Walking the 2026 Emmaus Road

​

Walk beside us risen Jesus…

On the Emmaus road of life
On the journey of confusion
On the road of questions
On the way of disappointment
When we do not understand.

Walk beside us, risen Jesus
On the Emmaus road of life
In the guise of the stranger
In the unfamiliar traveller
In the unexpected guest
When we feel almost overwhelmed.

Walk beside us, risen Jesus
On the Emmaus road of life
Give us insights beyond our knowing
Give us a glimpse of your will at work
Give us strength to keep on keeping on
When our hope is almost gone.
Amen.

Lord Jesus,

Just as You walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, walk with me on my journey today.

When I am confused, open my mind to understand. When I am weary, lift my spirit with Your presence. When I am doubtful, reveal Yourself in the breaking of the bread.

 

You are the Companion who listens when no one else does, the Teacher who explains truth when my heart is clouded, and the Savior who stays when the night falls.

Help me recognize You in the ordinary moments of life— in the stranger, the Scriptures, the Sacraments.

Let my heart burn with joy as You speak, and let my eyes be opened to Your love in every step.

Stay with me, Lord, for it is nearly evening. Shine Your light on my path, and guide me safely home to You. Amen.

I have been reminded this month that I’ve been leading worship in Methodist Churches for forty years. Forty years ago you wrote out your service by hand with a bottle of tippex next to you to correct your mistakes. You also took the whole serviceyourself - from a pulpit - and no one else helped you apart from an organist. 

 

Maybe I’ve preached on this Emmaus Road post Easter story more than any other. The miracle is I find new things to say about it every year.

 

In this most wonderful of stories in Luke’s Gospel, we accompany two of Jesus’ disciples as they first walk with and then eat with the risen Jesus. It is an encounter that will change their lives forever. Their story is a wonderful example of how God reveals himself to us too.

The two disciples are walking, down-cast and sad. Maybe they just can’t cope with the grief of their other friends and just need space. Jesus, the one in whom they had placed so much hope is dead, killed at the hands of those they had thought he had come to overthrow. 

 

Maybe they “just wanted to go home.” Have you ever said that when something has gone badly wrong, a holiday where the hotel was awful, a meal out that was inedible, being stuck in a long traffic jam… “I just want to go home.” 

And so when Jesus comes alongside them they are in no place to recognise him, even though there are strange rumours circulating that his body is missing and angels have appeared to say he is alive.

Note what Jesus does first. He does not reveal himself in a blaze of glory. He does not ignore their experience or their feelings of sadness. Instead, he gets them to tell their story, and he listens. 

How could this have happened? Had he been taken? What are we to do now? Where do we go from here? The two disciples have a while—seven miles—to roll these details over, to ruminate on this loss and wonder at these strange occurrences, as they trudge on to Emmaus. “Really’s?” and “what if’s” animate their footsteps amidst exhaustion and abandonment.

“But we had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel.” It’s a statement saturated with honesty and pain—a confession of sorts. This was the One who was to restore Israel, to lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things. This was the One for whom generations had longed, hope built upon hope for centuries. And this One finally had a face. Now, even after his death, that face was gone, vanished from view. Imagine the weight of grief. Imagine the intensity of loss. Imagine all that compounded by utter confusion.

It might not be all that hard to imagine, honestly. The Emmaus road is one likely familiar to many of us, this side of heaven. It’s a well-worn path, dotted with defeat and disappointment, marked by inevitable questions, and disbelief. Life seasons and circumstances often determine how steep or winding or rocky this road is, but many of us have probably trod it, whether in the past or in the present.

The beauty we experience week in and week out in the scriptures is that the living God meets us on this road. The living God comes alongside us unexpectedly in moments of loss and difficulty. The living God walks with us in times that tempt despair and despondency, whether we realize it or not. And this is precisely what Cleopas and his friend or his wife experience on the Emmaus road, as they encounter a stranger mid-step.

There can often be the temptation when people are sad or low to try and “cheer them up” without giving them the space or time to talk first. Jesus listens. He values their experience. He gets them to reflect on what they have experienced over the last few days in Jerusalem.

It is an important starting point for all of us in pastoral work. 

Like in that well-known poem of footsteps in the sand, we can sometimes as we look back discover that those times when we felt we were walking alone, when there were only one set of footprints, not two, in the sand, were in fact those times when God was carrying us, not when he had left us. 

As he did with the two on the road to Emmaus, Christ invites us to set aside time, maybe even just five minutes a day, to reflect on our day and discern his presence. As we do so, we will come to see him and experience him more and more in our daily lives.

And often pastoral care starts with a mess and a longing for help. 

Of course, by the time they get home, about seven miles walk, a long and winding road, they don’t yet know who the stranger is who has walked with thembut they have been so captivated by him and it is getting late they plead with him to stay with them. They feed him dinner, and they recognise him in the breaking of the bread.

It’s amazing how many of these resurrection appearances revolve around food—and people gathered around food. Jesus even makes the disciples breakfast on the seashore in John’s gospel. As an old theology professor used to say to his students, “Jesus loved meals so much, he became one.” 

I want to just think about three reactions these two have after seeing it was Jesus who’d walked and now broke bread with them. 

First, they say “weren’t our hearts on fire as he talked with us on the road?”

What does it mean to have a burning heart? The Greek word Luke uses here (kaiō) means ‘to set fire to’ and is used here metaphorically of the human heart being set on fire for God. It means more than simply being ‘enlightened’. 

It means being ‘set ablaze’ with understanding of, and enthusiasm for, God and the things of God. We are reminded of John Wesley’s testimony to his conversion on the 24 May 1738: ‘In the evening I went, very unwillingly, to a society in AldersgateStreet, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.’ 

 

John Wesley is reputed to have advised his fellow Methodists to ‘Light yourself on fire with passion, and people will come from miles to watch you burn!’

A Minister was roused from his sleep one night by the police with the news that his church had caught fire. Hurrying to the scene he found the fire brigade quickly bringing the fire under control. Apparently more serious damage had been averted by the prompt and zealous action of a man who lived just across from the church. He had spotted the fire, phoned the police and fire brigade, and also managed to put out a good proportion of the fire by the time the fire brigade arrived. Visiting the man a few days later, to thank him for his invaluable help and assistance, the Minister inquired as to why he had not seen the man in church before since he lived so close. ‘Well.’ the man replied, ‘the church has never been on fire before!’

Post Easter, recognising him, are our hearts on fire? Or has our fire gone out? 

 

Then having trudged seven miles, they run seven miles back to see the others. Jesus disappears, but they don't linger in contemplation of their mystical experience. They get up. They go back to Jerusalem, right then. They find their community. Because recognition of Christ is not complete in isolation. It is completed in community.  

 

This matters for us right now. We live in a culture that tells us our value comes from what we produce, or what we own, or what we can accumulate. We're taught that might is right. That power should have its way. That security comes through acquisition, through accomplishment, through ascending.  

And Peter's letter to the early Christians speaks directly to it. You have been ransomed from the futile ways of your culture, Peter says. Not by silver or gold. Not by playing the game of power and accumulation better than anyone else. But by the death of Christ. By an encounter with a way of being human that stands in radical opposition to the world's logic. 

This is life. Not loyalty to the powers of the world, but loyalty to the Christ who walks the dusty road with us, who breaks bread with us, who gathers us into community.  Like the disciples, we need to learn that salvation doesn't come through wealth and power; it comes through the vulnerability and self-giving love. Love above all else.

We're called to be that love-shaped community, practising a way of life that stands against the logic of the world. We're called to be a community that builds the alternative together, and as we carry the things of God along the dusty roads of this world, aspiring to something greater, we'll find the risen Christ with us.

Listening. Teaching. Interpreting the scriptures, and making sense of our lives. In weeks like this one in the news, we can get bogged down and hopeless. We have lost the prophetic imagination to speak out of this mess and muddle of that hope and that promise.

We really need a language that knows where we have been and where we might get. We have to acknowledge the sheer

improbability of the idea that we might, with a little effort, be different and better than we are. Then, to hope as we must, we must accept that we need to be rescued.

And that is what the two travellers learned on the Emmaus Road.

 

And this story in 2026 for us? I wonder what I said about it in 1986? 

Well I’ll say this this year…

I think it summarises the Christian life. In fact, it summarises what we do every week and what we’re doing this Sunday.

Our calling is to proclaim the empty tomb with joy. But, like the travellers on the Emmaus road, we’ve fled with fear from the place of new life. Insteadwe’ve ploughed on in precisely the wrong direction. God, as always, takes the initiative and draws near, but we fail to recognise Jesus even when he’s staring us in the face. Jesus asks what things are burdening us and others, and hears our intercessions and prayers. The Word himself opens the words of scripture as we hear them read and preached. In sacraments like the breaking of bread, we glimpse God’s abundance and he nourishes the part of us that is for ever. We cry to the Lord when it seems darkness is closing in, and he tarries with us. Finally, our hearts burn with the fire of his Spirit, and we repent and change course.

Fear to joy; blindness to sight; unheard to understood; ignorance to enlightenment; despair to inspiration; hungry to filled with good things; disunity to community; lost to found. We need not put our hands in his wounds to believe: these things are the marks of the risen Lord, in whose company we walk, in these days of Easter, and forever.

This afternoon at Sawley using the old hymn book we will sing these words, surely our prayer for us today: 

Perchance we have not always wist

Who has been with us by the way;

Amid day’s uproar we have missed

Some word that Thou hast had to say,

In silent night, O Saviour dear,

We would not fail Thy voice to hear.

 

Day is far spent, and night is nigh;

Stay with us, Saviour, through the night;

Talk with us, touch us tenderly,

Lead us to peace, to rest, to light;

Dispel our darkness with Thy face,

Radiant with resurrection grace.

 

Alleluia.

Easter 2026

​I was at a pre Easter Day music and craft workshop yesterday at Snape chapel which I’m the minister of temporarily until September. We learnt some new Easter songs and one the music said we should do lively, and  with hope. Do you gather here lively, and with hope as we await the dawn? I did wonder what we would do as Storm Dave swirled last night as I wrote this. Did Mary go to the tomb lively and with hope? I suggest not.

According to John, Mary Magdalene, racked by grief and yet motivated by a fierce desire to be near the body of her Lord, went to the tomb. She was awake early. Only John tells us that Mary set out before dawn. Not when light was breaking or at “early dawn,” as Luke says but “while it was still dark” At night.

“Early on the first day of the week,” John says, meaning between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., “while it was still dark” It’s important to John and it should be to us. Mary’s encounter with resurrection begins “while it was still dark.”

And when she gets to the tomb the darkness doesn’t go away. It’s intensified. She’s thrown into a different kind of darkness. She sees and yet she cannot see. She sees the tomb—did she have a lamp or a torch? —and by some source of light she discovers that the stone had been removed. She runs to Peter and an unnamed disciple, “the one whom Jesus loved”  we are told, she runs to tell them. “They have taken the Lord,” meaning the Lord’s body, “out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him”

Consider this: Mary’s lost in double-grief. She lost him first on Friday, this man whom she loved and who loved her, and now she’s lost him again. “They” she says. One person cannot easily move a dead body. In the dark, confused, concerned, she assumes the worse. Wouldn’t you? Thomas Lynch reminds us—Lynch is a funeral director and author who writes beautifully, movingly, with a wry sense of humour about daily encounters with death and loss, as a Christian—he says, that as general rule, dead folks don’t do a lot for themselves. They can only have things done to them.And that’s where Mary’s thoughts go.

She didn’t go to the tomb in the dark expecting him to be gone. And she certainly didn’t expect him to be alive. Sure, Jesus talked about rising again, but Jesus said a lot of things that were confusing and not especially clear to his disciples. She wasn’t looking for resurrection. It wasn’t on her horizon of expectations. As T. S. Eliot said, there are things, “Not known because not looked for.” 

When the men get to the tomb, they’re just as perplexed and confused. No one’s sure what’s going on or what’s going to happen next. They have a look around and then they leave Mary there all alone. Crying. Weeping. Heartbroken. She finally goes into the tomb. And then I love how John phrases this: “As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb… That’s when she really sees what’s missing. “As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb…” 

She doesn’t run from her tears or fears. They guide her deeper into the darkness. She sees the place where the body once laid. She sees the graveclothes. And she gets to see something the men don’t see: two angels sitting where the body was placed, one at the head and the other at the feet.

Mary doesn’t seem too bothered by the fact that she’s seeing angels and having a conversation with them.It’s already been an odd day, so why not angels too? But now, at least, someone bothers to ask, “Woman, dear one, why are you weeping?” They have taken away my Lord…” Again, we don’t know who “they” are, but it doesn’t matter. They have taken away her love. 

And it’s at that moment, in the depths of her sorrow and grief, unable to see clearly what’s going on around her, confused by darkness and despair, that Jesus arrives. He kind of sneaks up on her. He doesn’t startle or surprise her, but quietly stands there. That’s how the Resurrected One often shows up in John’s Gospel. He sneaks in behind closed doors to disciples locked away in fear  He appears from out of nowhere and fixes breakfast for his friends on the lakeshore and they don’t recognize him at first “Not known, because not looked for.” Mary confuses him for the gardener. “Woman, dear one, why are you weeping?” He speaks to her with profound respect. He doesn’t say, “Stop crying.” He doesn’t judge her. Mary!” he said. “Mary!” And then all becomes clear. Shadows slowly begin to scatter. His voice a light that pierces the darkness and brings her back to herself. His familiar voice a light that calls her by name because he loves her, in calling out her name, he calls—not unlike Jesus calling Lazarus out from his tomb calls her to step out into his light, the light of a new day, a new life, a new joy, a new way. —that’s what resurrection means, that’s what resurrection does and continues to do! 

In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness” (Jn. 12:46). And go back to the beginning of John, in his sublime prologue, we find these words: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” For, resurrection has a way of emerging from within darkness.

While it was still dark… While it was still dark…Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.

On this Easter morning, may we, like Mary, rediscover or perhaps discover for the first time, there is a light that shines in the darkness, a light the darkness can never overcome. There is a voice that illumines our darkness and our grief. There is One who knows our name and calls us to step out, step into the light of a new day. Lively, and with hope…

Christ is risen! Risen indeed!

 

Finding life in life - a baptism reflection

​This lovely prayer was in the worship at home for our mission area this week:

 

Lord Jesus, at the tomb of Lazarus you did the unexpected, you brought him back to life.

Thank you for your promise that you are the resurrection and the life. Help us to hold on tightly to this promise, especially when things

are hard. Enable us to look around and see the signs of new life that you bring: in nature, as the flowers begin to bloom and the birds sing. In our community, in our church life, and in our families and fellowship: Lord, we rejoice at births, successes in school (no matter how

small), new jobs, healing, birthdays, weddings and engagements… Lord, forgive us that we are often so focussed on the difficulties of life

that we forget to thank you for the joys.

 

Help us this week to look for where you are at work in our lives, to close each day with gratitude for the good things you have done. Nothing is too small for us to be grateful for. Into our times of difficulty and sadness. Breathe new life and hope.

 

Today in our worship we are celebrating life. We’ve celebrated new life as we’ve baptised little Evelyn Maria. The whole of life awaits her, an adventure of endless possibilities. To begin her journey well, we’ve made promises as parents and family, as friends and as church to be there for her. We don’t know how Evelyn’s life will work out but we’ve given her a good start by dedicating her to God. Life is ahead of her. Wouldn’t you like to be a child again? Or a young person with dreams?

One of my folk was telling me about the day her son graduated from Durham University when Bill Bryson the author was chancellor. Bryson gave a speech to the young people about to go into the world after a marvellous education and he said all would be fine because they would never have to live through another American President as bad as George W Bush… um!

We all want to find life. We all want things that excite us and bring us joy. Some people find it through music – yesterday we were at the Harrogate Choral Society performance of the Creation by Haydn, a few hours later I was listening to ladies and one man at the back called Yorkshire Voices sing Don’t you want me baby by the Human League with great enthusiasm in a concert at Harrogate Road. Some people find it following a football team - I’ve a friend who is a passionate Newcastle supporter – when they win the whole city comes alive, I’ve been in the city centre on a Saturday night - it’s an experience – and then they lose 7 – 2 to Barcelona this week. Some people find it in eating with others, or laughter with friends, or a walk in the countryside or an engaging hobby or playing with grandchildren. We want to enjoy life and have many blessings. We find life together in our churches. You know I’ve nearly done all my spring church councils, four done and two to go this week and I’m greatly encouraged how much life there is about. Come to our mission area gathering here at 7 on Wednesday evening and let’s celebrate what God is up to amongst us.

But what if life stops? What then?

 By the time Jesus arrives in Bethany, Lazarus has been dead four days. In those days the belief was that the soul lingered in the body for

only three days, so by the fourth the body was definitively dead. He is met by the impetuous Martha and the weeping Mary. When Jesus saw Mary weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he himself began to weep, being "greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply

moved." This is not just about Jesus being human, it shows how God can cry with the world's crying. Here is the man of sorrows, acquainted with our pain and grief, sharing and bearing it to the point of tears, meeting us where we are. In many parts of the world, people still mourn the dead in much the same way that they did in Jesus' time.

There would be a procession, carrying the coffin down the streets to the place of burial or cremation with cries and wails. Wild, sad music, a strong process of grief, where grief is communicated one to another.

 

I don’t want on a baptism Sunday to talk too much about death but Evelyn will experience little deaths throughout her life. She needs, as we all need, a Jesus who gets the hard bits and brings life out of impossibility, as the Psalm for today says “out of the depths.” Jesus wept. If nothing else, take these two words home and sit with them in this fifth week in Lent and see what they stir in you.

I invite us to hear these words by the Methodist poet Steve Garnas-Holmes:

For Lazarus, for Mary and Martha,

for Jerusalem, for us—Jesus weeps,

and invites us into the spiritual discipline of weeping

Tears come when you have gone beyond yourself,

embodying a divine bond, severed yet still holding.

Weep; for even if you have not suffered

you have loved a suffering world.

Break the seal.

Feel the aliveness of a good cry.

For if you can weep you can hope.

If you can weep you have loved and will love again.

You flow with God, who weeps for us in grief,

and weeps with joy.

 

Standing before the tomb, Jesus calls out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” And Lazarus emerges—still wrapped in burial cloths, still bearing the marks of death. Jesus then turns to those standing nearby and says, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

The miracle is not only that Lazarus is raised. It is also that the community is drawn into the work of restoration. The bindings of death must be removed.

This story from John’s Gospel is not about one man brought back to life long ago. It reveals something essential about the character of God. It shows a God who enters places that seem beyond repair. A God who arrives not before pain, but in the midst of it. A God who does not wait for the moment to be safe, convenient, or understandable.

Jesus comes when the flame of hope has flickered and gone out, when everything seems lost and the world has fallen apart.

Jesus shows up when there are no more treatment options. When the bottom has dropped out and there is nowhere left to fall. When the end of the rope has been reached and let go. Jesus shows up when everyone else has given up. When all that can be seen and smelled is death. When all that is left is a tomb, tears, grief, anger, and disappointment. I pray Evelyn may know this every day of her life. There is life every day of life.

Her baptism is a reminder to us and a renewing. By baptism we become children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus. Hence, by baptism, all who are baptised, are called to continue the mission of Jesus of establishing true justice on earth; to become co-creators with God in building his Kingdom of compassion, justice and love; to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. And to say death is not the end.

On Wednesday, Dame Sarah Mullally will be installed as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s been on a pilgrimage this week from London where she was bishop to Canterbury. She says this as she begins a new ministry: “”As Christians we are called to liberate others – liberating people to live into the fullness of a life that can only be fully found by following Jesus” In the midst of chaos, acts of kindness and love are what matters.” We pray for her this week.

There’s a final point I will make:

The people round Lazurus tomb thought he would be a bit smelly. Jesus does not deny that death stinks. It does. It always has.

 Instead Jesus asks us to release the life, the fragrance, that is wrapped in death. “Unbind him, and let him go,” Jesus commands. To unbind another or let ourselves be unbound means we must trust the perfume of life more than the stink. They did that for Lazarus. With each strip of cloth they removed death trembled, knowing its days were numbered. The unbinding of Lazarus was a death sentence for death.

Every day we smell death and every day we have the opportunity, by the grace of God, to change and be changed, to unbind and be unbound, to let go and be let go.

On this baptism day we celebrate life, life every day to be lived, life every day that Jesus can transform, life beyond the grave, eternal life for ever. For Evelyn we pray this prayer I found last night:

Dear God,
Sometimes life is good and sometimes it’s not.
Help us to know that you are with Evelyn in all of it.
When she feels sad, comfort her;
where she is afraid, strengthen her;
When she feels she’s had enough
Give her strength to try again.
For we are on an amazing journey of faith,
and we know that you never leave us.
Bless her today 
And let your peace be known in her, in us, and in the world.
In Jesus name, we pray.