Burning with Hope – Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter on Luke 24

Grace and peace to you and mercy from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We had hoped…

That’s how it starts. Not with trumpets. Not with alleluias. With the quiet words of two people walking home. They’re trying to make sense of it all.

These disciples on the Road to Emmaus had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel. They had hoped he wouldn’t have died. They had hoped that love would win—that death wouldn’t. But he did die…and now, the tomb…open? And yet Jesus was nowhere to be found. Still gone…

So they walked. Seven miles of sore feet and even sorer heartbreak. Seven miles of memories, of shattered expectations, of unanswered prayers. Seven miles of questions with no answers.

You know that voice. You’ve used that tense. We had hoped the treatment would work. We had hoped the layoffs would stop. We had hoped to hold the baby. We had hoped the country would change. We had hoped the church would grow. We had hoped it wouldn’t end like this. It’s all too common. 

And as we move along through the text, it’s important to note—Jesus doesn’t wait for them to climb out of it. He meets these unnamed disciples in the midst of their apparent hopelessness. He doesn’t wait for them to tidy up their theology or patch their hearts back together or believe hard enough. He comes alongside, steps in stride, and walks the road with them.

But they don’t see him. Their eyes are heavy with grief. Their hope’s gone dry. And yet he walks beside them—this stranger who is their Savior. He walks with them to the very edge of night. He waits to be invited. He stays. He takes bread. He blesses. He breaks. He gives. And suddenly—suddenly—they see.
Because it’s not just that he’s alive. It’s that he’s there. And he’s there at the table. At supper. With crumbs on his fingers and a loaf in his hands.

And then he opens the story—the one they thought was over. He opens it like you open a wound to clean it. Gently. Carefully. Truthfully.
We know that walk. We’ve made it ourselves.
You sit beside someone you love in the cancer clinic and smile through the fear. You watch the world twist itself tighter, with shouting and spite and no room for listening, and you wonder where all the good went. You pray for your grown child, who won’t speak to you anymore, and the silence has its own kind of weight. You walk into church and count the empty seats. You remember what it used to be like. You wonder if it’s all slipping away. You look at the news and feel numb. You’ve stood at too many graves.

And yet Jesus walks beside you. Not above you. Not beyond you. Beside you.

How? Through a voice that steadies your breath as you pray. Through a hymn you didn’t realize you needed to sing—or the joyful-yet-out-tune, enthusiastic brother in Christ belting it out three seats over. Through the quiet presence of a friend who shows up, listens, appreciates, affirms, and doesn’t try to fix whatever you’re dealing with. Through the whisper of the Spirit who won’t let go of you. Through the Word that opens like a seed cracking open in the dark. Through the memory of mercy, the pull of grace, the weight of the cross carried not just then, but now—for you.

Jesus doesn’t float above the world—he steps back into it, mouthful by mouthful. He meets these disciples in what’s plain and simple. And that’s not an accident. That’s a promise. He sits down with them. Breaks bread with them. And in the breaking, they know him, they see him. And then—he’s gone again.

Because the point wasn’t to hold on. The point was to be changed.

And while they’re still gasping with wonder, still telling their story—he shows up again. This time in a room full of frightened friends. He says, “Peace be with you.” And they don’t believe it. Who would? He was dead. This can’t be. But he shows them his hands. His feet. He tells them to touch him. And then? He asks for something to eat. Not a parable. Not a sermon. A piece of fish. And he eats it.

He doesn’t have to. He does it because that’s what the living do. They eat. He eats their food. The food they’ve touched and cooked and set on the table. The food they’ve wept over and laughed over. The food they have. Not some heavenly banquet. Broiled fish.
And that’s how he shows he’s alive. Because resurrection isn’t a show. It’s not a trick. It’s not a flash of light or a grand speech. It’s a Savior who eats. Not to prove a point. But to fulfill a promise.

And that promise still holds.

You hug your grandchild on the front steps, knowing you raised your own kids, yet here you are again, and still your laugh, your love cracks the clouds. You wipe the counter and hum the tune you haven’t heard since Easter morning. You press your hand to a shoulder in the seat ahead of you in worship during the peace and feel your eyes sting. You bring a casserole for a meal train and feel the Spirit fill you with compassion at the smile of genuine appreciation. You light a candle before worship and peace feels full. You walk the dog and remember a prayer you didn’t know you still had. You fold laundry and think of someone who needs forgiveness—and you start to let go. You take the bread and drink the wine and remember—Christ’s body broken for you, Christ’s blood shed for you. And somehow, some way—he’s there.

He opens our minds just like he broke the bread.

But that’s not where it stops. 

Then he sends them.

Not with a clean map. Not with full answers.

But with witness. With bread-memory and fish-memory and the fire of a heart that’s started to burn again.

So now: You go home and call your brother, even though it’s been years. You speak up at the church meeting—not to complain, but to hope. You drop an anonymous card with some money in someone’s mailbox you know is running short this month, with a note: “Sometimes we all need a little dough.” You tell your story at coffee hour and someone nods with unspoken understanding in their eyes. You bring food week after week to church for Our Father’s Table and pray for every family it will help, even though you don’t know them. You look at your hands, aging and worn, yet still knitting or quilting prayer shawls for someone who needs the enveloping love of God made real in another person. You come forward for communion, kneel beside the same people you’ve knelt with many times before, and take the bread like it’s the first time. You get up from your seat after worship and ask the Holy Spirit what’s next. Because resurrection doesn’t end at the table. It begins there.

The disciples don’t stay in the room. They don’t build a shrine. They go.

Because resurrection is never just for one moment or one meal or one memory. It’s a fire within us. It’s a name on the tongue. It’s Jesus, scarred and risen and real, made known in the breaking of the bread and the eating of the fish—with us and for us.

Jesus is made known in the most human things: walking, talking, eating. Resurrection meets us not in perfection, but in the ordinary. Our lives, wherever we are, good or bad, become holy because Jesus enters them, enters us, breaks bread with us, and eats fish with us on the other side.

We will not falter. We will not run. We will not hide from the road, no matter how long, how quiet, how weary it may be. For Christ walks it already. He goes ahead of us and beside us and within us. In the breaking of bread, in the baking of casseroles and the folding of laundry, in hymns and hugs and honest prayers, in rooms where grief lingers and hope flickers, in simple fish and wine and bread, Jesus is known. We have eaten at the table with our risen Lord, and now he sends us—his witnesses to these things.

Ordinary moments become extraordinary occasions. Our daily lives are transformed by this incredible, miraculous, merciful grace that we had hoped would change everything—and it did and continues to do so. And so not only had we hoped—we still do, we must, we will—we can do no other.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.