Keep Your Head Up!
Keith M. McFarren
April 19, 2026
Luke 24:13-35
    These two guys on the road to Emmaus were
really down in the dumps.  I can just
picture them walking along with their heads down, hands in their pockets,
shuffling their feet and maybe even kicking stones as they walk.  
    They probably felt like all the troubles
in the world were resting on their shoulders.
And why shouldn’t they?  After
all, the guy who they thought was the Messiah and was going to deliver the
Kingdom of God to the nation of Israel had been crucified.  The guy that was going to set them all free
just like God had always promised was dead.

    Verse 21 kind of sums everything up. “We
thought he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel.”  They came “that close” and lost it all.  They came “that close” to having what God had
always promised them they would have and they lost it all.
    Back in 1999, Robby Gordon was leading the
Indianapolis 500 and ran out of gas on the last lap.  He was so close.
    The Chicago Cubs were on their way to
winning the National League Pennant only to have the bottom fall out – to have
Billy Bartman catch that one foul ball that would have made all the difference
in the world - and they lose again. How often have you been “that close” only
to have the bottom fall out?
    Jesus came into Jerusalem like a
king.  There were people throwing their
clothes at him and waving palm branches yelling Hosannah! Hosannah!  They were pumped up. They were flying higher
than a kite.  Their troubles were over.
God had finally heard their pleas.  God’s
power had been present in Jesus as he performed miracle after miracle and there
was no doubt in their mind that this was God’s choice to redeem Israel.  This was God’s choice to liberate Israel  once and for all from pagan domination and
they would be free to serve God in peace and in holiness.
    How must they have felt to think their
problems were over, that they were finally going to be saved by the long
awaited Messiah – to be this close and then have the bottom fall out.
    It’s ironic, isn’t it, that as Jesus
joined these two guys along the road he asked them what they are talking about
and Cleopas looked at him and says, “Are you the only person in Jerusalem
that doesn’t know what’s going on?  Have
you been out on an island somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean
Sea?  How can you not know what they did
to the Messiah?
    You see the irony here is that in reality,
Jesus is the only person in all of Jerusalem that really does know what’s going
on and the rest of the people are the ones that are ignorant and don’t have a
clue.  Jesus was the only one to know
that everything that had happened up to this point was all part of God’s plan
for the entire world.  Jesus was the only
one to know that the Kingdom of God was finally at hand.
    These were all good people who lived their
lives according to the laws of Israel.
They prayed everyday; they celebrated all the right holidays and made
the right kinds of sacrifices and they ate all the right kinds of food…but they
didn’t read very well…nor did they understand nor did they remember very
well.  
    They had been reading and hearing the same
thing over and over again for over 1450 years and you would think that by now
someone would have caught on and said “Hey wait a minute lets take a closer
look at what this is trying to tell us.”

    Long before Jesus was even born, in the
Book of Genesis, God told the serpent in the Garden of Eden that man and satan
would be life long enemies -“you (satan) will strike at his heel but he
(Jesus) will crush your head” (Gen. 3:15).
Satan would continually attempt to defeat Christ while he was here on
earth but in the end Satan would suffer defeat when Jesus rose from the dead.
    The prophet Isaiah, in the 53rd
chapter, spoke of Jesus as the Messiah who would suffer for the sins of all
people.    
    Isaiah said Jesus would be a man who
appeared to have nothing to offer the people.
He would suddenly appear but there would be nothing physically
attractive about him that would cause people to want follow him.  He wouldn’t be handsome and he wouldn’t have
any type of majestic aura about him to even look like a king.
   Isaiah went on to say that the people would
all turn against him. He would be led like a lamb to the slaughter…but he would
never say a word.   He would be as quiet
as a sheep who was getting sheared.  He
would bear the sins of the world and the people would do nothing but ridicule
him and turn their backs and walk away.
Isaiah told them all of this, but they didn’t understand.
    It was the prophet Zechariah who said that
the Lord would someday pour out his Holy Spirit on all of us and only then
would the people realize just who it was that they pierced with their swords
and hung from the cross.
    It was the prophet Malachi that said that
God would send a messenger in the form of John the Baptist…a messenger to
introduce and prepare the way for the Messiah.
    Finally, time after time, throughout the
gospels, Jesus told his disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem, that he had
to suffer and that he had to be killed.
And time and time again he told of how he would be raised on the third
day after his death.  And despite all of
these predictions, the disciples never fully understood nor did they ever, in
their wildest dreams, expect the resurrection.
It
was all written right there in the scriptures.
Jesus told them right to their face.
The Prophets told them exactly how it would be. Jesus himself told them
how it would be.  But the people just
couldn’t comprehend what they were reading and they couldn’t open their ears to
what they were hearing.
    I can relate to the people of Israel.  I can remember having to read novels in high
school and then discuss them…novels that had deep meanings behind them.  Now some people eat that kind of stuff up and
they can tell you the deep down meanings behind the metaphoric words and
allegories and all that.  
    I never got into all that stuff.  I was never much of a deep thinker.  In fact I had a hard enough time trying to figure
out who I was at 16, 17, or 18 years old, let alone the deep meanings of some
author I couldn’t care less about. It was all right there in the book, but I
never fully understood it.
    As we make our daily walk with God, I
believe many of us are like the two guys on the long, dusty road to
Emmaus.  It’s easy to go through our life
keeping our heads down because of our problems and burdens.  We go through life with our heads down
worried about this or worried about that.
Some of us even go through life with our heads down feeling sorry for
ourselves because of who we are or how we turned out.  
    You see, if you go through life with your
head down you’re going to miss a lot of what’s going on around you.   If you continually keep your head down you
can’t see Jesus and if you can’t see Jesus you’re going to miss out on the
goodness of God and you won’t be able to see what he’s doing in the world
around us.
    Some suggest that the reason the two guys
didn’t recognize Jesus was because they were traveling west near the end of the
day and the setting sun was in their eyes and they couldn’t see.
    But I say they couldn’t recognize Jesus
because they had their heads down; they had their heads down because they felt
defeated and discouraged and feeling sorry for themselves.  They were so wrapped up in all the bad things
that had been happening to them that they couldn’t see the presence of God in
their lives nor could they see any good in the world around them.  
    They had lost their Messiah…and in losing
Jesus, they lost their hope and their faith for the future.  Their hopes and their dreams, for the present
and for the future, they all died the same day that Jesus died on the cross.
    Death can have a blinding effect on
us.  If we don’t have faith and if we don’t
have hope, then death will blind us…and if death blinds us…then death will have
the final say and death will have the final victory.  
    I want you to close your eyes for a
moment.  That’s what life looks like when
you have no faith or no hope.  If we have
no faith and we have no hope it’s like we close our eyes and all we can see is
the darkness out there before us.  We’re
like a horse with blinders that can only see straight ahead and when the
straight ahead becomes totally black with hopelessness the future doesn’t look
very promising.
    But by the time they reached the end of
their seven mile journey with Jesus, they had recognized him.  They recognized him because they raised up
their heads and in raising up their heads, they saw that they were surrounded
by the resurrected Jesus.  
    In raising up their heads and opening up
their eyes, they moved from a world of defeat and discouragement and despair to
a world of hope and faith because they could now recognize the story of the
crucifixion and the resurrection as a part of God’s plan and at the same time,
recognize the story of God’s redemption not only for Israel but for the entire
world.
    They not only saw Jesus but they saw the
resurrected Jesus…and when they saw the resurrected Jesus, they saw new life,
new life for their hopes and dreams for the future…all resurrected at the same
time.
    The Jesus that made them hang their heads
because of his death now made them raise their heads with joy and happiness and
faith and hope because he was alive.  He
had been resurrected…and that day, on the road to Emmaus so too were Jesus’ disciples
resurrected.
    The road to Emmaus is the way to God; it’s
the road that leads to life.  It is a
road that is filled with sorrow and hard times…a road filled with all sorts of
bumps and holes and ruts…but don’t hang your head, because it is also along
this road that the resurrected Jesus will always meet you and walk with you and
forgive you of your sins and fill you with his grace and unconditional love.
    As you walk down the road of life keep
your head up because if you hang your head you may miss Jesus…but at the same
time you may miss something else that is very important.  
    You may miss someone who needs to change
their life…someone who needs to know about the love of God.  Someone who needs to know about God’s grace…someone
who needs to know about God’s unconditional love…someone who needs to know
about the resurrected Jesus and the life that he gives.  
    Stay alert to the world around you…you may
miss someone who needs to know what you know…you may miss someone who needs to
know about Jesus.  Keep your head up and
change someone’s life.  Keep your head up
and change the world.