The Third Sunday of Easter | April 19th, 2026 | The Rev. Jim Friedrich

Then they told what had happened on the road.

“On the road” is a phrase that invokes one of the two basic motifs in both literature and life. Either you stay home, or you go out on the road. To paraphrase Hamlet, to move on or not to move on, that is the question. Either you stick around and deal with whatever’s happening in your given world of attachments, obligations, and responsibilities, or you leave it all behind, crossing the boundary and closing what is familiar into a new and unpredictable reality, the unknown territory where you will encounter rare beasts and have unique adventures.

Sometimes you’re on the road to escape, because whatever you left behind was killing you, and you just had to get out, even if you had no idea where you’d end up. Sometimes, you’re on the road because you’re on a quest, searching for something essential you’re just not going to find until you leave home and risk the way of unknowing. Stories about being on the road go way back. Think of Homer’s Odyssey or the Exodus in the Bible. Those journeys had a goal; getting back home or to the promised land, but all that was somewhere over the rainbow. Meanwhile, the journey, as most journeys prove to be, was as much or more about what happened on the road, as it is about whatever happens at the end.

Catherine of Siena  said, “All the way to heaven is heaven.” Right? It’s the journey. But the road isn’t always easy, as one songwriter said; the road it gives and the road it takes away.

In cinema, an entire genre, what we call “road movies” is devoted to the themes of “getting away” and “searching for,” but the finding usually remains in doubt in these movies, or proves unattainable. Those who are out on the road trying to get home or find a promised land rarely make it. They either stay lost or die. Right? Think of Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma and Louise.

In the early 1960; there was a tv series called Route 66, anyone remember that? It follows two young men, Buzz and Todd, as they wandered endlessly in their Corvette convertible. I always wondered where they had room to put their suitcases. Each week, they stopped somewhere along this iconic highway and something interesting would happen. When a mechanic asked them one time why they kept on traveling, Buzz said, “Todd says I got unrest. So what’s wrong with unrest? It’s as good as anything! Besides, we’re all stuck with it.” That echoes a famous line of St Augustin. ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’

Ever since Adam and Eve took that road out of Eden, not a souped-up Corvette, but as Milton put it in Paradise Lost, “with wandering steps and slow.” Ever since then, the human race has been in its own road movie. We are perpetually restless until we come home to God, or maybe until we discover that God shares the road with us every step of the way.

So. In today’s gospel, we see two men out on the road. As in most road movies, here are two buddies making their way together, trying to put Jerusalem in their rearview mirror. We know what they’re trying to get away from; the terrible events of Jesus’s crucifixion and all their broken hopes and dreams. For them, Jerusalem meant pain, it meant the shame of the cross, it meant the end of everything they hoped would happen. If this were a film noir road movie, the buddies would continue on their way, fleeing their harrowing past, hitting a series of detours and dead ends along the way, but finding neither any future nor any way back. One film critic’s description of the typical road movie sums up the futility of its endless searching. “It’s a one-way ticket to nowhere,” he writes. “Road movies have always been songs of the doomed.”

But the story Luke tells is not a song of the doomed. Something incredible and unexpected happens on the road, something which changes everything for these two travelers and makes a way where there is no way. That’s a phrase from the ancient church, talking about the Paschal mystery of dying and rising; making a way where there is no way.

Let’s look for a few minutes more closely at Luke’s story. Two disciples are on the road, trying to put something terrible behind them. What they had thought of as their life, along with all their dreams and plans and hopes, that was over now. “Some of us had thought that Jesus would be the Messiah, that he would be the one to redeem Israel and bring us to the promised land but …” That’s what they thought. But their beloved friend and teacher in whom they had placed all their hopes was dead and gone, crucified. The crucifixion was something that should only happen to bad people, criminals, the scum of society, not to people you love and respect, so it was a shameful thing. The travelers are so caught up in their grief and shame and sense of loss that they’re totally oblivious to the fact that the risen Christ is already walking beside them, already starting to make something new happen.

Grief is like that, isn’t it? You’re so enveloped by the pain, the sense of loss, you can’t see anything beyond it. So difficult to believe in a future. Your own inner light goes out; you only have the word of those who’ve been there that you will get through it. You don’t know how or when or whether you have the strength. You know, they say life only demands from you the strength you possess but in your hour of need it doesn’t feel like that, does it? But God would not let them stay there, in their own tomb of grief and despair. Yeah, suffering happens. In a world of free will and chance, suffering happens, even to God. But through the mystery of the cross God has transformed suffering into a place not just of ending but of beginning. Suffering in God’s hands becomes life-giving rather than life-threatening. Instead of thwarting God’s purposes, suffering becomes part of the repertoire of salvation. God doesn’t create suffering or want suffering or send suffering, but God changes suffering. It becomes formative, not destructive. It is no longer a detour or a dead end; it is the way. The Paschal mystery, dying and rising.

Of course the hymn says, God is always wiser than despair. “Behold,” says the holy one, “I make all things new.” Were those disciples on the road ready to hear such a gospel of new possibility? It didn’t come easily to them! They were stuck in the past. “You poor fools!” the stranger said. “Poor fools, so slow of heart to believe all those things you’ve been saying all these years in church. Time to believe them.”

Luke’s road movie is not a song of the doomed. The two friends on the road may have thought all they were doing was getting away from a ruined past, but the idea of a better future somewhere down that road was the furthest thing from their minds. The conversation consumed them, so much so that they didn’t even see Jesus next to them. They were so busy obsessing over what they had lost and how terrible things were that it took them a while to notice they were not alone and a third traveler was walking with them. How long did it take to notice him? Luke doesn’t say exactly. But we know from our experience it can take a while; take a while to step out of our grief or despair or whatever and welcome new possibility. But thanks be to God, those disciples started to get it. The more they listened, the more their hearts began to burn, burn within them. Their hearts knew before their minds ever did. So even before they fully recognized who was with them on the road, they sensed that something was happening, something so very very important that if they let it slip away from them, they’d always regret it.

So when they got to Emmaus and the stranger starts quoting to them on the road, they knew enough to call him back. “Stay with us! Please.” They still have no idea how much the stranger would come to mean to them, but something inside them wanted very much to find out. So he came inside, sat down at table with them, and he took the bread, he broke it, and gave it to them. Words we say at the altar every week. How beloved that moment of recognition, the breaking of the bread. Christ is with us; “I am with you always, whenever you do this I am there,” that’s what all that means. We say at the altar. Whenever we break bread and share the cup in Christ’s name, Christ is present and real. In our own physical and spiritual reality as a community of faith, we become the body of Christ in this time and this place. That’s a powerful truth. Everyone who partakes of the Eucharist is being given as though we’re sitting at that table in Emmaus with Jesus.

But Luke’s tale of the road to Emmaus isn’t just a story illustrating what the Eucharist is about; it’s about the road we all travel in this mortal life. Every day, every hour, step by step, Jesus draws near to us on that road and waits for us to notice. We can walk that road with our eyes closed, many do. All of us do sometimes. We can fail to see and welcome whatever the journey wants to give us. But if we let our eyes be opened ,if we pay attention to the love and wisdom of the voices along the way, if we welcome into our life the divine guest who knows us by heart and beckons us in every human face, then we will truly find our way. Amen.