The disciples were filled with their own worries as they traveled along the Emmaus road—they were filled with anxiety, and disappointment about the future. A stranger joined them on the road and they repeated the recent events—the crucifixion, the empty tomb, the testimony of the women about the angel visitation saying that Jesus had risen. But these two were not buying any of that because disappointment and anxiety hung around them. “We had hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel.”
That’s one of the most melancholy statements in Scripture—”we had hoped he would be the one…We had hoped….” We know how that feels, don’t we? We had hoped our finances worked out differently. We had hoped our health was better. We had hoped our kids would go to church. We had hoped there would be no more war by now. We had hoped we would stop wondering about our faith by this age.
It’s funny how worry and anxiety and disappointment can blind us from seeing what is right in front of our eyes. When the mind doesn’t believe something possible, it is hard for the senses to receive the information. Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus were so anxious, and so certain that Jesus was still dead, that the risen Lord appeared to them, walked along beside them, taught them all about the Hebrew scriptures and how Jesus was the fulfillment of that—and they still did not see him. The light of the world was right beside them, but to their eyes, the risen Lord just looked like a fellow traveler on the way to Emmaus.
But Jesus met the disciples where they were at—walking away from Jerusalem, not believing the testimony of the empty tomb, and full of disappointment and anxiety. That’s exactly where Jesus shows up in our lives, too. It is so easy to believe that fears, worries, doubts, anxieties separate us from God, drive God away from us, disappoint Jesus and mean that we are somehow outside the family of God and circle of faith—but that is precisely where Jesus meets us, walks with us, engages us, loves us.
A friend of mine had a plaque in her kitchen that said, “Before you go to bed at night, give your worries to God, he’ll be up all night anyway!” Rev. Ralph Abernathy during the Civil rights movement once said, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future.” Lay your worries at the altar, for the Risen One who reveals himself in the breaking of the bread, holds the night, and our future secure. (Excerpt from Linda Little’s “The Road to Emmaus: The Walk of Worry and Revelation,” May 2019]
