffered so that we could be saved. On one hand, Jesus’ death is unique. Because he is perfect and God incarnate, his suffering accomplishes what our suffering never could. But, on the other hand, our suffering reveals Jesus. When we suffer in obedience to God, or when we suffer in the patient endurance that is only possible when we trust God’s salvation is coming, then our lives reenact Jesus’ victory for the world to see.
This is how Paul understands what happens when he and his fellow apostles suffer in obedience to Jesus:
10 We [apostles] always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you (2 Corinthians 4:10–12, NIV).
So the disciples on the road to Emmaus discovered that God’s salvation isn’t about political or religious freedom for the Jews. And if we will listen to Jesus, we’ll discover that salvation also isn’t about health, wealth and happiness in this life. The ‘bad’ news is that God’s salvation doesn’t guarantee a life free from pain right now. But the good news is if you’re in the midst of that pain, it reminds us that God is still at work, bringing salvation to us and to the world.
III. Seeing Salvation in Our Pain
The Emmaus disciples didn’t see that God was working out his salvation amid their disappointment. Their departure from Jerusalem on Easter Sunday was an act of surrender. They had concluded that it was all over. There was no more hope. Why hang around in Jerusalem waiting for a salvation that wouldn’t come?
But when Jesus opened their eyes to see the truth about his death and resurrection, they immediately ran back to Jerusalem. It was no longer the place of God’s painful failure. It was now the epicentre of God’s salvation that would spread across the world. They ran back to the place of their past hurt because there they now understood that God was there, bringing redemption.
Maybe you’re like those disciples walking on the way to Emmaus.
Maybe you’ve experienced grief, loss, disillusionment, or disappointment. Maybe you’re wondering why God didn’t do something, or why he allowed something to happen. But Jesus’ suffering set the table for the meal that brought God’s grace to us. So now, we celebrate his death, because of what it accomplished. Can we also learn to celebrate our places of pain because we trust that God is likewise working out salvation through them?
The Emmaus disciples suffered from too small a picture of salvation. Jesus was trying to do more than simply liberate the Jews so they could be politically and religiously independent. He was setting them free from the power of sin and death, which is, ultimately, what gave Rome its power, but also what led the people into sin and selfishness —the forces that poison every community.
We also suffer from too small a vision of salvation, when we forget that God wants us to begin experiencing eternal life starting now. To be sure, we won’t experience its fullness until the age to come, but we are meant to experience a foretaste of it now; that only happens when God works through our suffering. Our suffering and disappointment are often a vehicle of God’s salvation. You can’t learn patience until you are forced to wait for something you desperately want. You can’t learn humility unless you are first humbled. You can’t learn unconditional love without having forgiven someone for something that would make you want to stop loving them. You can’t learn generosity unless you learn to trust God’s provision when it feels like you don’t have enough. You can’t learn the value of community unless you’ve experienced the pain of loneliness. It is through the place of our hurt and struggle that the Spirit transforms us from old creation into new creation, liberating us from the power of sin.
Of course, our suffering isn’t always about our personal transformation. Sometimes our suffering is for the benefit of another person. Our mercy for the person who wronged us may help them see a glimpse of God’ mercy, opening the door for them to seek God. Our generosity on God’s behalf might help someone else learn to trust that God is looking after them. Our love for the person who treats us like an enemy might shame that person into seeking forgiveness. Our patient endurance in times of suffering might show someone the strength God can give us when we trust him. We might bring others a step closer to wholeness by how we respond when things don’t go our way. It might also be that someone else’s patience, mercy, hope or love in hard times helped us to find God when otherwise we might not have.
Now the idea that God may ask you to endure hardship so that someone else may receive a benefit might feel unfair. But remember, Jesus paid everything to save you, so if the world were fair, none of us would be saved. Also, God doesn’t ask our permission. He doesn’t ask us, “Will you accept adversity and disappointment for the sake of others?” The hard things often happen whether we consent or not.
The question, then, is how we will interpret the hard stuff when it happens. If we allow ourselves to see the redemptive possibility in it, we can find meaning in it and endure it with hope and even joy. If we don’t allow ourselves to see God at work through it, we’ll become discouraged and embittered by it.
Conclusion
So remember, if we only look for God to save us in the ways we want, we will be blind to his work of transforming us. When their eyes were opened to God’s saving work, the disciples ran back to Jerusalem, the place of their greatest pain, because they realized that God wasn’t absent in their tragedy; He was at work in the middle of it.
Whatever heartache or hardship you’re carrying today, don’t give in to the temptation to believe God has abandoned you in it. Instead, invite Jesus to sit with you at your table. Ask Him to give you Emmaus eyes to see how He is using this hard season to refine your heart, to reach your neighbour, and to display His glory. Let’s be people who walk through the valley not with downcast faces, but with burning hearts—knowing that our God is at work in every place of pain.
