THE ROAD TO EMMAUS
We live in an age when fairy tales are again in vogue. From Narnia to Harry Potter we are all of us children on a journey into the unknown. None of us knows when an unexpected meeting may change our lives.
The inimitable Malcolm Muggeridge
had spent most of his life running away. He had battened down his defence
hatches against any Christian commitment. For years “The Hounds of Heaven”, as
he liked to call them – those spiritual forces that direct the traffic on
life’s highways – had tried and failed to bring him to heel.
Malcolm had of course flirted with the Christian faith throughout his whole life, but his critical intellect and his gift for satire had ensured that he would elude heaven’s hounds. The satirical delights of radio and T.V. were far too tempting.
It happened as it so often does, on a journey into the unexpected. Malcolm travelled to the Holy Land in the Autumn of 1967 to spend two months filming a three part programme entitled “The Life of Christ”. It was in preparation for the third and final programme that Malcolm Muggeridge walked with a friend on the road to *Emmaus. The experience was life changing. In a sermon he preached in the High Kirk of St Giles on his return, Malcolm speaks of a ‘third presence’ which walked along with them on that road. Decades of doubt and spiritual conflict came to an end with this unexpected meeting. Malcolm shares with us his vision of the risen Christ when he writes the concluding script for this programme:
“What is not open to question is that today, two thousand years later, Christ is alive. On every walk, Christ came to tell us, whether to Emmaus or Wimbledon or Timbuktu, there is the same stranger waiting to accompany us along our way, if we want him.”
Bill Donaldson
*Luke 2413-36:” Christ appears to the disciples”