The Apperances:Emmaus

About 10 days ago in the New York Times, there was an interview with a man by the name of Ben Sasse, a 54-year-old father of three, former Republican senator for Nebraska, and former president of the University of Florida. The article is entitled "How Ben Sasse is living now that he is dying." In December, Ben Sasse was diagnosed with stage three pancreatic cancer and given three to four months to live. It's a long interview—it goes for about an hour—you can listen to it or you can read the transcript; it's there in the New York Times. The subtitle is: "He's trying to make a difference in the short time he has left; he wants to heal the America he's leaving behind." He has a podcast, and the podcast is inspired by a Monty Python sketch entitled "Not Dead Yet."

What happens after you die? In the ancient world, there were as many views then as there are today. For some, you'll come back as another life form: reincarnation—come back as a butterfly, a gum tree, that kind of thing. For others, you just cease to be; there is nothing, your cells decompose into their parts, into their molecules, into their atoms, into trace elements. For others, you waft around like a spirit into the world of ghosts; the soul lives on in a disembodied netherworld. No one in the ancient world thought that there was a life that was better than this one. No one thought that there would be a better life than this one, that it would get better—no one except one group: the Jewish people. They had concluded, based on their holy scriptures, that there had to be another life, the life that belongs to the age that is yet to come. And when that life appeared, it would be for everyone; it would be for Jew and Gentile and all at the same time: the resurrection of the dead, the end times, and then the resurrection to the judgment. Everyone would rise to the judgment based on their life.

But then something happens to change their minds: a man transformed. Not the Superman, not the one who merely survived a crucifixion, who was able to heal—he was so strong he was able in the tomb to heal and regain his strength and struggle with the stone and overcome his enemies. Not that sort of man, but one who was transformed, and that transformed everything they thought as well.

We're talking about resurrection. Someone has estimated that over the past 35 years, 3,400 academic books and articles have been written on the topic of the resurrection; that's about a hundred a year. That's a lot. And so for the few weeks post-Easter 2026, we are going to think a little bit more about the resurrection. Often we do it around Easter time, but Easter time is just one Sunday, so let's do it for a couple of weeks afterwards.

And especially, what I want us to think about is the appearances of Jesus. We heard a little bit two weeks ago about the empty tomb, and I'll say something about the empty tomb, but really I want us to focus on the appearances of Jesus. The reports of Jesus' appearances are uneven and vary significantly across the accounts. Different people cite them; they are involved in different emotional states; there are different groups of people. In the New Testament, there are people who are mentioned by name and there are people who are not mentioned by name. James is mentioned by name; Thomas is mentioned by name; the 11 disciples are not mentioned by name, they're just called "the 11 disciples". Saul of Tarsus is mentioned by name; more than 500 who saw him at one time are not mentioned by name.

Some of the people who described the appearances are women. I mentioned something about this two weeks ago: Mary the mother of James (which is just another way of talking about Jesus' mother), Salome, Joanna, and Mary Magdalene, from whom seven demons had been cast out. Perhaps not the best of witnesses, let's be honest. And there are better witnesses around and available—people like Nicodemus, people like Joseph of Arimathea, two well-respected Jewish leaders who were followers—but they didn't see him. They did not witness the appearances. If you're going to invent appearances, then it would make sense to say that it was those guys who saw him because they are people of credibility and standing in the community. If you're going to invent a story, then do a better job.

There would also have been massive pressure to make all the accounts and the appearances align neatly with each other so that they concur with each other, but they don't. The accounts of Jesus' appearances read like straightforward accounts of what happens: "I'm just recording how I saw it myself" or "how it was passed on to me." And then, why did Jesus not appear to unbelievers? Why is it he always appeared to believers? Well, because when you see him, you become a believer. Apparently, it was very hard to see him and not be a believer; that's how convincing the appearances were.

And then Jesus appears just for a period of time, a certain discreet period of time, a number of days, and then it all stops. What happened to him? Further, being a witness came with no benefits whatsoever. To be a witness to those appearances meant plummeting social status, it meant persecution, it was to be ostracized, and for many, it involved execution. There was no incentive to be a witness unless it just happened to be what you saw.

Today, I want us to think just very briefly about Emmaus, that one word which conjures a whole story, a whole account. And it is a very useful exercise in what you see when you're not expecting to see something. That little exercise I gave you at the beginning—if you are not expecting to see a gorilla passing a ball, then very often you don't see it. And what I did was I tried to distract you; I said, "Concentrate very closely on those people who are in white passing," and when you're not expecting to see it, you don't see it. And for those of you who have seen it before, once you know what you're looking for, you can't unsee it, because your expectations set the agenda.

It's very important to think to ourselves: what were the expectations of these two on the road to Emmaus? Well, in the account, Luke chapter 24, I wonder whether you can see—and here's a way of thinking about the passage—I wonder if you can see there are four openings. Two of them are objective and two of them are subjective.

The objective openings are the open tomb and the open scriptures, and anybody can investigate the open tomb and the open scriptures. And two of the openings are subjective: he opened their eyes and he opened their minds, and that depends on your eyes being opened and your minds being opened, and that is the subjective experience.

So, have a look at chapter 24: The Open Tomb. You can see there—we didn't have it in our reading but it's there in verse 2—when they get to the tomb, they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. The tomb is open. And verse 3: they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus there. So what they found was—they were expecting it to be a closed tomb—it was an open tomb and there was no body there. Anyone can investigate the open tomb. It's objective; it's not a matter of opinion. You can go to the tomb, or you could have gone to the tomb; you can't go to the tomb now, but you can read the accounts. Go to the tomb: it's open, it's empty. Why is it empty? Well, you can come up with your theories: maybe they went to the wrong tomb—well, find the right tomb, that should be pretty easy to do. The body has been taken—who took it? Well, you could probably work that one out as well. Produce the corpse.

See, the open tomb by itself is not enough. What do you conclude from the open tomb? He's gone. Who has taken him? That's the obvious thing to think. The open tomb does not make them think Jesus has been raised. Why would it? Because it's not the end of the age; no one's supposed to be raised until the end of the age. Although Jesus said he would rise—he said he would die and rise on a number of occasions—no one expected it because it was not something they were expecting to happen soon. It was going to happen at the end of the age when everyone would come to life.

But the open tomb does point towards the appearances. And so let's focus on this appearance on the road to Emmaus. There are two people walking the road: one is a person called Cleopas, mentioned by name; the other is not mentioned, the name is not mentioned. We don't know who it is. Why is Cleopas mentioned by name? Perhaps people knew well that he was one of the early witnesses on the road.

They meet up with Jesus, they don't realize it's Jesus, and they have this comic chat, this ironic chat with him about how depressed they are about the experiences of the last few days. The same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them, but they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, "What are you discussing together as you're walking along?" They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them asked him, "Are you the only visitor and do you not know the things that happened there in these days?" "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. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it's the third day since all this took place. And in addition, some of our women amazed us; they went to the tomb early this morning but they didn't find his body. They came and told us they'd seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; they did not see him."

He said to them, "How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken." And then as they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus said he was going [farther], but they urged him to stay and he stayed with them. And at table, he broke bread, and then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.

See, there's no wishful thinking here. They're convinced that they're not going to meet him, that he's dead and buried, even though there were accounts of the tomb being opened. They didn't expect to meet Jesus on the road—who would? But then verse 31: he opens their eyes. That's the first subjective opening. See, verse 31: he opens their eyes to recognize Jesus. It's interesting to read through the passage and just pick out the words that describe seeing, the words that describe discovering: "they found this," "they saw this." But here their eyes are opened; they recognized him. He'd been there all along, but it's only now that they recognize him.

You know, there is a strong thread throughout the Bible that says you can see the evidence but not recognize it unless God does a work within you. You can't actually recognize the evidence even though it's plain to be seen; your eyes need to be opened. It's not that the evidence was not there, but unless God does something. When I was first a Christian, I was given a book, a little brown book which I seem to have lost or given out to someone. It was called More Than a Carpenter, and it was written by a man, an American by the name of Josh McDowell, where one of the things he did was he tried to establish the evidence for the resurrection. And his claim, you know, you can prove that it happens—and so much so that people thought, well, it's just so logical, if I just explain the logic of this to someone, the logic will be irresistible and people will be convinced and they'll have to believe the resurrection. The Bible says you can't believe the evidence unless God allows you to, unless God, to use the words here, opens your eyes.

And then verse 32: he opened the scriptures. He opened the scriptures to them. He talks about the whole weekend. They had assumed that the cross was a tragedy and the empty tomb was a mystery, but Jesus says it was a triumph. Verse 26: "Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" And he goes to explain to them exactly what has just happened on that Easter weekend.

I wonder how he did it; I wonder what he said. Do you remember during COVID and the pandemic how we used to go walking and talking with each other? Remember that? You're allowed to walk with one person or meet up with one person and we'd go for our walks and we'd sort of walk for an hour or an hour or two hours and we'd talk. Remember that? Wouldn't you have loved to have walked the Emmaus road with Jesus? Wouldn't you have loved to have been one of these two people who just got to walk with him?

I wonder what he said to them when he opened the scriptures. I wonder if he took them back to Genesis 3:15, where he said he was the one who's going to crush, or there was one born of the woman who's going to crush the serpent's head. I wonder if he took them back to there, or I wonder if he took them to Isaiah 53, where it said he was pierced for our transgressions, by his wounds we were healed. I wonder if that's where he took them to in the Bible. We'll never know, but we do know one thing: they had a great walk because they say, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?"

Their hearts were set on fire. This is the experience that believers have today—not all the time, but if you're a believer you may well have had the experience of reading the scriptures and it's like your heart is burning within you. Or you might have had the experience of having the word of God preached or explained and it's like your heart is burning within you. It's that subjective experience where God makes it real to you. Their hearts were set on fire. Do you know this experience? Have you ever had this experience? It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does happen, it's amazing.

And then finally, verse 45: he opens their minds. On page 1048: then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. So you can investigate the scriptures objectively, but God says we need him to open our minds to understand the scriptures.

Did our hearts not burn within us? Today as you sit here you may say to yourself, "I'm a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and his resurrection." You might say, "I'm a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and his resurrection, but I have my doubts or I've got my questions." Or you might be very clearly someone who's not at all, and only you know that.

What can you do? The first thing I would suggest to you is that you should question your presuppositions, because your presuppositions will decide this. If your presupposition is that it's impossible for someone to rise from the dead, then you will conclude it did not happen. C.S. Lewis wrote a terrific short little essay where he was in a dialogue with somebody and he said to them, "If I put a penny in the drawer of my desk, can you guarantee it'll be there tomorrow?" And the person said, "Well yes, assuming no one plays around with it so no one takes it." And he said, "But that's my whole point."

And he goes on to say: do you think the universe is a closed universe where something can't change, or is it an open universe where things can? Is it a closed universe where there are laws and the laws decide everything, or is it an open universe where there is someone who creates the laws and can then change them should he want to? See, if you conclude it's a closed universe, no evidence will be enough for you. But what if the laws of nature don't decide what is possible? Question your presuppositions. One of the marks of good critical thinking is to say, "What's wrong with my view?" So you have your view, you should ask yourself, "What's wrong with my view?"

Part of the issue here is it's just so important; it's very difficult to just say, "Oh yeah, he rose from the dead," and just move on. It's such a significant event, there are implications. C.S. Lewis again said: "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, is of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." What sort of evidence would a resurrection leave behind, you think? Exactly the evidence we've got.

I would put to you—back to Ben Sasse. Ben Sasse, Republican senator interviewed in the New York Times, a socially liberal, politically left masthead, April 2026. At the end of his interview, he says this: "I believe in the resurrection and I believe in a restoration of this world, so I did not feel great fear about my death. I didn't want the pain I was going through, though I kept hearing the Pauline phrase 'to live is Christ, to die is gain.' Death is terrible; we should never sugarcoat it. It's not how things are meant to be. But it is great that death can be called the final enemy. It is an enemy, but it's a final enemy, and then there will be no more tears." He said, "I continue to feel a peace about the fact that death is something we should hate; we should call it a wicked thief, and yet it's pretty good that you pass through the veil of tears one time and then there will be no more tears."

Let's pray, shall we?

Gracious God, we thank you for the open tomb, we thank you for the open scriptures, and we pray that our eyes might be opened and our minds might be opened; and we pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.

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