The Road to Emmaus: Recognizing Christ Walking Beside Us

The Road to Emmaus Christian reflection

The Road to Emmaus: A Four-Part Reflection Series

Part One of Four: Recognition

There is something unusual about the story of the road to Emmaus.

Two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem. They had followed Jesus. They had placed their hope in him. Then came the crucifixion, and with it the collapse of much of what they had expected.

As they walk, a stranger joins them.

They speak with him about Jesus. They tell him what has happened in Jerusalem. They even tell him about the women who had gone to the tomb and returned saying that Jesus was alive.

They know the story.

Yet they do not recognize the person walking beside them.

Luke tells us simply that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16).

Perhaps that is why the story of Emmaus continues to speak so powerfully to Christians. It is not only a story about two disciples walking along a road two thousand years ago.

It is also a story about us.

When God Does Not Meet Our Expectations

One sentence in the Emmaus story has always struck me.

The disciples tell the stranger:

“But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21).

We had hoped.

There is disappointment in those words.

They had constructed an expectation of what Jesus would do and perhaps how God would act. The crucifixion seemed to have destroyed that expectation.

And so they walked away.

How often does something similar happen in our own lives?

We pray for something and receive a different answer. We expect God to act in one way, and events move in another. A relationship fails. An opportunity disappears. Illness comes. War erupts. Someone we love dies. A future we had imagined suddenly changes.

And we say, in one way or another:

But I had hoped.

Faith is relatively easy when God behaves according to our expectations.

The more difficult moment comes when he does not.

The disciples could not recognize Christ partly because they were still trying to understand what had happened through the expectations they carried with them.

Perhaps we sometimes do the same.

Christ Was Already Walking with Them

What fascinates me about Emmaus is that Jesus does not wait at the destination.

He joins them on the road.

Before they understand, he is there.

Before they recognize him, he is there.

Before their disappointment disappears, he is there.

The presence of Christ does not begin when the disciples finally recognize him. He had been walking beside them all along.

We sometimes imagine that God is present when we feel his presence and absent when we do not. Emmaus suggests something different.

Our inability to recognize Christ does not mean that Christ is absent.

There may be periods in our lives when we look around and wonder where God has gone. Perhaps the better question is not always, “Where is God?”

Perhaps sometimes the question should be:

“What prevents me from recognizing him?”

They Knew Scripture, but Something Was Missing

Jesus begins explaining the Scriptures to them.

The disciples listen.

Later they remember:

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32).

They knew Scripture before meeting the stranger. They knew the events that had occurred in Jerusalem. They knew about Jesus.

But knowing about Jesus and recognizing Jesus are not necessarily the same thing.

That is a challenge for Christianity as well.

We can know theology.

We can know Scripture.

We can attend church.

We can defend doctrines.

We can visit the Holy Land and stand at the places associated with the life of Jesus.

And still there remains a deeper question:

Do we recognize Christ?

Knowledge can lead us toward faith, but faith cannot be reduced simply to possessing religious information.

The disciples needed more than information.

Their eyes needed to be opened.

When Their Eyes Were Opened

Recognition finally comes at the table.

Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them.

Luke writes:

“Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (Luke 24:31).

Suddenly the stranger is no longer a stranger.

The one they thought they had lost had been with them throughout the journey.

And then something remarkable happens.

They return to Jerusalem.

The road they had traveled in disappointment becomes the road they travel again with a completely different understanding.

The geography has not changed.

They have.

That, perhaps, is one of the deepest meanings of pilgrimage.

We sometimes imagine pilgrimage primarily as traveling from one place to another. But the real measure of pilgrimage is not simply how far we travel.

It is whether the journey changes the person who returns.

Our Own Road to Emmaus

During my years guiding Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land, people often came with a powerful desire to walk where Jesus walked.

I understood that desire.

There is something extraordinary about opening the Gospel while standing beside the Sea of Galilee, walking through Jerusalem, visiting Bethlehem, or traveling through the landscapes in which the biblical story unfolded.

But eventually I came to another question:

Is the purpose of pilgrimage simply to walk where Jesus walked, or is it to learn to recognize Jesus walking with us?

The first requires travel.

The second requires faith.

And that means Emmaus is not confined to the Holy Land.

Each of us has an Emmaus road.

Sometimes it is the road of disappointment.

Sometimes it is uncertainty.

Sometimes grief.

Sometimes it is simply ordinary life: work, family, responsibilities, conversations, frustrations, and the thousand small events through which our days pass.

We may be so concerned with reaching the destination that we fail to notice who is walking beside us.

The Pilgrimage Continues

This is why I have come to think of Christian life as a permanent pilgrimage.

A pilgrimage to the Holy Land eventually ends. The pilgrim returns home. The suitcase is unpacked. Photographs are organized. Souvenirs find their places on shelves.

But if pilgrimage has accomplished something deeper, the journey should not really end.

The pilgrim has learned to look differently.

Emmaus teaches us that Christ may be encountered on roads we did not choose, during moments we do not understand, and even while we are walking in the wrong direction.

The two disciples were leaving Jerusalem disappointed.

Christ walked with them anyway.

Perhaps that is one of the consolations of the story.

We do not always have to understand the road before Christ joins us on it.

We do not always have to recognize him before he is present.

Sometimes recognition comes only later, when we look back and realize that our hearts had already begun to burn within us.

And perhaps then we can say what the disciples discovered on the road to Emmaus:

The Christ we thought we were searching for had been walking beside us all along.

Continue the Journey

This is Part One of “The Road to Emmaus,” a four-part Reflection series. We began with the Christ who walks beside us even when we fail to recognize him. But recognizing that Christ is present raises another question: How does he make himself known? In Part Two, we remain with the disciples as Scripture sets their hearts burning and follow them to the table, where their eyes are finally opened in the breaking of the bread.

Peter E. Sabella guided Christian pilgrims throughout the Holy Land for more than two decades. The road to Emmaus and the idea of becoming a “permanent pilgrim” are at the heart of his book Closed for Renovation: On the Road to Emmaus, a journey through Scripture, geography, history, reflection, and prayer for those traveling through the Holy Land and those making the pilgrimage from home.