Teaching Text

Luke 24:13-35

“Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.

He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”

They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” “What things?” he asked. “About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”

He said to them, “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.

As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 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?”

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

Sermon Recap

This Resurrection Sunday, Pastor Jon asked a question most of us don't say out loud: what happens to hope when it dies — and what does it look like when Jesus brings it back?

He opened with the concept of “hope theory” — a framework from psychology that defines hope as three things: a vision for the future, a pathway to get there, and a sense of agency that you can actually make it happen. We all construct what researchers call “assumptive worlds,” inner pictures of how our lives will unfold. The person who moves to New York convinced that if they can just land that job, that relationship, that apartment — everything will finally click. When those worlds collapse, we collapse with them.

That's exactly where the disciples were on the road to Emmaus. They had built everything around the hope that Jesus was the Messiah who would redeem the nation of Israel. When he was crucified, that world was gone. Walking away from Jerusalem, faces downcast, saying the most honest thing in the passage: “we had hoped…” in the past tense. And this is exactly where Jesus shows up — not to people with their lives together, but to two people walking in the wrong direction. No other religion offers this: a God who walks with you when you are walking away from him.

Jesus does three things to resurrect their hope. He gives them a revelation of His heart, simply by showing up. A revelation of His word — gently reframing everything they thought they understood. The disciples had mapped a nationalistic vision onto the Messiah. Jesus expands that entirely: His suffering was not a defeat but a plan, coming as the second Adam to reclaim what the first Adam surrendered. Then He sits down and breaks bread — and it's at the table that they finally recognize Him.

Pastor Jon closed with Gerard Manley Hopkins, “the goal is not Easter in church, but Easter in us.” If your assumptive world is collapsing or not satisfying, Jesus loves finding people in that exact place. Turn around. He is already walking with you.