Luke 24:11 “These words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” ...And then two followers and friends of Jesus walk seven miles with Jesus without knowing it. On the road to Emmaus, they walk and talk with Jesus and don’t recognize him. They should know better, these friends and followers of Jesus. These disciples and apostles sure seem blind to their teacher, their rabbi, their Lord. But hindsight is 20/20. We simply can’t understand the richness of this moment until we look back on it later. As Christians, we’ve had 2000 years to get used to the idea of Jesus’ resurrection. For some of us it’s a metaphor, for some of us it’s a historical fact, for some of us it’s a mystery beyond either one. However you find meaning in the resurrection, imagine, for a moment, if you were with Mary Magdalene going to the tomb to care for Jesus’ body. You’re full of worries. How will we ever move that stone? Has his body started to smell? Will we be harassed for caring for this enemy of the Temple elite and Rome? You show up at the tomb completely unprepared for resurrection. No wonder it takes so long for Jesus’ friends and followers to believe. They aren’t ready for resurrection right away, they need some time. Where in your life are you hiding from resurrection today? What invitation to abundant life are you resisting? The question might be too hard. Hindsight is 20/20, right? Maybe we’ll only know looking back on this day, the ways that we are right now resisting coming fully to life. So look back. Do you remember as a schoolkid, a teacher who took you aside and suggested that you weren’t reaching your full potential? Maybe he said you could work more diligently on your homework, maybe she said you could pay more attention in class. At the time you might have rolled your eyes, or argued, or felt embarrassed. And maybe later you wrote that teacher a letter, or just thought about it in your mind, how much it meant that your teacher believed in you, had faith in you, saw that you could be more than you were. Maybe a parent or grandparent or aunt or uncle sat down with you and said, “I’m worried about you. I see you acting recklessly and I want you to be safe because I love you, because you matter.” Maybe at the time you were defensive, maybe you thought that person was uptight or old-fashioned. Maybe later you realized you had been out-of-control and afraid to admit it, and that someone else telling you that you were worthy of work helped you believe it. Hindsight may be 20/20, so even if we can’t see right now what resurrection we’re hiding from, we can trust that in the fullness of time we’ll look back and see that there was more abundant life available to us than we knew how to receive. Hindsight is 20/20, but faith is looking forward with the assurance that all things are working toward good, that the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice, that in the fullness of time we will find gifts in all that is unfolding today, because we are divinely designed to work with God to make all things new. Hindsight is 20/20 so we simply trust that right now God is inviting us to come fully to life, to live abundantly, to join Jesus in resurrection as life always wins, as love always wins. Praise God, whose invitations have no RSVP deadline. God is always, always, always overjoyed to invite us to live, abundantly.
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