A Necessary Grief

“Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

Luke 24:26

Their hearts were heavy with grief.

No, not just grief. The bitterness was the heavier burden. Bitter thoughts made the two young men age, and they walked with the bent gait of the broken, the humiliated.

They rebuked themselves as they left the city, angry at their own foolishness. They wondered how they let themselves get involved with such a plan, to risk trusting what could never be.

But, hoping against all hope, there had been a maybe.

Maybe He would change everything. Maybe, for a brief glimpse, they would see Heaven had indeed come down and touched this scorched earth. Maybe they would have their land flow with milk and honey once again. Maybe all would be set right, and they would be vice-regents under a great Sovereign.

Maybe He really was God-With-Us.

But each maybe had evaporated in the cruel, noonday heat. He had turned out to be like everyone else.

Mortal. Temporary. Extinguishable.

Hadn’t they seen it with their own eyes? His tendons and muscles—pierced by cruel spikes. The flesh ripped from his bones in torturous strokes. The blood and sweat in mingled rivulets, dripping off his bared kneecaps onto his toes, pattering the dust from whence He came.

Even until the last moment, they had clung to hope—hope that angels would rescue the Son of God, that God would open the jaws of the earth and swallow the merciless villains. They had hoped Jesus himself would do as the crowd jeered—to come down from the Cross and save himself. But hope dwindled, finally snuffed out while they watched in horror as He surrendered his breath.

He was not who they thought He was. He couldn’t be now, his frame decaying in a granite tomb.

All this they said to one another in angry ejaculations as they walked the road to Emmaus. Why stay in Jerusalem? There was nothing there for them but danger.

They rounded a bend in the road and saw another traveler ahead. He was watching them, waiting for them, it seemed. As they drew nearer, he called out “Shalom.”

Responding with muttered greeting, they avoided eye contact the intruder of their thoughts.

There was something familiar about the way he spoke the words of peace over them, but they did not know his face. He fell into step with them.

“What are you talking about, so serious as you walk?” he asked.

They were in no mood for the tourist who knew nothing about their troubles. They stopped walking and stared at him, “long-faced, like they had lost their best friend” (Luke 24:18).

“Are you the only one in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard what’s happened during the last few days?”

In other words, Are you kidding me?

The traveler stopped walking, too. He shook his head, smiled, daring to ask, “What happened?” 

In disbelief, the two men exploded their story, talking over each other. They all started walking again, and they walked faster and faster, their gait matching the pace of their racing hearts. The man said nothing. He just listened—quietly, intently, without a troubled face. The young men talked and talked until there was nothing left to say, out of breath with their emotion and exertion.

The traveler was silent. He let their frustration and despair hang in the space between them as they slowed their stride. When he finally did speak, it was the last thing they expected this kindly but ignorant stranger to say.

“So thick-headed.”

Their heads and necks jerked to look at him. They stopped as abruptly as if they had run into a wall.

“So slow-hearted.” The strange man stopped too, swallowing an even stranger grin.

“Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?”

They stared at him, mouths hanging open.

“Then he started at the beginning, with the Books of Moses, and went on through all the Prophets, pointing out everything in the Scriptures that referred to him” (24:27).

Of course, it was Jesus all along. They were about to discover that the Man they left dead was God-Alive.

This narrative clearly displays one of the things I love most about Jesus. He has this uncanny ability to just show up as we walk along in our lives, most of us dragging heavy hearts behind us like over-stuffed luggage. We come around a corner and there he is, with a smile and a wave, asking us what is happening in our lives.

His lightheartedness seems inappropriate in the wake of our bitterness, our disappointment with him, but it’s not. He knows we are disappointed. He knows we are confused about what he’s doing or not doing in our lives.

And that is when he begins to teach us, the thick-headed, slow-hearted people of a Risen God that we still think is dead.

“Was it not necessary?” he asks us.  Whatever it is, it is necessary. Whatever the thing is in our lives that has disrupted us, frustrated us, disappointed us—it was necessary. It was important. It was meaningful. It still is. We have a God that does not always meet our expectations. He allows setbacks and disappointments into our lives.

What we see as death circumstances, Jesus will make alive, green with growth and fruit. The signs are all there, all throughout the ages of the world. His faithfulness has evidence. What we see as failure, Jesus has already secured the victory. What we see as God letting us down, forgetting us, leaving us behind, God has in hand. He is right there with you and whatever it is. He makes it beautiful and purposeful and an asset to the Kingdom. We, as children of a loving Father, can rest in the knowledge that whatever we walk through will be transformed into goodness.

“He knows us far better than we know ourselves,” Paul writes, “knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”

—Romans 8:28, MSG

Every detail. Nothing gets missed, nothing gets lost. Nothing goes unredeemed and unrestored in God-With-Us. Not our past. Not our sin. Not our terrible circumstances. Not our pain. Not even our disappointment with God.

We can’t always see what’s necessary and what’s not. If we were the two on Emmaus, would we have seen it as necessary for Jesus to die? To be tortured and buried? Or would we have viewed it all as a gigantic waste? Would we have seen any of the events of Good Friday as necessary?

Most likely not. But it was. It was the most necessary event in the history of the world. Our sin made it necessary. The Love of God made it necessary. And we can be guaranteed that whatever thing we carry in our lives that seems unnecessary is actually quite needed for our growth in God.

His work is always necessary, and in the bitter pain, we find that Jesus is still with us as we walk along the road.