…“We had thought He was the one.”
That’s how the fellas introduced Jesus to the Stanger on the Emmaus Road. And the Stranger confronted them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe…”
The Stranger’s correction provided an opportunity for the fellas to rediscover God in Christ, a God infinitely better than they had thought He was. The Stranger’s correction confronted the lie of distance and separation. It rebuked every punishing, transactional, hierarchal, thought about love.
It set the table for them to rediscover Jesus as other-centered, self-giving, reconciling, non-controlling love; A God who wins by laying down His life.
…And a humanity who wins in the same way.
“We had thought He was the one.”
It was also a confession; one every follower of Jesus has or will make at some point in our relationship with God; if we’re being honest. It’s a humble recognition that our certainty can be flawed, our ideology broken, our theology incomplete.
But the gospel good news is Jesus never leaves. The Emmaus Road Stranger walks beside every person on every step of our journey, often in ways we don’t recognize, under names we don’t know, so He can reveal Greater Love within us.
You see, “We had thought He was the one.”
And He is!
And it’s always way better than we had thought…
nn
This article is excerpted from my forthcoming book,
Leaving and Finding Jesus
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