The four synoptic gospels all seem to assume:
1. the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth
2. Jesus to be a great teacher
3. Jesus to be a miracle worker
4. Jesus to be a sort of a prophet.

If the world had need of only these four notions I don’t think any of the 4 canonical gospels would have been written.

With the possible exception of point 3 for western secularists, most people today also would embrace these points. Muslims believe it. Hindus believe it. A great many people of harder to label religious belief believe it.

The urgent message of all four gospels is in fact that Jesus is something more than these four things. That is why they were written.

CS Lewis in Letter 23 of the Screwtape Letters makes the point that the gospels weren’t so much written to convince non-Christians of something about Jesus, but rather to strengthen Christians in their belief.

The earliest converts were converted by a single historical fact (the Resurrection) and a single theological doctrine (the Redemption) operating on a sense of sin which they already had—and sin, not against some new fancy-dress law produced as a novelty by a “great man”, but against the old, platitudinous, universal moral law which they had been taught by their nurses and mothers. The “Gospels”, come later and were written not to make Christians but to edify Christians already made.

The gospels seem to locate the central dilemma of the mission of God as the inability of the people of God to believe. This had been the central problem of God’s mission through Israel as seen in the desert and the in the promised land. This problem was seen in the rejection of Jesus by the religious authorities of the covenant people and then again it is seen in the disciples of Jesus themselves.

In Luke’s story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus the scene is played out once again. Here we have two disciples of Jesus who accept points 1-4 but stop there. They have now been faced with the account of the empty tomb and we find them bewildered and stuck.

“Stupor” seems to be the best word to describe the status quo of Jesus followers throughout the gospels. “Stupor” seems to be a pretty apt word to describe the status of the church in nearly every age. Every now and then some clarity breaks out in brilliance, usually from unlikely places and unlikely people, but “stupor” is status quo.

If we were to add another common assumption about Jesus today it would likely be “nice”, but this story destroys that assumption. Jesus’ response to these disciples is not “oh, I really appreciate the support you two have given to our little movement. I’m sure it was a terrible inconvenience to walk these seven miles to Jerusalem. Would you please take this survey to see how the Almighty could give you a better spiritual experience on your next visit to Jerusalem?”

No he says “how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared. Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

He then goes back through the Hebrew Scriptures and re-orients their assumptions.

We might imagine Cleopas and his friend to beg off but remember that this guys really are Christ followers and the way we can tell is that they persevere even through the chastisement. In fact they are turned on by what Jesus walks them through and this energizes them to greater levels of belief.

It seems that the work of the gospel here is not simply to get people to agree with points 1-4 but to get them to point 5, to the audacious, unbelievable point that this Jesus is to be worshiped, followed and obeyed in a kind of absolute manner than ancients had some experience with (they knew slavery) but we moderns have almost none.