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A commentary on Luke 24:13-35, written for World Vision staff

Introduction
Christianity has lived the past few centuries under the spell of Reason. In an effort to ‘make sense’ of God and the world, Christian theology became propositional, conceptual and dry. Christian spirituality also, wherever it survived, was reduced to the mechanical reproduction of external ethical disciplines, lacking passion, enthusiasm and mystery, all of them suspect in rationalistic terms. This unfortunately is true, at least to a certain extent, about World Vision also.

Postmodernity has proven the utter inability of reason alone to renew our perspective on life, here and beyond. It has also exposed the deep spiritual thirst of many around us, which made spiritual classics like Thomas a Kempis, Imitatio Christi, and many others like it to become very popular again.

The Bible often presents the spiritual life of the faithful in dynamic, process-like metaphorical terms, addressed to the right side of the brain: it speaks about life as a ‘journey’, as ‘pilgrimage’, as ‘walking’, etc. There is no surprise then that one the most cherished books by many Christians, besides the Bible, is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim Progress.

This is why we need, in Christianity in general and in World Vision in particular, to restore the power of metaphor and the fascination of story as a source of renewal for ‘life in its fullness’, materially, socially and spirituality.
At the end of the Gospel of Luke we find the story of the two disciples on the Emmaus road that we will interpret here as a metaphor of spirituality as journeying with Christ.

The steps of the process

1. Walking alongside vs. Confrontation
v. 15 – Jesus himself came up and walked along with them – He chose not to confront them heads on, but to come along;
v. 16 – they were kept from recognising him – some people don’t see not because they don’t want to, but because they are not able to; spiritual blindness is cured not with rational arguments, but with spiritual means;
Applications
- Our fellow brothers and sisters do not need us as experts in, and even less as managers of spirituality, but as fellow sojourners.
- We need to become vulnerable and share our LIFE with them before we will be able to help them.

2. Listening should proceed speaking
v. 17 – what are you discussing? – Jesus did not start by providing answers, but by asking questions; not because he needed to know, but because they needed to speak;
v. 19 – what things? – people need someone to talk to and to share their hearts with, rather than someone who can provide cut and dry professional answers to deep personal problems;
Applications
- Listening may be the most important DEED we can do to serve others in their spiritual growth.
- In order to earn the right to speak, we need to learn to listen. Before we are able to teach others, we need to let them teach us (we may be surprised to find out how much we still don’t know).
- If we want to be listened to, we need to know our audience well.
- If we want to communicate to others the ‘heavy’ truths of life, we need to build a bridge of relationship that is strong enough to bear them.

3. There is a time to confront
v. 25 – how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe – Jesus never spared his strong words when they were needed; he ‘loved enough to confront’; not to speak at that moment would have increased the confusion of his troubled disciples; someone defined spirituality as ‘the process of being cleaned up of the dirt that cover our faces and makes us look so much alike’ – we all have in our lives things that definitely must change and some of them are so entrenched that only the shock of confrontation can dislocate them;
v. 27 – he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself – there is no better source for our words that the Bible and no other legitimate core for our message than the person of Christ;
Applications
- If we do not have a life with Christ, we have nothing to share.
- If we do not do the deed of sharing, our life will never impact others.
- If we add no WORD to life and deed, it will be us and not God that will take all the credit.
- We have to believe in the power of the Word that is God’s message communicated to us in the person of Christ, through the Holy Spirit.

4. Making space for personal commitment
v. 28 – Jesus acted as he were going farther – he did not want to press them to make a decision; they needed space for reflection and commitment;
v. 29 – but they urged him strongly, ‘Stay with us’ – conviction comes in stages and needs time to formulate; people may be more attracted at first by the beauty of the message or be fascinated with the person communicating it, before they are convinced by the truth of it;
Applications
- After we have done the deeds of love and said the words of faith, we need to withdraw and make space for conviction to form.
- However, this should not be a passive withdrawal and waiting, but an active engagement in the prayer of hope.

5. The power of metaphor
v. 30 – he took bread, broke it and began to give it to them – Jesus did the symbolic eucharistic gesture that instantly reminded the disciples of the last supper;
v. 31 – they eyes were opened and they recognised him – the spiritual blindness of the two disciples was removed not by Jesus providing facts and presenting arguments, but through the sovereign intervention of the Holy Spirit, that was awaken by the power of the eucharistic metaphor; there is a limit to what reason can do; although necessary and not to be discarded, our minds need the spirit in order to take us all the way to the goal of our spiritual maturity in Christ;
v. 32 – were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us? – this gives us a glimpse into the delicate process of change at a time when no external signs were visible; spiritual change is like labouring a field – one has to saw the seeds, water the ground and then wait in hope until the first signs of the new life can be seen; and, because so many factors are involved, there is no perfect guarantee of success.
Applications
- Every community of faith has its own signs and symbols that build up, create esprit de corps and offer a basis of renewal in times of spiritual dryness.
- The Church has baptism and the eucharist among other such metaphorical means of strengthening its spirituality.
- World Vision too needs such thoroughly integrated symbolic means of building up its corporate spirituality.
- Maybe the so-called ‘triad’ – Spiritual Formation, Partnership with Churches and Witness to Jesus Christ – is one of those means of giving coherence to our approach of the ‘soft’ spiritual core of our ministry.
- Nevertheless, whatever we may decide in this respect, prayer has to have a central role in holding them together and making space for God’s sovereign signs to be manifested among us and through us in the communities we serve.

Conclusions
v. 33 – they got up and returned at once to Jerusalem – the two disciples did not simply acknowledge the new truth and did not continue on their way: so to say, their new vision was followed by a new strategy; true spirituality always combines contemplation and action, faith and mercy, prayer and service; conviction and application;
v. 35 – then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognised by them when he broke the bread – someone said: ‘the light that we keep for ourselves might blind us’; the two disciples felt compelled to share with the others their new spiritual discovery; the beauty of it is that they discovered that the same Lord had given them the same new vision, one that was going to ‘turn the whole world upside down’ and bring spiritual renewal to many.

Let us pray to God in the name of Christ and through the Holy Spirit that he will renew in the same manner the corporate and personal spirituality in World Vision.

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