I think these days of Scripture following Easter are some of my favorite in all the Bible. There is so much emotion. Shock. Fear. Uncertainty. Hope. And then excitement. Excitement of the Good News, where some of the disciples start to see the risen Jesus.
We’ve read about the empty tomb. And today, one of my favorites where two of the disciples are walking on the road to Emmaus, and they encounter a Man. They don’t recognize Him at first. But when they sit down to dinner, and the Man breaks the bread – and then they know that it is Jesus. They experience something that is burning their hearts with a Love that is divine. But at the same time, there was something normal, something familiar. It is Jesus.
And there’s another reading coming up on Friday. Another favorite of mine, from the Gospel of John. The disciples are fishing in the Sea of Tiberias, aka Galilee. And they encounter Jesus there. They are so excited to see Him! He’s making them breakfast on the beach, He’s there, normal, just like old times.
Then, just as on the road to Emmaus and at the two men’s table, Jesus is there. He is there in His divinity as the Son of God. But perhaps more importantly, he is there, just like us, a normal person, conversing with us. Teaching us.
We’ll circle back to that in a minute.
This is what’s important. Normalcy.
Yes of course, it is important that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead. That is the foundation of our faith. But that is so hard to grasp. However, He died like a normal person. He was without sin, but He suffered the sin of all of us, all of us normal people. And so perhaps that is the most important lesson here – that even though Jesus suffered and died for us in an unimaginable way, and on top of that rose from the dead – that He is still just one of us.
He is not normal in the sense He is the Son of God. But He is normal in that He is just like us.
My heart burns just thinking of this.
Those disciples that met Him on the road to Emmaus and that experience Him in the upper room and that eat with Him on the Sea of Tiberias all experience God, but yet they just yearn for a sense of normalcy after what they have just been through and witnessed. They are excited to just see Him.
I think we all yearn for this sense of normalcy these days.
I was just having a discussion with my son, not unlike other discussions I’ve had with him in recent weeks. As with most of you, we’ve been cooped up in our house with each other for weeks now. And there are no signs of this shelter in place letting up for at least a few more weeks. At times, we’ve been getting on each other’s nerves, and he’s upset because he thinks he is annoying.
He’s eleven. Confined to the house. Can’t be around his friends. Can’t play baseball with His team. Heck, I don’t even know if we could go up to the park and play on the fields. He’s a really good kid. He’s not annoying. But we’re all confined here, together.
You do the math…
And so I asked him to come up to my office and he sat on my lap as he always does. As I have done a number of times in the last several weeks about this, I talked with him and said,
“Yep, this sucks. We have a lot to be thankful for, and yes, many people have it much worse than us and would love to have our health, but yes – this sucks. Your mom, myself, you – we’re all dealing with the same situation. The only thing I can promise you is that there is hope – the infections seem to be leveling off and God willing they will be dropping in the coming days and weeks, and that there is hope. Things will pretty much get back to normal.”
Will they ever be the same? No. Even once scientists develop treatments and a vaccine, COVID-19 will like be a seasonal bug as the strains mutate. There will be systematic and economic ramifications for years. But – we will get back to a sense of normalcy. Life will go on. We will go back to the office. Schools will be in session. Sports will resume. But nothing will be the exactly the same. And actually – that’s a good thing.
Because it’s the same way with Jesus, albeit on a much larger scale. Yes, the disciples are seeing a semblance of normalcy, but things have changed. The risen Jesus is in their midst. It is a whole new ballgame.
Yes, the situation stunk for the disciples going through it. They didn’t understand, until they did through the Grace of Jesus and His Holy Spirit. Things have changed. Things have been disrupted. But our eternity has gotten a whole lot better!
With this normalcy comes a whole new understanding. A whole new meaning. A whole new purpose.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Think about that.
The more things change, if you look, the more His Truth presents itself.
Everything in life is simple underneath all the distraction, behind all the chaos.
So, here is Jesus, coming to us seeming through a complete stranger, or perhaps through an acquaintance, or simply through a loved one. We don’t notice Him at first, but He is there. And there is always a lesson we need to learn, that He teaches us in these people that we encounter, that He reveals Himself through.
Look at Him! Listen for Him! Let your eyes be opened so that you can see Him. Look for His greatness and love in the midst of the normalcy in our lives. He is there. There is a lot of talk about politicians not wasting a crisis for their political gain. Well Jesus most certainly does not waste a crisis. We become better and stronger because of it, and we are truly changed. But we have to look for it.
Jesus was changed, but yet He is still the same. He comes to us. In the normalcy. Let’s cherish those times in our lives, and not miss it because we’re too busy. And in these times, let’s look for Him.
