To Emmaus and Back, With Saints

Jun 03, 2025

Christ at Emmaus. Rembrandt van Rijn

During his Sunday message, Pastor Brian Ochsner takes us walking toward Emmaus with two Jesus-followers. Jesus died two days before. With sad hearts, they trudge the dusty miles from Jerusalem, wondering why he died when they were sure he would conquer the Romans. Questions fill them, but no answers.

Questions! I think. Again! This pair are wondering too.

My thoughts flit to last night’s online presentation.* Neo-Calvinist philosopher Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff revealed his own questions since 1983, when his son Eric died in a mountain-climbing accident. He doesn’t know why, but he is no longer able to consider theodicies, theological explanations for the existence of evil. When he starts to read them, he thinks two words: But Eric…

Before Eric died, Wolterstorff served a “domesticated God,” whom he understood. Since then, he has lived in more uncertainty, aware of the presence of strange “powers and principalities, God’s enemies.” Instead of asking God about the why and how, he now asks, “Why does it take so long to defeat these powers?” He now believes Christianity is less about our answers and more about the kinds of questions we ask.

I wondered just briefly, then nodded agreement at my computer screen. I’ve wondered about the origin of evil since my son Craig’s stillbirth and then wondered more, decades later after the death of his brother Matt at 33. After both losses, I wept my way through Wolterstorff’s book “Lament for a Son,” finding kinship and solace.

I rejoin the Sunday morning message. Jesus appears and listens to his followers’ crushed hopes. Our pastor asks, “What are your crushed hopes? What hopes has Jesus not fulfilled?”

Today’s hopes? I’m not sure. But scars of old crushed hopes for my sons remain — my questions still go unanswered. I, too, have no useful theodicy.

As they talk, the Emmaus pair fail to recognize Jesus. They urge him to stay with them, and they begin to host a meal. Jesus turns the tables, breaks bread and becomes their host instead. Their eyes are opened, and they recognize their Rabbi who broke bread at one last supper, fed 5,000 with a pittance of food and is manna in the wilderness, the bread of life.

“When he became the host, they recognized him,” says Pastor Brian. “They could lay their questions at his feet.”

I send a silent message toward the pulpit: Please don’t say Jesus answered all their questions! Pastor Ochsner wisely refrains.

The meal done, Jesus disappears. Hearts burning, the pair rushes back toward Jerusalem to tell all there, “We have seen the risen Lord!”

Like Methodist founder John Wesley, I find my heart “strangely warmed.” Holy Communion begins. Christ was the host. He IS the host. His body. His blood. Sometimes he doesn’t answer questions. He IS the answer. Present in my body.

We conclude with a hymn:

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that thou art;
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.

Dr. Jerry Sittser used this hymn to conclude his book, “A Grace Disguised.” In it Sittser chronicled his journey after his wife, daughter and mother-in-law perished in a car crash. He and his wife chose this hymn for their wedding, and he chose it again for her funeral. I wept through his book’s last page. The hymn is embedded in my soul. The hymn and book have journeyed with me since.

Back home, I pull both books from the shelf and reread underlined sections. Comforted by saints, I live with ongoing questions and a God I cannot domesticate.

Still, in moments of peace, I can say with medieval mystic Julian of Norwich: “All will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.”
_____

*Online conversation “Free to Be Faithful,” May 4, 2025. Sponsored by Institute for Christian Studies and Reformed Journal.

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