Embossed (Luke 24:13-35)

A few weeks ago one of my former students met with me for coffee and some conversation to catch up on what’s happened since I last saw her at her high school graduation. The meeting stemmed from her asking for some advice/help with one of her papers, an offer I had left open for my students whenever they had a need or a question while in college. Honestly, most don’t take me up on it, but a few have along the way. Sometimes their confidence just needs a boost, a reminding of the things they already know but have forgotten. College assignments can quickly become overwhelming, very similar to the life for which college is preparing them in their chosen fields. 

My sweet student gifted me with a beautiful book that she had signed, dated, and embossed. Then she excitedly told me what it said and that the embosser was mine. An embosser is often a very small press that through pressure creates a raised design or a seal onto a piece of paper. This type of seal validates the authenticity of a document, whether it is used by an official or an ordinary person, letting people know this work belongs to him/her. 

This precious student knew my love for reading because I had shared it with her over a three-year period, and she wanted to gift me with something I would use and love. The book was just the tool to share the real gift, the instrument that demonstrated both her knowledge of who I am and her love for me. I admit I was a bit overwhelmed by both and grateful.

Teachers often pour themselves into the lives of the children they teach (however big they are, they are children). From my own experiences, I know that teachers can feel bereft when their students graduate, especially if they’ve taught them multiple years and they feel more like their own children than impersonal students. For me personally, it often felt like I was losing the people I love. There are students I taught (sometimes feel like I helped raise) during their high school years that are precious to me, students I haven’t seen or heard from since. Some students I occasionally see—I bump into most at a local Wal-Mart. Some are my “friends” on social media, but that is just a superficial knowledge of their lives, an invention sometimes almost like happily-ever-after fiction. I literally move from seeing them for at least an hour every single weekday over a school year, conversing with them, teaching them, sharing life, investing in them, to nothing. There is grief and loss, not of life, but of access to their lives, like a child has moved out of the country (before telephones existed). I had poured myself into them for so long, and then they were gone unless they chose to seek me out. Moved. No forwarding address left behind.

I thought of all this today as I read again Luke’s account of the road to Emmaus. Here  are two disciples traveling a road leading them away from the hope they have willingly placed in Jesus, the teacher they have spent years following, interacting with, learning from. They walk in bewilderment and sadness, and their confusion is palpable. Nothing is as they thought it would be, and they are speaking and wondering what all the things that have just occurred over the weekend in Jerusalem could possibly mean. They’re remembering some of the things He had told them, pondering. There’s an empty tomb . . . should they be hopeful since it is the third day and He spoke of the third day and the women said there were angels who said He is alive. What could it all mean?

Then Jesus, whom they do not recognize when He joins them (in His resurrected body), begins to walk with them along the road, asking them what kind of conversation they are having, why they are so sad. Their jaws drop. Who could this man possibly be that hasn’t heard of the events of the weekend? The potential Messiah had been delivered over by the religious leaders in Jerusalem and had just been put to death on a cross by the Romans, seemingly killing the hopes of the Jewish nation that seemed to have followed Him around the countryside for the past few years, hoping for a glimpse of a miracle, which many had seen. The title, the King of the Jews, was even mocked by the Romans in the sign they placed over His head. How could this man not have heard of the hours of darkness at mid-day, the earthquakes, the temple veil being rent in two from the top to the bottom, of Jesus’ quick burial, the dead coming out of graves and appearing to many, and subsequently the finding of the empty tomb? What rock had he just crawled out from under? Really!! 

Jesus’ question to His disciples turns into another opportunity to teach. (Teachers teach, taking every opportunity to teach students that is offered, especially the ones they’ve walked with closely for years.) He speaks again with another question: shouldn’t the Christ have suffered all this and now enter into His glory? He then teaches them, expounding on all that is in the Scriptures about Him. He shows them Jesus is the Christ of God, the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world, the fulfillment of the prophecies. They listen, still not really hearing, but He presses on, patiently making connections for them, showing He really is who they had hoped He would be. 

As I read this, I kept thinking about Deuteronomy 6, the Shema, the call to obey God and prosper, the call to love God with everything I am, with my heart, my soul, my might, the call to teach diligently regardless of what I am doing, for whatever I am doing, God is in me through Christ and the Holy Spirit, thus He is in what I am doing. My focus is to be on Him always, my obedience evidence of my love for Him.

I turn to verse seven and read this: “you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.” God is to be so impressed upon His followers that they can do nothing apart from Him. His teaching is the protection offered, and my dwelling upon it, talking about it, walking it out is my obedience of His command, my accepting of His provision through His word. It is pressed in. Embossed. And there is life there, a growing understanding of my need to keep talking to others about Him, to tell them the good news of Jesus Christ, the One who died for my sins, the only One who was able to perfectly fulfill God’s law and the commandments in Deuteronomy 6. 

I am learning as I walk down this road of life that HIs impressing on my life requires my pressing in. I can never quit studying, reading His word, learning more about the One I worship. I can never quit sharing it, speaking of it, thinking about it, talking about Him, to Him. He is the teacher that never loses even one of His “students,” and there is no grief over the ones He calls by name. The road may be long, the journey confusing, the questions confounding, seeming separation, but He is the the Way, the assistance needed along it, the answer at the end, my reward, so I press in to His seal that embosses me, and the evidence of His ownership of me rises up in my life, showing me (and the others I speak to, walk with, talk with, pray with, teach) the evidence of Christ in me, my hope of glory. It is tangible inside me and visible outside, like this seal I sit and rub my hands over while I ponder His embossing of me this morning.