Surprised By Jesus

Surprise doesn’t happen often, so when a story hits you with it four times, it’s trying to wake you up. We sit with Luke 24 and the Emmaus Road, where disciples stumble through grief, confusion, and the kind of disappointment that sounds painfully modern: “We thought he was the one.” They’ve heard about an empty tomb, yet they still feel detached and disenchanted, and we name that experience honestly as part of the Easter season journey toward Pentecost.

We also nerd out a little on why this story shows up only in Luke, how it lands right after the resurrection scene, and why the Gospel writers may have valued credible witness over a perfectly smooth narrative. But we don’t stop at evidence. We push toward the question many of us actually carry: what is resurrection supposed to do to us, not just what are we supposed to believe about it?

From there, we track Jesus’ grounding moves in the passage: he reframes the moment through Scripture and sacrifice, then breaks bread and suddenly eyes are opened. That leads into communion as a Christian ritual of identity, and a surprising bridge to Richard Rohr, Archimedes, and the fulcrum metaphor for social transformation. Contemplation plus action is powerful, but we argue the fixed point is ultimately who Christ is and who we’re trying to become in him.

If you’ve been asking why faith should matter when the world feels stuck, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s tired and searching, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. Where do you find your fixed point when hope starts slipping?

Transcript

Four Surprises On The Road

Pastor Darren 0:01

How often are you surprised? Right? I mean, it it it doesn't happen often, I imagine, right? Because it's sort of in the definition of it. If it's happening every day, it's not a surprise anymore, right? It's just a Thursday or whatever it is. But in our story today, these disciples, they get surprised four different times. At least they're referred to four different times. Firstly, they meet this stranger. Later we find out it's Jesus, but they don't recognize that. But they meet him and they're so surprised because this guy, he doesn't know anything about this massive event that's happened. Jesus was crucified, and now it looks like he's been resurrected, although we're not so sure at this point, but just such a big event. So they're surprised. This is here's a guy who doesn't even know it happened. Then they talk about being astounded at the story of the women who went to the tomb, found it empty, and then came back and told them. So now there's another sort of surprise. Like I said, that's when they use the word astounded. Huge surprise. Then they refer to their surprise when they actually go to the tomb and find it that uh it's empty, and they have that shocker themselves. And then the final surprise comes at the end of our passage as they realize it was Jesus all along who was there with them, breaking the bread with them. It's an interesting story, and our theme for this season of Easter, this whole season that leads us to Pentecost is stories that matter. So we ask ourselves the question: all right, well, why does this story matter? You know, what is Luke trying to get across about the life of Christ? Or, or maybe even more importantly, what is Luke trying to encourage us to do in response? You know, how is Luke trying to get us to change our lives for the better? So that's where we'll dig in. But first, I'm gonna deal with our scripture heads out there, the guys who like their exegesis, the gals who really like to dig in, like Steve here. I know Laura's one of those. We have other scripture heads. I'd like to dig in Mark up here. All right, all right. I bet you, I bet you we have more. You guys are just like kind of chill, right? Yeah, I'm digging into Malachi, but I don't need you to know it. All right, scripture heads right here. First of all, this is the only one of our four gospels that has this story. So it's probably really, really interesting to Luke, so important that he includes it, and all the others don't include it. In fact, a fun project, if you are into it, might be to go look and see what are the stories that are only in Luke, because you'd really get a sense of who Luke is and Luke's perception of who Jesus is. Also important, it comes right after this the discovery of the empty tomb. This is an important moment, the big part of the whole story. It builds towards this, so we know it's a big thing, the resurrection. He's not just gonna throw any story out there. It's big, it's it's a worth it story. We should dig into it. It functions as a reinforcement of the significance of the resurrection, why it means what it means and its intended effect on us. But here's what's interesting: it doesn't really stop there. There's what you might call like an extension or or an add-on of Jesus appearing yet once again with the disciples. In fact, as he vanishes after serving the bread or breaking the bread, then as it reads, he kind of comes back to them and starts talking again and then leaves yet again. Finally, Luke ends with the ascension of Christ up to heaven. So I'm gonna jump back to that second uh uh appearance of Jesus to the disciples because it's a little bit awkward. Again, this is for the scripture heads here. If we were New Testament scholars, we might assume that Luke had a few different parts of the story of Jesus or different moments that Jesus came to visit these disciples after being crucified, and he wanted to get them in there. He wanted them because of the significance of not just one appearance, but two appearances, or maybe somebody writing later with Luke's gospel, added it in there. Um what we can tell too is high priority wasn't necessarily to have a smooth thing. You wouldn't necessarily have Jesus vanish after his big moment and then come back again and say, oh, and here's a few more things, very similar to what I just said. So it's more likely these are stories, add-ons that people had. And for Luke, that added to the credence. That was the value that they had. The ideas were supposed to be bringing people to Christ, and if there's more of these stories, then people will be more convinced, and that was probably the higher priority of our writers. So, now, again, what do we do with this story? How is it a story that matters? The easy first inclination is to say to ourselves, all right, further evidence of the resurrection. He came back two times, right? And added on to you know, a few others with Thomas and things like that. Oh, this is just evidence. This now we know it really, really happened, right? For some, that's an assurance they really, really appreciate and like having those stories as proof. But for a lot of us, it doesn't fill all that we need. We're looking for that invitation, that guidance. How are we supposed to be affected by this, other than to just believe it? We want some answer to the question of how does this speak into our lives? So, something I identified with as I was working my way into the story. These disciples who were uh walking and talking about their uh disappointment on the journey, after all, Jesus had been crucified. Yes, they saw an empty tomb, but they're still in that place of, okay, what uh what's this about? Right? They say the words, we thought he was the one to redeem Israel. I think we can identify with that. I think anyone who has said, why doesn't God just whatever, fill in the blank? Anybody who has said that can identify with these disciples on this journey. We thought Jesus was gonna redeem all of Israel, right? What was this? I thought, I thought this was it. What happened? Do you ever feel like you found that person or or that program that was gonna do that amazing, that was gonna change the world for the better? And you got behind it and you got yourself excited about it, and then it didn't really come to pass. Maybe it fell apart by personal failings of that person we were hoped for, hoping for, or for that program we were hoping for. Maybe the world didn't create the space for that thing to happen, for that change that we really believed in, that we were excited about. We the world just didn't let it happen. Right? We can identify with those disciples in that way. Those disciples who really thought this was it. And then it felt like it wasn't. Because we've been there. We've all been in those places where we had lots of hope that something good was going to happen, and then it just didn't happen like we had hoped. And we land in these spaces like these disciples, wondering not only whether it happened or not, but whether it was even worth it, whether it was true and even worth all the energy that we put into it. And here in Easter season, when we're supposed to be feasting on all the blessings that God has given to us, and we get into this place again, like those disciples. You really died, Jesus? But the job's not done. What about it, God? Are you are you gonna fix this or not? It's enough to make you feel that when you're in that space here post-Easter, all of a sudden we can feel let loose again, detached again, disenchanted, unmoored again. Just like those disciples on that walk. But I found some grounding, I found some stabilizing in the words and the actions of Jesus in this story. First, he does two main things. First, he reminds them that this is what was foretold in the Old Testament. It happened like we anticipated it would happen. It happened like they anticipated it would happen hundreds of years before that. We would do well also to remember the significance of sacrifice in that whole event. Not just Jesus' sacrifice, but our invitation to sacrifice, to giving up of ourselves for others, for the world around us, for God, as part of that journey of faith. And then the second thing he did was share the bread. He broke the bread with these disciples. He blesses it and he breaks it, and then they recognize him and he vanishes. The breaking of the bread. That's our thing, right? And when we're talking about a behavior, an act, a ritual that is Christian, it is that the ultimate act that identifies us, it's who we are. This is what Jesus does. Some of you are reading the daily devotion from Richard Rohr, right? From from the Center for Action and Contemplation. I don't know if you caught the one for last Sunday. But Rohr, he was talking about social transformation. He was talking about changing the world, presumably for the better. I'm gonna assume that because I like Richard Rohr. That's just a little joke. Thank you, Boyd. He's my guy, he's my go-to over here. We have a signal, I give him. No, he uh I was talking about changing the world for the good, and he uses Archimedes. Archimedes to talk about the effectiveness of a fulcrum. So I think I did you get my pictures? Yeah. So this is Archimedes, right? It's a Greek philosopher, mathematician in the third century BCE, right? So before Christ. And what he figures out is that wait, engineers in the house? Raise your pencil. Yeah, we got a few, and then a couple of you too cowardly to put your hands up. This is what I know. All right. I like you engineers. I know just enough to understand why you guys get so frustrated. Right. So he's uh that that kind of thinker, right? And he develops this understanding of a fulcrum. So I found a picture too that gives sort of a basic understanding. We kind of know that just in doing different things in our lives, but he came to understand, or the first to sort of formally describe this idea that when we find that right spot, we can actually increase our strength and move things that we wouldn't normally be able to move. Here, I have a summary here of it. Archimedes, a third century BCE Greek philosopher and mathematician, noticed that a lever balanced in the correct place on the correct fulcrum could move proportionally much greater weights than the force actually applied. He calculated that if the lever switched far enough and the fulcrum point remained fixed close to Earth, even a small weight at one end would be able to move the world at the other. Right? A fulcrum. So you can see maybe some of you have moved things doing that. You put the little rock in the middle and then you wedge it up and lift it, or a smaller version. If you've used a nutcracker, it's the same principle. Right? If you're cracking that nut and your nutcracker, the the uh legs or the arms of the nutcracker aren't long enough, you can't get the force. But once they get to that really great length, then you can squeeze and get you that walnut you've been dying to eat. Am I right? All right. So that I mean that's the principle, right? We with uh we need uh leverage and gravity, and when we find just the right place, we can increase our capacity for uh for strength, for moving things. And Archimedes felt that we could actually move the world given the right fixed position and some counterweight in the mix of that. So Richard Rohr, he starts using that principle to talk about social transformation. Talk about a big rock to move, talking about changing the world. And he writes, and I think I got this up there, the fixed point is our place to stand, right? The fulcrum relies on that sense of a fixed point, and if you get just the right point, you can maximize your capacity to move a big weight. It is a contemplative stance for Richard Rohr, steady, centered, poised, and rooted. To be contemplative, we have to have a slight distance from the world to allow time for withdrawal from business as usual, for contemplation, for going into what Jesus calls our private room. However, we have to remain quite close to the world at the same time, loving it, feeling its pain and its joy as our pain and our joy, otherwise, our distance can become a form of escapeism. For Roar, he's trying to describe how that fixed point, that perfect place for that fulcrum is between contemplation and action, that we need to find that spot, that's where our spirit really wants to dwell, somewhere between the spiritual world of God's reality and then the reality we're living in, the physical reality that we are living in. But for me, in terms of our own passage, isn't Jesus telling us, with this short message after having been crucified and resurrected, isn't he telling us that uh making the point that the fulcrum for us is located in our sense of who Christ is and what Christ stood for? We should probably add to who we are trying to be in relationship to Christ. Isn't that our fixed spot? Isn't that our ideal space? Isn't that the point from when we're able to make the most significant difference in the world? Maybe it's not coincidental that when the disciples were at their lowest, Jesus returns to remind them of who they are supposed to be. We hit our lows in this world, right? When our faith seems uh uh least relevant, least worthwhile, least effective, times when the temptation is to abandon the behaviors of faith. After all, they aren't doing it. They've abandoned all sense of decency. Never mind faith. Why should I stick with this? And Jesus answers because it's your identity, it's your fixed point for the fulcrum where you are able to make the changes in the world that you believe in. It's from there that you're able to be who you are called to be, to be the change, to be the justice, to be the hope, to be the love you intend to be. And the cool part is, as Archimedes learned, from that point you can move way more than you think. It might even surprise you. Amen.