An Unexpected Journey | 5/3/26
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What parts of your life right now might feel like that road away from Jerusalem—places of disappointment, confusion, or uncertainty?
Can you think of a time when understanding came later, when something finally “clicked” after a long stretch of not seeing clearly?
Who has helped you see things differently—someone who offered you a new perspective or language for what you were going through?
Where do you see transformation happening in your life right now, even if it feels small or unfinished?
If your story could help someone else encounter hope or healing, what part of it would you be willing to share?
Transcript:
Have you ever missed something that was right in front of your eyes the whole time? You find your keys in the same spot that you thought you had looked at least ten times. Your TV remote is always known for falling in the crevices of the couch, and so as you are lifting up those seat cushions, you find it sitting right on the side table in plain sight.
Or my personal favorite—when you lose your kids in a crowd of people, and they’re right next to you the whole time. It’s always slightly befuddling how we can miss something so painfully obvious.
This is the experience of two disciples who were traveling their way to Emmaus. They miss some crucial information that is right before their eyes. I invite us all to listen to this passage from Luke chapter 24, to see how they respond to this missing information.
On that same day, two disciples were traveling to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking to each other about everything that had happened. While they were discussing these things, Jesus himself arrived and joined them on their journey, but they were prevented from recognizing him.
He said to them, “What are you talking about as you are walking along?” They stopped, their faces downcast. The one named Cleopas replied, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who is unaware of the things that have taken place there over the last few days?”
Jesus said to them, “What things?”
They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth. Because of his powerful deeds and words, he was recognized by God and all the people as a prophet. But our chief priests and our leaders handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel. All these things happened three days ago.
“But there’s more. Some women from our group have left us stunned. They went to the tomb early this morning and didn’t find his body. They came to us saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who told them that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women said, but they didn’t see him.”
Then Jesus said to them, “You foolish people! Your dull minds keep you from believing all that the prophets talked about. Wasn’t it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”
Then he interpreted for them the things that were written about himself in all the Scriptures, starting with Moses and going through the prophets.
When they came to Emmaus, he acted as if he was going on ahead, but they urged him, saying, “Stay with us. It’s nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.
After he took his seat at the table with them, he took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, but then he disappeared from their sight.
They said to each other, “Weren’t our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road, and when he explained the Scriptures for us?”
They got up right then and returned to Jerusalem. They found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying to each other that the Lord has really risen—he appeared to Simon! Then the two disciples described what had happened along the road and how Jesus was made known to them as he broke the bread.
Friends, this is the Word of God for us, the people of God, and we say, “thanks be to God.”
Will you pray with me?
O God of all journeys, by the power of your Spirit, open our eyes this morning that we might see Christ in our midst. Open our hearts and our minds that we might receive your Holy Word this day. It’s in Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
The silence was deafening. No words could quite express what it felt like to walk away from Jerusalem on that day—to be going back to a life that didn’t quite fit anymore. A life that Cleopas and this other disciple left in the dust the moment that Jesus said, “Follow me.” And they did. They left their family, their friends, their homes, and all the expectations that went along with that, and journeyed with Jesus.
They had been sure that Jesus was the one whom the prophets had foretold about. They were sure as he was healing the sick, as he was feeding the hungry, as they watched him speak truth to power with love and authority and humility. Cleopas and the other disciple were absolutely confident that they had found the Messiah—the one who would save them all.
Until they weren’t.
Until they watched as Jesus was arrested and hung up on that cross. They watched as Jesus was laid in the tomb. They heard when the women said that his body was gone. They’d had enough. There was absolutely nothing left for them in Jerusalem—nothing left but grief and fear and confusion.
And so they trudged back to the place from which they’d come, to face the “I told you so’s” and the “know your place” from their family and friends they had left behind. As grief and sorrow carried them away from Jerusalem, an unknown and unexpected stranger joined them on that journey.
We, the readers of Scripture, know that this stranger is Jesus. But those disciples—their eyes were kept from seeing him and from recognizing him as Jesus. Maybe their minds were clouded by the trauma and the grief that they were carrying with them on that road. To them, Jesus might have just looked like a merchant, someone traveling for work, or maybe a nomad in search of his next adventure.
But for seven miles—the distance it would take to go from here to downtown Gainesville—this unexpected teacher took them on a journey through Scripture, offering new language and a new framework to understand their lived experiences of the past few days. The stranger reinterpreted the stories they had heard all their lives, presenting a new perspective of this faith that they had now lost all hope in.
You see, this isn’t just a story about a journey to a town called Emmaus. It is a story of what it looks like to journey toward something new—to a new understanding, a new insight, renewed hope, new perspective. It is a journey of transformation.
When the disciples started this journey in Jerusalem, they were blind. But when they arrived at Emmaus, as they watched this unexpected teacher lift, bless, and break bread, their eyes were opened. They understood that Jesus was with them the entire time. They witnessed and experienced the presence of the risen Christ along that journey of transformation.
The journey that these two disciples had on the road to Emmaus is not unlike the journey that our confirmands, who are just standing before us, just completed through the confirmation process.
In September, these new confirmands came to their very first class with everything that they had experienced of faith so far. Some of them grew up going to Sunday school or even going to Stepping Stones, and some of them had no idea why they were sitting in that class in the first place.
But over the course of a whole year, these confirmands learned a framework that helped them to put language around their experiences of faith. You heard that they dove deep into Scripture. They learned about what it means to be a part of a United Methodist Church, and they were given the opportunity to ask some really good questions.
At the end of that journey, they now have the tools that will allow them to make this faith their own. They are not the same students who started that class in September. They’ve been transformed.
Transformation doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. Change doesn’t usually happen in isolation. There’s often a catalyst that supports that movement from what once was to something new. In this process of transformation—in the changing and the growing and the becoming something new—there is a mechanism through which the person making this journey experiences something holy, something life-changing, something miraculous.
This is what we believe to be the presence of the risen Christ in plain view on that journey.
And for me, the question becomes: what do we do with that? What do we do with this life-changing experience? What do we do with the transformation that we have had when our eyes have been opened to the risen Christ among us?
We share that good news, don’t we?
We share it like a group of fifteen boys who just completed a different kind of journey on our Faith Mission campus. Our campus on the east side of Gainesville has created a life-giving partnership with CDS Family and Behavioral Services. A program through that group is called SNAP—Stop Now and Plan.
This program is a place where young boys who have already had experiences with the juvenile justice system here in Alachua County come together as a cohort. Together, these boys work alongside their parents and guardians to learn tools that will help them effectively manage the big emotions that come with different aspects of life.
At the end of this program, CDS collects feedback from the participants—both the students and their parents and guardians. On this whiteboard are some of the responses that they’ve collected, but I’ll lift up a few because it’s kind of hard to see.
“I love this program. I stayed out of trouble and kept myself in better situations.”
“My mama needs SNAP.”
“He helped a friend stay out of trouble in school. He’s been teaching his friends SNAP.”
We can learn something from these boys. Because when you experience something transformational—when someone or something changes your life—that’s good news. That needs to be shared with others.
These boys were transformed through the experiences of this program, and because of the hard work that they did, because of their transformation, they are now helping others around them do the very same. Their classmates, their friends, their families are all transformed because of the witness of these boys—what they have learned and how they have grown over the course of the SNAP program.
Friends, this story doesn’t end when Jesus breaks the bread at the Emmaus dinner table, when the disciples recognize that he is the risen Christ. They don’t even finish the meal they have begun. They jump up, and they head back—the seven miles back to where all of the other disciples are gathered in that upper room—and they share the good news.
They bear witness to what they have experienced of the risen Christ in a way that makes transformation possible for all of the others.
This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus who participates in the transformation of the whole world.
Elaine Robinson, in her book God-Bearing, says it this way: “To be a follower of Christ means that we reorient or direct our lives to be agents of life and love. We become planters of seeds and sowers of healing and wholeness. We become signs of transformative justice and grace in the brokenness that surrounds us. We become the quiet strength that refuses to let God’s way be denied or diminished. We are urged by grace to be the glue binding what is broken, the balm soothing what is raw, the sunlight warming and illuminating what is cold and cloudy—just as others are these same gifts to and for us.”
Friends, transformation isn’t an isolated event. It’s not meant for just us to experience. Our transformation is meant to be shared.
Your story of how you have been transformed by Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit matters. When you share your own story through your words or your simple actions, you just might be a catalyst of change—that mechanism by which someone else can experience the risen Christ in and through your witness.
When you choose to share your own story of how Christ transformed you, it sets off a chain reaction of transformation. It inspires the people around you to experience something new as well.
So friends, maybe you have made it to Emmaus. Maybe you have been sitting at that table for quite some time. This is just the beginning of the story.
The risen Christ invites each of us to share our stories in our own way—to be a courageous witness, sharing how Christ has met us on this journey of faith. And who knows? When you share your story, it might just change the world.
Amen.
