"How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:25-27)
There's a selfish part of me that wanted to write everything that I know at this point, and the amateur in me wanted to write it all in one book, on the definitive way of understanding Jesus through the Jewish Festivals and through the themes that emerge, but I felt the Lord had commissioned me to sing a new song--not a whole opera, just one song that told the story, a royal ballad. If we understand kingship as the background and framework into which all the other stories fit, then we will be a good way along the path of understanding what it was that Jesus was trying to explain to the disciples. This road to Emmaus won't tell us everything, but it will have started us off on a journey with signposts we can continue to follow all our lives.