Daily Worship

Responding to the Cross: Leap

James Cathcart April 27, 2026 2 0
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Luke 24: 30-35 (NIV-UK)

30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’

33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together 34 and saying, ‘It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.’ 35 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognised by them when he broke the bread.

All month in our Daily Worship we have been reflecting on life ‘After the Cross’. We have been using the story of the two disciples walking to Emmaus in Luke 24 to explore how the cross can make us flinch, shrug, kneel, and leap.

Sometimes, like Cleopas and his friend getting out of Jerusalem, we can find ourselves literally walking away from the cross. It’s too much, too sad, too painful to contemplate.

Sometimes the cross challenges and frustrates us — again like the two disciples in Luke 24 shrugging and explaining that they had hoped for more but it was all too good to be true. Many of us shrug at the cross — considering it a fairytale, a metaphor, a bizarre historical footnote. For some the shrug is part of rejecting faith and for others willing to look long enough to scratch their heads and shrug will be what draws them deeper into it. Indeed if the cross hasn’t ever made us shrug in wonder and confusion at the limit of our understanding is it really the cross we’re looking at?

At other times the cross will bring us to our knees, like Cleopas and his friend kneeling to eat with Jesus — this enigmatic stranger they still haven’t recognised and yet have invited in. It is only when Jesus breaks the bread and gives thanks like he did at the Last Supper that they see who he really is!

And they immediately leap up!

We are told, despite the day’s walking and the late hour that they immediately head back. There’s no time to delay.

And it still happens this way.

It can come through long walks, deep conversation, Bible study, shared meals, through Communion — in some times and places the cross suddenly hits us and brings us leaping to our feet. No longer flinching, or shrugging, or kneeling — but leaping into action. 

 

Prayer:

 

Leap Layer

laying leaps

this is a leap prayer!

Lead us to leap

and leap

after you.

Amen.