KNOWING JESUS IN A NEW WAY
As I am preparing the children’s lessons for this week, I have been reminded how much I love the stories that we are about to share with them. The series is called “Knowing Jesus in a New Way.” In a nutshell, we go through Bible stories where followers of Jesus encounter Him after His Resurrection and how they are trying to make sense of their interactions with Our Savior.
I always stop and think how it must have been an exciting time- Yay! Jesus is alive! But also a confusing time. I can only imagine some of the thoughts that were going through their heads - Wait. What? We thought you were dead and now you are back?
Over the 40 days before Jesus ascended into heaven, we are given examples of various witness stories in the Bible.
In Luke 24:13-35, we see an interaction with Jesus playing out on the road to Emmaus. Cleopas proceeds to tell who he thought was a stranger that there had been big news in Jerusalem.
Luke 24:20 - 24 has the travellers saying the following:
The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23 but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.
I had to stop and giggle at this a little bit. The travelers on the Road to Emmaus just gave Jesus an account of what happened to Him. He was right there with them, and they didn’t even know it. It wasn’t until they broke bread with Jesus that they realized that it was indeed Him.
Our children’s story has the subtitle: “Known in the Breaking of Bread.”
Have you ever been in a situation where you were confused by something that happened to you and you didn’t think that God/Jesus was there, but He really was?
It is comforting to know that the disciples didn’t have all the answers. They had doubts. They didn’t even recognize Jesus. They were learning what it meant to be with Jesus given a different set of circumstances.
The timing is interesting, because I feel like we have an opportunity to learn something new about Jesus or to see one of His qualities reinforced during this time in our country. COVID-19 is showing us “new ways” to live almost each week. Perhaps now is the time to interact with Jesus in a new way. I feel like we are literally doing this over our computer screens every Sunday. I didn’t ever think I would rely so heavily on technology to point me to Jesus!
We are all learning what it means to worship and celebrate Jesus under different circumstances ourselves.
Things never went back to the “old way” for the disciples. In fact, they changed again. Jesus left and sent the Holy Spirit.
Looking at our situations, I am guessing things won’t ever be quite the same for us either. But I am confident that the journey will provide us with much to learn and to reflect on just like the disciples.