The wife hears some noises. She pokes her husband awake and says, “I hear noises downstairs.”

“You’re always hearing noises downstairs”, he protests. “There’s no one there.”

She insists. “I’m sure there is.”

Finally, to keep peace, the husband grumbles downstairs and ran into a burglar. The burglar has the silverware and some other things in a sack. He is ready to leave. The husband says, “Just a moment. Before you leave I would like you to come upstairs and meet my wife. She’s been hearing you for over twenty years.”

When the husband goes downstairs he is not expecting a burglar. But he finds one anyway. Our text this Easter morning is also a story of people who find what isn’t being looked for - two disciples who are met by the risen Christ when they are sure that He is dead and buried -- because even though they aren't looking for Jesus, Jesus comes to them on the road.

Post-traumatic stress syndrome is one of the more recent categories to be assigned official status by mental health professionals. Interest in the syndrome developed from studies of military combat neuroses, pathological grief, catastrophic accidents, and divorce following a child’s terminal illness. The syndrome is a human response to disaster. The symptoms include re-experiencing the traumatic event over and over again and a numbed response to the affairs of daily life. There is acute depression, feelings of detachment and estrangement, memory impairment, and desperate attempts to distance oneself from the trauma and its setting.

Two disciples of Jesus suffer from post-traumatic stress. It hasn’t been labeled that yet. The first century was a bit short on psychologists to label things. But the emotions were there before the label. They head out of Jerusalem for Emmaus on the afternoon of Easter day.

Emmaus was a village about seven miles from Jerusalem on the main road to the seacoast. But as Frederick Beuchner suggests, Emmaus is not so much a place as a state of mind. Emmaus could be any place, just so long as it is far removed from the frustration, anger, confusion, and despair that consumes them. Emmaus is the place we go to in order to escape -- a bar, a movie, wherever it is we throw up our hands…Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one.”

About ten years ago The Los Angeles Times had a report on a survey. "You thought alcohol, drugs and tobacco are the chief health concerns among teenagers? Not according to today’s teachers, pediatricians and other youth-working professionals. They contend the main health problem is adolescent anxiety and depression. A kind of pessimism that is new is how Peter Bentsen describes it. The chief of Search Institute, reports that participants in the study report feeling disconnected from social institutions and support systems and a sense of powerlessness to make a difference."

“A sense of powerlessness to make a difference.” Perhaps you’ve felt that way. Perhaps you even feel that way today as you gather here with us in worship. You’re here but you’re here to go through the motions or because of family expectation. It’s surely the same way that Jesus’ disciples felt on that Friday when they saw Him crucified and in the hours that followed.

Cleopas and his companion believed that in Jesus the Messiah had come. Now Jesus has died like any ordinary person. Cleopas and his companion are going home at the end of a dream. They need to find out if there is a future, and whether they want any part of it. Sure, they heard the first reports that Jesus was alive again. But how believable is that? They want no part of other people’s hallucinations.

Now there is no reason to think that Cleopas and his fellow disciple are especially well known in the ranks of the disciples. But their black despair is enough cause for the risen Christ to overtake them on the road and walk with them.

For some reason or another, which we will consider in a few minutes, they do not recognize Jesus. Jesus asks what they are discussing. They stand still, looking sad, and tell Jesus about Jesus and the terrible thing that was done to Him, and how they had hoped that He was the one who would redeem Israel. But now it is all over.

Their despair brings a rebuke from Jesus in words that are less than complimentary. He doesn’t say, “Oh, you poor people, I feel your pain.” He says, “What little sense you have! How slow you are to believe all that the prophets had spoken.” Jesus continues with some words which we can only begin to understand, “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and enter into His glory?”

Then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus interprets for these disciples the scriptures. Jesus shows them that throughout the Old Testament a consistent divine purpose is worked out - a purpose that in the end produced the cross. The terrible nature of sin is found throughout the Old Testament and so is the deep, merciful love of God. In the end, this combination made the cross inevitable. Jesus says that these disciples have a wrong understanding of what the Old Testament teaches, and therefore they have a wrong idea about what happened at the cross.

As they near Emmaus, it appears that Jesus is going to go on. They urge Him to stay. He sits down with them to eat. He takes the bread and gives it to them. Suddenly their eyes are opened. They recognize Jesus and He vanishes out of their sight.

These disciples have come to the end of their journey, a long journey when done with dragging, defeated steps. But now they fly back along the dark road to Jerusalem. They come to the place where the eleven are staying. Before they can speak the eleven tell them, “The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon Peter.” Then they tell of their own encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus.

What would it be like to have shared this experience -- to walk along that road and hear Jesus teach from the scripture, to sit at that table and recognize Him when He breaks the bread, to experience a great resurgence of hope?

But there is also a mystery to the story. Why did these two disciples who loved Jesus so much not even recognize Him when He walked beside them? Why, at least, didn’t they recognize his voice as Mary Magdalene did earlier that day by the empty tomb? It is true that these disciples are not members of the inner group. But they know Jesus.

One reason they don't recognize Jesus may be simply that they don’t expect to see Him.

When Carol and I were in Israel a number of years ago, we went with our group into a restaurant on the side of Mt. Carmel near Haifa. Inside the restaurant were two other Pastors whom I know. But I looked right through them. Their presence there didn't register because they were out of place. They belonged back in California. They weren’t there because they couldn’t be there.

Perhaps these disciples on the road reacted the same way - only more so. I wasn’t suffering from post-traumatic stress in Israel - terminal jet lag but not post-traumatic stress. I at least knew that these two pastors were alive. But for Cleopas and his fellow disciple, Jesus is completely out of context on that road because Jesus belongs in the grave.

Some critics of the Bible, like the so-called “Jesus Project”, have supposed that the disciples made up the resurrection out of their own wishes. They wanted it to happen so badly that, symbolically, it did happen in their minds and their hearts; that they didn’t really see the risen Jesus, but through the eyes of faith they recognized that the spirit of Jesus is still alive in the world -even though His body stayed in the grave.

But the Biblical witness is unanimous. The disciples were not looking for anything to happen and were not expecting anything to happen. They were realists. Verse 11 of this same chapter records that the words of the women who came back from the empty tomb sounded to the eleven disciples like nonsense. The disciples had no use for a spiritual, symbolic resurrection that didn’t involve the real Jesus they had known and walked with. They know that Jesus is dead and they know that the dead can’t come back to life. Or at least they knew that it can’t happen until it actually did happen.

It is possible that Cleopas and his traveling partner don’t recognize Jesus because they don’t expect to see Him.

But the text suggests that they are deliberately prevented from recognizing Jesus - that for some reason it was God’s purpose to cloud their eyes until Jesus could point them to the scriptures to show them what had happened. When Jesus broke the bread their eyes were opened. It wasn’t because the act was reminiscent of the breaking of bread at the Last Supper, because these disciples were not at the Last Supper. It was something else that opened their eyes - not the bread but the hands holding the bread -- the hands with the still vivid wounds of the nails -- the same wounds Thomas would see a week later.

The disciples at the end of the Emmaus road finally recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread. How do we recognize Jesus when He comes to us?

First of all, from this text, we are to recognize Jesus in scripture. Jesus tells us that we’re supposed to see Him there. Even though the eyes of the disciples on the Emmaus road are somehow prevented from recognizing Him, Jesus still rebukes them for being devastated by the crucifixion. The evidence of what would happen was already in the Word if they had the eyes and the will to see it.

The word of God is inspired by God. Through the Holy Spirit the true Word of God has the power to validate itself in our lives. Cleopas and his companion demonstrate this truth with their own experience. They exclaim to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us as He talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?”

That’s an experience you can have too. It is my fervent wish for each person here to be involved in a program of solid Bible study on a regular basis. It is the most life-changing and life-enriching experience you can have. There are many people here this morning who can testify to that fact.

Let me make two observations that grow out of the experience of these Emmaus disciples.

First, Jesus tells us that there is something objective about Easter - that it is rooted in history - history as prophesied in the Old Testament. Jesus rose from the tomb. He conquered death. This means that evil cannot finally win. It means that all of Jesus’ great promises about being the resurrection and the life are solid promises that you can build on in your own life today.

But this Easter morning I want to focus on a second observation - that the fact of Easter in history is meant to lead us to a present and very personal experience with Jesus in our own story. This is the experience we have as we give Jesus entry into our lives.

There is a great difference between knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus. Let me give an illustration.

Suppose you went to the library and checked out a book on chemistry to read to your eight-year-old child. From this book you read to your daughter about the properties of helium. You may even have her memorize a chart giving all of the properties of the gas.

Would your daughter then know helium? Yes, in a way. But not in the way that touches her life where she lives - not in the way she will know helium if you hand her a helium balloon, allow her to see it, touch it, play with it, watch it fly, and maybe even inhale it so she can talk with that high squeaky voice. She will then know helium in the way that makes a difference - and may even be pushed to go back and re-read the book so she can better understand what she’s experienced.

God wants us to know about Jesus from scripture. But that’s so we will recognize Him in our personal encounters with Him - as He breaks bread for us and shows us that the wounds He suffered are for us too.

Sometimes we badly need that encounter and that knowledge. For there are times when we are on Emmaus roads of our own. It can happen at the betrayal of a person we respected and trusted very much or as one we loved rejects us and leaves us for someone else. It can happen when we lose our job or are terminated without cause after loyal and faithful service. Or illness may strike us and confine us without any respite from pain. It may come as advancing age forces us to pull up the roots of a lifetime, move among strangers, and accept decreasing physical vitality. It may be the devastating death of a spouse or a child. Or it may begin in a time of moral failure when we awaken to how miserable we have made ourselves and the people we love. And in the midst of trauma, in the aftermath of numbing grief, we would give anything to somehow reverse things so it was like it used to be. Like the words of the Bob Seeger song “Against the Wind” we can say – “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”

And while on our way to our Emmaus, we may be surprised. Suddenly in the barrenness of our desolation and loss when we least expect it, we are aware that we have been joined by the presence of another that would go with us. Like Cleopas and his fellow disciple, we may not immediately recognize his identity. But later, in some moment, word, gesture or flash of understanding we see Jesus with us in our darkness. And He doesn’t come with answers. He comes as The answer - the answer we need. He comes to let us know that He is with us and that somehow everything will be all alright even when everything is all wrong. We suddenly know in a way beyond words that He is walking beside us on the road.

Jesus comes to us in the Word. He comes to us in our own experience. And He also comes to us in the experience that we share with other believers. The disciples hurry back to Jerusalem and are greeted with the words, “The Lord has been raised! It is true! He has appeared to Peter.” Then they tell their story. The experience of the others as they share it adds a dimension to the experience of each individual believer. It develops a sense of continuity and community between the individual and the body of Christ as a whole. You can come to me and say, “The Lord has done this or this other thing in my life and I can rejoice because I, too, have had experience with the action of the same Lord who is active in your life. That’s one reason why regular participation in worship is so important. This is where it happens.

In accordance with the scripture, we also recognize the true Jesus through the shared experience and beliefs of the church. We do not have the privilege of defining Jesus however we want - whatever suits our fancy or preconceptions. Verse 45 of this chapter is very interesting in this regard. It says that Jesus opened the mind of the gathered disciples - including Cleopas and his companion - to understand the scriptures. The word “mind” there is singular - a lot of disciples but only one mind - the shared understanding of the church of God as to the meaning of scripture and of Jesus Christ.

We recognize the true Jesus as the Jesus of reality - the Jesus with the physical wounds and the bodily resurrection - the Jesus who eats fish with His disciples as the later parts of this chapter records. This is important because we are not saved either by an idea or a collection or system of ideas or beliefs. We are saved by a person who came back from death with great power and glory and who walks beside us today.

Easter is about reality - reality that we can build our lives on. Easter is the good news about the universe, about God and about myself. It proclaims that the world is not some kind of orphan asylum. It is not a mammoth machine shop. It is not a whirling ball hurtling through endless, empty space. The universe is a home, and the heart of it is someone - the risen and living Jesus Christ who is here with us now in worship - and in our walks on even the darkest roads.