Spiritual vision

The last chapter of Luke tells the story of two of Jesus’ disciples walking to Emmaus, discussing the previous days’ events including Jesus’ trial and execution. Jesus suddenly comes up to them along the road, but they did not recognize him.

But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
Luke 24:16

The implication here is that they were prevented from recognizing Jesus’ physical appearance, and indeed some translations attribute this physical “blinding” to God.

Later in the story, after the two have explained to Jesus the very things that have happened to Jesus, Jesus appears to grow frustrated with them for not being able to perceive spiritual truths.

Then Jesus said to them, “How foolish you are! You’re so slow to believe everything the prophets said!
Luke 24:25

This bothered me. Why is Jesus frustrated with the two men when they were prevented from recognizing his resurrected body? How is that fair?

I believe the reason is revealed further in the story. After Jesus explains the spiritual realities of who he is in accordance with the Jewish prophets, the men ask Jesus to stay with them and share a meal. He does, and after praying over it and breaking bread with them, they recognize who he is. And as soon as they do, he vanishes. And it is in their exclamation that we find the source of Jesus’ frustration:

They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
Luke 24:32

There was something within the men’s spirits (their hearts) that recognized the truth before them, even if their physical eyes couldn’t perceive it. Something within them came alive when Jesus was with them.

So why were they not allowed to recognize Jesus?

Meditation upon this story would lead one to consider all of scripture contextually, beginning with the fall. In Genesis, after Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, their “eyes were opened” (Genesis 3:7), and at once their existence was dictated by their perception of the physical world. Everything had inverted and become backwards, antithetical to divine order.

There are six times in the Bible that the phrase “They have eyes but do not see” (or a permutation thereof) occurs, spanning both Old and New Testaments. A theme repeated in this way is a thread of spiritual truth that provides greater insight if we’re willing to see it: in Biblical numerology, six is the number of man. Thus, this phrase underscores the fundamental deficiency of man and the disconnect between man and the divine: we have eyes, but do not see.

The men’s physical eyes were prevented from seeing Jesus because their spiritual eyes could not see, or at best were severely weak. God prevented them from perceiving spiritual truths through imperfect physical means, because that is the opposite of God’s divine order. Truth is meant to be perceived (seen) in the spirit first, then manifested in the physical. These two men were still guided by their physical perceptions, thus they could not see the spiritual realities in front of them, even though something within their spirit “burned” as they encountered truth. The coals were stirred and had become hot, but they didn’t burst into flame.

We often make spiritual judgments through our physical experiences. I’m feeling well, my family is good, I have lots of money in the bank…I am experiencing God’s spiritual favor! I received a promotion at work…God has blessed me! The person who hurt me apologized…Jesus is at work! While all good things can certainly be attributed to God, the reality is that God’s blessings and the work of Jesus are perpetually and eternally extant, whether our physical perceptions discern them or not.

Anything that we experience is an outflow of a continual and eternal spiritual reality, not a one-time “fairy godmother” waving of the wand to inject some magic blessing dust for a moment of our lives. Thus we do not pursue the “physical blessings” or miracles that are temporal and transitory, but the eternal spiritual truth in a higher dimension that gave birth to them. Miracles and blessings and suffering and dis-ease will come and go, but the eternal spiritual current of truth is unchanging and unbound by time or physics.

We fall short of the glory of God when we cannot see with spiritual vision. Jesus said, “I only do what I see the Father doing” and “My Father is always at work.” His followers didn’t know what he meant because they did not have spiritual vision. Peter defied the laws of physics by walking on water when his eyes were fixed on the supernatural (that which superseded natural “measurable” dimensions) Jesus. When he reverted to his [lower] physical and logical filters to evaluate his situation, he began to succumb to the laws and rules of the natural world as perceived and measured by the natural mind. Peter also was rebuked by Jesus for denying Jesus’ spiritual vision of his purpose (the cross) because Peter, while his intentions were good, was seeing “upside down”; that is, perceiving and attempting to manifest God’s purposes through his natural senses rather than his spiritual sense. And anytime we operate in this way, we likely have unknowingly oriented ourselves in diametric opposition of the purposes of God, typically accompanied with the insidious pride and arrogance of our own imperfect deductions and conclusions from repeated physical measurements of physical reality. This is why humility is imperative to the pursuit of truth, because often the things of the spirit will confound our natural senses, and in these moments we exist in a strange and uncomfortable liminal place where the disconnect we feel is not between us and God but between our spirit and our incomplete natural perceptions.

Just as Adam and Eve walked with God in spirit – they primarily perceived in spirit and the physical was simply a lesser, subsequent manifestation of a spiritual reality, and spirit informed this lesser reality – so to are we meant to move from a place of physical orientation of ourselves and others to one of spiritual orientation. This is the entire purpose and work of Jesus, and it is the road he paved by which the captive is set free.

Oftentimes I see Jesus people dumbfounded or disappointed when something in this fallen physical world does not go their way, or they experience discomfort or suffering. The greater spiritual reality is that everything we need is with us in the present moment, in every moment, and the work of the divine is all around us. Like the two men walking to Emmaus, we just can’t see it because we’ve been walking by sight, not by faith.