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Didn’t you get my text?

Didn’t you get my text?

These five words often leave me speechless. We can bemoan the fact that we are too connected to our mobile devices and computers, or we can understand that in a different era we might well have said a similar phrase: “Didn’t you get my note?”

Either by note or by text the idea is that we should have picked up a vital piece of information that would make better sense of our current context.

For example, a spouse comes in the door from work and is greeted with this phrase: “Can you go ahead and chop the broccoli for me?”

The answer comes: “Sure where is it?”

And then that fateful phrase: “Didn’t you get my text? Please pick up some broccoli on your way home.”

During the post-resurrection of appearance of Jesus on the road to Emmaus there is a similar dynamic at work.

Jesus walks with two disciples who don’t recognize him. (The passage doesn’t tell us why they don’t recognize him. It’s not the main point.) During the conversation, the two men tell Jesus that they are sad because basically they want to believe that the resurrection took place. They’re having a hard time with it though, because even in pre-modern times it was hard to believe that a person could be raised from the dead.

At this point in the account we might expect Jesus to say, “Surprise! Guys it’s me!” Yet what does he say?

Didn’t you get my text?

That’s not actually what vv. 25-26 say, but it has similar force. How slow they were to believe all that the prophets had spoken! Jesus gets them to wonder about the Old Testament. Then, without revealing himself to them, he starts explaining the story of the Christ event from the Old Testament.

Reading the Old Testament in light of the cross and resurrection gives us a vital piece of information that would make better sense of our current context. In other words, all of Scripture is pointing to Jesus. This seemed to be important to Jesus, otherwise he would have revealed himself immediately to the two confused disciples on the road to Emmaus.

How about you?

Do you find yourself confused in your own walk with Christ? Do you wish that Jesus would show up in your bedroom and do a miracle, or physically walk with you, or shake your hand? Jesus himself has shown us that, at least for right now, the best thing for our own growth is that we understand who Jesus is from all of Scripture.

This isn’t the only place in Scripture that makes this point, but it is the most tangible one. Jesus walks with them. He talks with them. He even eats with them, but as soon as they see who he actually is—he disappears. They are left with the Scripture. So are we.

Didn’t you get my text?

In Him,

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