The Twist Everyone Missed

“Torah spells out the coming of this man. It’s dogma and tradition that have misunderstood the picture from scripture...” – Jairus (The Chosen, Season 3 Episode 4, Unclean Part 1)

I write this as a preface to set the tone and provide context for the articles that will follow this one. Consider this the catalyst for everything that comes after it.

Most of us probably remember the first time we watched The Sixth Sense and for 49 minutes thought we were tracking with a pretty straightforward plot. Then minute 50 comes along and Haley Joel Osment utters the iconic line “I see dead people” and everything changes. In that moment, everything we thought we knew about the movie was turned upside down.

And as we go back through the movie in our minds or maybe watch it a few more times, we realize just how obvious it could have been had we just looked at things a little differently. The breadcrumbs were there, we just missed them. And nothing prepared us for the crazy ending M. Night Shyamalan had written into the script. It blew our minds.

This is where we find Cleopas and his friend from Emmaus as they walk back home three days after Jesus’s crucifixion. In Luke 24, we find ourselves in the middle of a tense, solemn scene. Cleopas and his buddy are engaged in a heavy conversation. They’re desperately trying to piece together, not just the events of the last few days, but the last few years. We don’t know how long these men followed Jesus up to this point, but it was long enough to have built up some expectations of how His mission was going to play out. They are disappointed and dismayed. Heartbroken and hopeless.

They weren’t the only ones coming to grips with a harsh reality that day. Even Jesus’ most devoted disciples and closest friends didn’t connect the dots between the missing stone, the empty tomb, and the folded clothes. In all their minds, the story had abruptly ended. Jesus was suddenly gone and at minute 49, Cleopas left the theater, believing he knew the ending. But he could not have been more mistaken. And on a dusty 7-mile stretch of road between Jerusalem and Emmaus, the plot twist of all plot twists was about to be revealed.

At this point in the story Jesus walks up beside them and strikes up a conversation, hiding His true identity from them. He feigns ignorance and asks them about their downcast posture. They tell Jesus all about their disappointment. When they’ve finished, Jesus’ response is surprisingly unempathetic. He chastises them by saying “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all the prophets have spoken!”

This must have been quite a shock to them. As Jesus is talking, these guys probably began to replay the events of the last few days, and maybe the last few years, in their minds. And, with the plot twist revealed, they start to realize all the signs they’d missed. The big, surprising ending had actually been telegraphed from the beginning. The breadcrumbs were there. They had just missed it. But how?

As it turns out, even though they’d likely read it many, many times and even committed portions to memory, these guys didn’t really understand the Old Testament and, as a result, they didn’t understand Jesus. So, Jesus walks them through the Old Testament – from the law to the prophets and illuminates it for them.

As Chad Bird discusses in his book Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament, first century Christians had nothing to read but the Old Testament and second temple literature (i.e. Jubilees, the Book of Jasher, 1st Enoch, etc.) to learn about Jesus. As Bird astutely points out, if you were a follower of Jesus in 40 A.D., we’re likely find you at a fellow Christian’s house in a small gathering reading the Old Testament. The point here is that during the infancy of Christianity, the Old Testament proved sufficient to teach people all they needed to know about Jesus. Bird goes on to make a strong argument (that I won’t unpack here, maybe in the future) that everything written after the Old Testament, including the New Testament, could simply be viewed as commentaries on the Old Testament. I would tend to agree with Chad on this, although I would carve out the 4 Gospels and Acts as exceptions. More on this at another time.

Simply put, many Christians today do not pay close enough attention to the Old Testament. Often even if they know it, they do not fully understand it and make no attempt to dig deeper or don’t even know how to. And if we are to take Jesus’ rebuke in Luke 24 seriously, it would behoove us to take a closer look at these texts that form the foundation of not only the Christian faith, but the entire story of humanity.

This will be the primary focus of The Unscholar. Moving forward, I will attempt to illuminate the Old Testament by providing broader cultural context, connecting dots between it and the New Testament, and untangling complicated passages that are frequently avoided due to their complexity or just plain weirdness.

Finally, I pray that as you engage with this content, you will have the same response as Cleopas and his friend when they said, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?” – Luke 24:32