Grounded | Hope Soap, April 26, 2020

The culmination of the Emmaus story is found in the disciples being able to see the Risen Lord in the breaking of bread, but they are unable to see the Risen Lord without Jesus’ Bible study to end all Bible studies – explaining how the entire Old Testament is actually about him. For us, as followers of Christ, we believe God’s Plan A has always been Jesus and the revelation of the coming Messiah, now present in our Risen Lord, is everywhere in the Old Testament.

Jesus as Lord is the Big Picture we miss when we, like the disciples on their way to Emmaus, hone in on a detail of the story and when that detail does not suffice we, as a failing art critic would attempt to do, make sense of the story of the person of Jesus that fails to show the bigger picture – that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ Sin and Death no longer hold their boot to the throat of what God created and Jesus reigns over.

While we may be hunkered down, like a teenager grounded and unable to leave the house, and wondering what we are supposed to do or where God is this Emmaus story, the entire story – not just the disciples' failure to see Jesus, the breaking of bread, or their rush back to Jerusalem – shows us that not only is Jesus at work but that he’s been at work since the beginning.

Before Moses, way back when the Word was God and the Word was with God, God has been present, and God is present with us now. God is reigning now.

While we may be grounded at home and feel as though our grounding is shifting, Christ remains the same. Christ - the One the scriptures were pointing to, the one who overcame the power of Sind and Death, and the one who continues to reign as Lord over all of creation – is our grounding, our sure foundation.

Our Risen Lord is among us. He is present when we pray when we study when we break bread, but more importantly, he has always been present, he has always been Lord.