The Road We Did Not Choose

April 19, 2026 | The Third Sunday of Easter (A) Preached at Peace Lutheran Church St. Charles Luke 24:13-35

They were walking away. Not because they wanted to. Not because they had given up on everything they believed. They were walking away because sometimes the only think left to do is put one foot in front of the other and keep moving––even when you don’t know where you are going, even when the road feels more like retreat than journey.

Two disciples. Seven miles. The city of Jerusalem receding behind them. And between them, the wreckage of a weekend that had undone their entire world. We need to sit with that for a moment, because Luke doesn’t rush past it. He tell us the disciples were talking––the Greek word is homileo, it’s a rich word meaning to walk and converse together, to commune, to let words travel with your steps. It’s where we get the word homily from. These two disciples were processing out loud what they could not yet make sense of in silence. And the things they were saying to each other were heavy with grief.

“We had hoped,” Cleopas finally tells the stranger, “that he was the one who to redeem Israel.” We had hoped. Three words that carry the entire weight of human loss inside them. Not just disappointment. Not just confusion. Grief. That particular kind of grief that arrives when something you staked your life on does not turn out the way you believed it would. The kind that doesn’t announce itself cleanly but settles into your bones like an ache you cannot quite name.

We all know that kind of grief. The grief that doesn’t just come with death of a loved one, but with change. With endings. With transitions. Transitions you did not choose and were not sure you were ready for. The grief of loving something so deeply and then having to release it––or having it released from you. That is where these two disciples are. And that, honestly, is where many of us find ourselves at different chapters of our lives.

Here is what strikes me the most in this story: Jesus doesn’t wait until the grief is resolved to show up. He doesn’t stand at the end of the road with a solution. He walks into the middle of it. Just as he appeared in the middle of the room to meet Thomas where he was. Luke says he “drew near and went with them.” In the Greek, the word for how Jesus approaches is a word meaning gentle accompaniment. Jesus comes alongside, not ahead, not behind, but beside. He matches their pace. He enters their sorrow as a companion before he enters it as a teacher.

And then Jesus asks a question that must have seemed almost absurd given everything: “What are you discussing as you walk?” They stopped. They stood still. And the text says they looked sad. Of course they looked sad. Their teacher was dead. Their community was scattered. The story they thought they were living had collapsed. What else would they look like, stranger? But Jesus doesn’t flinch from the sadness (or even the sarcasm). He doesn’t offer quick comfort or tell them they shouldn’t feel what they feel. Jesus invites them to tell it. To say it out loud. To name their grief and let it be real in the presence of someone willing to hear it.

This is one of the most human moments in scripture. Here, the risen Christ––the one whom death could not hold––chooses to enter human grief before he explains it away. He sits with it. He walks with it. He is present to it. The word the disciples use when they ask him to stay––“Abide with us”––is the Greek word meno. It means to remain. To linger. To not leave. It is a word of longing, not just politeness. Stay. Don’t go yet. We’re not ready to be alone with all of this. And he stays.

The meal they share that night is spare and unplanned. A table is thrown together at the end of a long day, a stranger is invited in from the road, bread is passed between hands in the fading light. There is nothing elaborate about it. But something happens at that table. Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it and their eyes are opened. There is a word buried in the Greek here that is easy to miss: dianoigo. It means to open mind and soul fully, to throw open wide, as one throws open a window or a sealed room. What was locked is unlocked. What was dark is flooded with light. It’s a powerful expression that underscores what happens in this moment.

Cleopas and the other disciple recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Not before. Not in the long explanation on the road, as important as that was. Not in the warmth of hearing the scriptures opened to them, though their hearts burned. But here, at the table, in the ordinary act of bread broken and shared––they saw Christ. This is the ancient pattern of the church’s gathering: Word and Table. Explanation and encounter. The story told, and then the meal where the story becomes embodied, where the risen Christ is made known in the breaking of bread.

It’s no accident that the church has gathered around these two things, week after week, century after century. Because grief needs both. Grief needs someone to help us make sense of what has happened, and grief needs someone to sit with at the table and break bread in the dark. And here is the thing about that meal: he vanishes from their sight. He is there, and then he is gone. But they are not the same people who left Jerusalem. Something has shifted within them. Something has been given that cannot be taken back.

They didn’t stay at the table. They got up “that same hour” and turned around. Back to Jerusalem. Back toward the community they left. Back toward everything they were not sure they were ready to face. This is what the encounter with the risen Christ does. It doesn’t remove grief. It doesn’t erase the hard road behind them or guarantee that that the road ahead will be easy. But it transforms the direction of the journey. It sends you back! Not to the past, but into what comes next, carrying what you have been given.

There is a Latin phrase that has shaped our Christian thinking about Holy Communion: cum pane. It means “with bread.” It’s the root of the word “companion.” Companion––the one who shares bread with you. A companion is not someone who makes the journey painless. A companion is someone who walks it with you, who shares what they have, who does not let you walk alone. In other words, the ministry of mutuality.

You are not alone. Whatever road you are walking right now. Whatever grief you are carrying. Whatever transition looms ahead that you did not choose and are not sure you are ready for––you are not walking it without accompaniment. The risen Christ who walks the Emmaus road with two grieving disciples is the same one who walks with you.

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Gandalf writes a poem to Frodo:

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

Gandalf is highlighting to Frodo what hidden value is, inner strength, and resilience. It’s become an anthem for travelers. And we are all travelers on this journey of faith. And on that journey, on our individual Emmaus roads, we all will meet Christ. Beloveds, Christ draws near. He asks us to speak what we carry. He opens the Word. He breaks bread. Amen.

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