Easter 3A’26
19 April 2026
Luke 24.13-35
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone <+>
You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have put off my garments of suffering and clothed me with joy. Therefore, my heart sings to you and I will give thanks to you forever! – Psalm 30.12-13 {modified}
In last week’s gospel we heard about the apostle Thomas, and how he was honest about his doubts, telling the other disciples that if he did not have a personal encounter with the risen Christ, he wasn’t going to believe. His honesty was rewarded by his receiving a personal visit with Jesus who let him touch the scars in his hands and side.
During the season of Eastertide (the time between Easter Day and the feast of Pentecost,) we hear the stories from the gospels of those early days of faith fanned into flame, by the growing community of believers that were having direct meetings/personal encounters with Jesus – He is risen – the Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! The community of resurrection is growing with the remaining 11 disciples, along with Jesus’ mother Mary, Mary of Bethany, and Mary of Magdala, are coming to know the truth that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead just as he had told them.
Today, on the third Sunday of Easter, our post resurrection story will take us on a journey sometimes referred to as “the road to Emmaus,” and it will include yet another personal encounter with the risen Christ.
Emmaus, was a town 7 miles from Jerusalem. Emmaus, which is a Greek word translated from the Hebrew and means (Arkansans are you ready for this) it means “hot springs.”1 So you might say, these two disciples one whose name was Cleopas and the other an anonymous disciple, were on the road to Hot Springs!
They were talking and discussing when suddenly they are joined on the road by a ‘stranger,’ who is Jesus, incognito (they don’t recognize him) just as Mary Magdalene didn’t recognize him at first, mistaking him to be the gardener, until he spoke her name, then she instantly knew who he was.
What is it that sometimes keeps us from seeing people, places and things for who they truly are? Why do we often miss out on God’s blessings of hope for us by being blind to what is right I front of us? Perhaps it is our own traumas, disappointments and wounds that blind us and prevent us from seeing the ties that bind and cause us, like the two disciples, without realizing it, to walk away from Jerusalem and the resurrection hope, feeling like they had wasted the last three years of their life following Jesus.
If Thomas is known for his honesty and doubt, then Cleopas and the unnamed disciple, are known for their honesty and disillusionment. You can almost hear the disappointment in their voices as they explain why they are so sad: “But we had hoped that he [Jesus] was the one to redeem Israel.” Author and Episcopal Priest, Joseph S. Pagano writes that, “True religion is not simply knowledge about God or divine things. True religion is the actual experience of the inward sweetness of God, a sense of the heart in which we know the true beauty and mercy of God.”2 The heart of the matter is truly a matter of the heart!
Without a personal encounter with Christ, religion (by itself) won’t matter much. For we don’t so much long to know more about God, as we long to have an experience of God. As Joseph Campbell put it, “they were standing on a whale fishing for minnows.” The Jesus the disciples longed for was not dead, or far off in heaven, he was walking right beside them, they hadn’t been abandoned, the darkness hadn’t won out, like they thought it had. Jesus begins to unpack the scriptures of the law, the prophets and the psalms, tying it all together as a cohesive story, and intentional plan by God to defeat death once and for all and to bring New Life for all people!
Upon arrival at Emmaus, the two disciples didn’t want this heartwarming encounter with this stranger to come to an end. What was it that so drew them in close to the timeless truths he had been telling them? There was a house where they had planned on staying the night so they invited him to stay for dinner, which Jesus accepts.
Finally, at the dinner table, Jesus begins breaking the bread and pouring the wine, and as he takes, blesses, breaks, and gives the bread to them – they suddenly see that the stranger was Jesus. In that familiar four-fold pattern of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving them the bread it all comes together for them. Jesus then vanishes from their presence. And there they are left sitting, dumbstruck and gob smacked. {He is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!}
Now these two disciples have joined the jubilant band of believers who were rejoicing at the glorious good news.
The journey back to Jerusalem was so different from the slow meandering pace they had kept while walking to Emmaus. It was celebration that was called for, it was time for community, and for the ecstatic fellowship with other believers!
Doctrines, Creeds, Laws, and books won’t keep us warm at night! It is the experience of God that enlivens, empowers, and stirs the embers of hearts grown cold. No one who has ever had an encounter with the living Christ can ever be the same. The power of the New Life took the despair of the disciples and turned it into dancing.
Christ is alive and at large in the world often in disguise, in the voices and faces of strangers, as well as our neighbors who remind us that God has been walking with us all along; showing up in the strangest places, at the strangest times, halfway through a seven mile walk, with people we might not have picked, through Word and Sacrament, in the face of a stranger and in the breaking of the bread, we see Christ.
So, what is the path to great faith, and true religion? What are the vital ingredients required for having a personal encounter with God; the answer is startling: Doubt, Disillusionment, Disappointment, and Honesty. Like Thomas, after touching Jesus’ wounds make his bold declaration of faith when he said, “My Lord, and My God!” Cleopas and the other disciple made their wholehearted declaration of faith with a question, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
O God, whose blessed Son made himself known in the breaking of the bread:
Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work.
Amen.3
1 https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Emmaus.html
2 https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/when-we-want-to-talk-easter-3-a-2011/
3 The Book of Common Prayer, Collect for the Third Sunday of Easter