"Was It Not Necessary?" (Luke 24:13-35)

A Broken Messiah

The two disciples who are walking the road to Emmaus are broken down. When the stranger approaches them, Luke tells us that “they [are standing] still, looking sad” (Luke 24:17). What has broken them? They share with the stranger that their expectations have met a bitter end. Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had hoped was the messiah, the one who would “redeem Israel,” the one who would make Israel great again, had been crucified (24:19-21). In their mind, the crucifixion settled the matter. No messiah of God would suffer such a fate. The messiah would be a victor, not a victim.

But the stranger has the strangest of responses. “Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things?” (Luke 24:26). In other words, was it not necessary that the messiah be the victim rather than the victor?

This one question turns the entire scriptures upside down for the two disciples. In their mind, Yahweh is a conquering God, the one who had defeated the Egyptians and the Canaanites and all who opposed the faithful of Israel. A broken messiah makes no sense. Yet, for this stranger, a broken messiah makes sense of everything. It is the interpretive key. Luke says that this stranger goes on to show how a broken messiah breaks open “all the scriptures” (24:27).

A Different Kind of God

It might be worth sitting with that for a moment. How often do we hear that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament? That the Old Testament God is angry and vengeful and violent? And no doubt, there are depictions of such a God in the Old Testament. But this is not the God whom the stranger sees in the Old Testament. I can’t know for certain, but I think that this stranger (who is Jesus, of course!) must appreciate that however inspired scripture is, it is also always a human enterprise. Which means that sometimes it shows us the culture of its human authors as much as it shows us the character of the divine God. Sometimes it shows us violence and patriarchy and slavery. And sometimes, through these dark clouds, a divine light shines through. Sometimes through this noise, a divine heartbeat can be heard. So, as this stranger on the road shows us, interpretation is crucial. It is like holding a stethoscope to the scripture and listening for God’s heartbeat. And it’s clear where this stranger hears God’s heartbeat in the Old Testament. Not in the depictions of violence and vengeance, but in the repeated declaration that God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ex 34:6; cf. Num 14:18; Neh 9:17: Ps 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2). This declaration is almost the creed or confession of the Old Testament, so often is it repeated.

According to the stranger, the God of the Old Testament is no different than the God of the New Testament. They are one and the same: a crucified God. That may be hard to imagine. It certainly was for the disciples on the road. But it is a curious thought-experiment with surprising results. When I read the Old Testament looking for a crucified God, I begin to see him everywhere. In the suffering of the ancestral family, who must live for generations as sojourners in a foreign land. In the suffering of the Hebrews under Pharaoh in Egypt. In the suffering of the poor Israelites in the land, who are enslaved by their own kings (like King Solomon) and exploited by the rich (as the prophets richly detail). I see the crucified God in the suffering of the psalmist, whose prayers regularly recount trouble. And in the suffering of the exiled Israelites, who lose their temple and their family and their friends and must live in a foreign land. The Old Testament is a history of Israel’s deliverance, but it also a history of their suffering. Yes, God is a deliverer, but God is also a sufferer. Those two things are not contradictions, but counterparts of a single reality. A God who loves is a God who suffers, because love does not get its own way through force. It forgives, it is patient, it declares peace, it welcomes, it heals. Love does all the things Jesus did, and with the same results. Suffering.

“Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things?” the stranger asks. From his point of view, God has been suffering from the start, because God has been loving humanity from the start. It is only natural this would happen to God’s messiah.

“Broken Down” or “Broken Open”?

The stranger’s interpretation of God is indeed strange in a world that idolizes power and control. But what also strikes me as strange is that the stranger (who is Jesus, of course) bears no grievance toward the people who put him on the cross, toward the temple leaders or the Roman authorities. He breathes no resentments or threats against them. It is natural to feel owed something when you are wronged. (Just think about the last time your insurance didn’t pay for something under its coverage.) Yet this man was wronged in an extraordinary way, and his response is basically, “This is the way it had to happen.” “Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things…?”

On the one hand, we could hear the man saying this with a sigh of resignation, as though love always loses. To love is to suffer, and that is the end of it.

On the other hand, the stranger does not seem to see suffering as the miserable end point of love. His full question is, “Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). In other words, to bear the suffering of love is somehow connected with entering into a glorious new reality. Which is consistent with the message of the messiah Jesus himself, who said to bear the cross daily is somehow to save your life (cf. Luke 9:23-24).

Today’s passage concludes with the stranger “breaking” bread, and then the disciples’ eyes being “opened” as they reconsider the stranger who “opened” the scriptures for them on the road. These two words—“break” and “open”—jump off the page at me. Typically, I think of brokenness as an undesirable thing. I would rather avoid it, ignore it, pretend it’s not there. For me, “broken” means “broken down.” It is the end of things. But in this passage, “broken” means something else. The broken bread “opens” the disciples’ eyes to see the risen Christ (24:31). The idea of a broken messiah and a suffering God “opens” the scriptures to the disciples (24:32).  Here, “broken” means not “broken down” but “broken open.” “Broken” is not the end, but the beginning. It indicates not a falling apart but the inbreaking of something new. Indeed, our scripture ends with the two travelers—who were previously broken down—now broken open with enthusiasm and hope. Their hearts are “burning,” they say (Luke 24:32). They rush back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples about it.

As Leonard Cohen put it, “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” What Jesus shows the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is not only that the God of love suffers, but also that this suffering is not a dead end or a cul-de-sac but precisely the crack through which the light—the love of God—gets in. If the messiah came with force, throwing his weight around, he might command fear and respect and a groveling sort of gratitude. But his strong-arming would preclude love, which “does not insist on its own way,” which “bears…and endures all things” (1 Cor 13:5, 7). His coercion would rob us of our humanity, our freedom to choose and to create. Instead, the messiah suffers, and his suffering reveals just how much he loves us, how deep and how wide is his love—as far as the heavens are above the earth (a metaphor that comes from the Old Testament, for anyone who’s interested; cf. Ps 103:11). His suffering reveals that there is no end to his love, that it is indeed stronger than death and endures forever.

To some, the idea of a crucified messiah or a weak God seems like utter foolishness. But for me, it is honest-to-goodness good news. It means not only that God’s love knows no bounds, that there’s no suffering God won’t bear just to be with us, but also that God’s love is indeed stronger than any force and can redeem any wrong or wound. And that because of his love, what seems “broken down” is in fact “broken open” with possibilities for new life.

Prayer

Holy God,
The scars you bear
Show us the depth of your love for us
…
May the good news
Of your broken messiah
Change the way we see our world
And the way we live in it.
May it kindle within our hearts—
As it did for those travelers on the road to Emmaus—
A burning hope.
In Christ, whose cross is how the light gets in: Amen.