Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter (April 19, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and edited for clarity.
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please be seated.
On the day of the resurrection, there are two students of Jesus who are leaving Jerusalem. And as they walk along the road, they’re talking about everything that happened. When a stranger joins them and says to them, “What are you talking about?” they fall still. The deep grief that they’re carrying on their journey is obvious on their faces.
And they say, “How can it be, stranger, that you don’t know all these things that have happened these last three days?” And so they tell him. They tell him about their teacher, Jesus—a great prophet, a healer, a man of incredible power. And yet it seems that he too was subject to the cruelty of the world. And he too, with all the power, all the miracles that he had manifested, ultimately could not escape death at the hands of the Roman Empire.
And they say to the stranger, “But we had hoped. We had hoped that he was the one who was going to deliver us.”
Someone calls these the three saddest words in all of the Bible: we had hoped. Have you ever said something like that? Think about a time where you took that verb hope and it was in the past tense. And how were you in that moment?
But I had hoped. But we had hoped. I had hoped for peace. I had hoped I was cured. I had hoped she would beat that addiction. But we had hoped.
In one of the Bibles that we read in our Bible study on Wednesday, one of the translations, speaking of the disciples when they are greatly distressed, says, “The disciples’ hearts fell to the floor.” That is what I hear in these three words: we had hoped. Those times when the bottom falls out of our lives. That’s what the disciples are walking along carrying in this beautiful story of the resurrection.
And they say, to make things worse, we who had hoped are now told that the one in whom we had hoped is no longer in the tomb. And in fact, there are women among us who say that angels told them that he is alive again. They are walking along the road trying to make some sense out of this, with their hearts on the floor and this absolutely wild testimony. For ones who had hoped that there might still be hope, they are walking along trying to make sense of it.
We too are walking along together through life, trying to make sense of the very same events, the very same testimony. Living in a world whose cruelty often has our hearts falling to the floor—a world that has us saying we had hoped, and sometimes finding that our hope is in the past tense, carried away by what time does and what people do. And at the very same time, we, like those disciples, have a testimony: the one in whom we hope is risen.
They walk along, and as they come to the end of their journey, they say to the stranger, “Won’t you come inside?” The stranger says, “I’m going to keep going.” And they say, “No, it’s evening. Stay with us.”
And here I think we see something subtly shift. Because the people who claim they had hoped are still doing the things that the teacher they mourn taught them to do—offering hospitality, still reaching out for connection. Somehow, what they experienced with this stranger on the road has started to bring their hope, their faithfulness, back to life again.
They are insistent. They say, “You have got to come in. We want to offer you our hospitality, our bread. We want you to have a safe place to spend the night.” And so the stranger comes in, and he sits at their table, and he takes bread, and he gives thanks for it, and he breaks it. And their eyes are opened. And they see him. And he vanishes from their sight.
And Luke says that very hour they hurry back to Jerusalem, back to their companions. Before they even get a chance to say this impossible thing that they have just seen, they hear, “It’s true. He is risen indeed. Simon saw him.” At the very moment they saw him, Simon was seeing him. They are all seeing him. And though he may vanish from their sight, what they’ve seen is undeniable.
Now they’re going to continue together. They, like us, are in this world that causes us a great deal of sorrow and grief and loss of hope—and yet, where hope is insistently rising again.
I read a commentary this week that says, “The resurrection doesn’t solve our problems.” The resurrection doesn’t solve our problems. That, I think, is shown very clearly in this idea that the disciples say, “We had hoped.” We had hoped this powerful man, with his teaching and his powers of healing and his miracle-working, would fix this whole thing—that he would turn us around, that he would set our people free as God had promised, that he would stop the cruelty that we inflict on one another.
We had hoped.
And yet it seems that he himself became subject to that cruelty. And risen again, appearing to share bread and then vanishing from their sight, it seems that the world is just as it was. Romans still in charge. Disciples still confused. A world still full of questions and doubt, just like ours.
So if resurrection—if it doesn’t solve all those problems, if it doesn’t fix us—then what is it? What does it do?
Resurrection shows the truth. Resurrection opens the eyes. It reveals the truth of God’s love, which is at the heart of all things—a love which is indomitable, and it seems, rarely glimpsed. And when glimpsed, vanishing almost in the very same moment from our sight. To take bread, bless it, give thanks for it, break it—and then he vanished from their sight.
But the revelation that he is risen and present has changed the world.
And we now live in a world where our practice as Christians is to pay attention—in all things, all people we meet, all places we go. To pay attention to the hidden reality that is at the heart of all things. To pay attention to the heartbeat of God’s love, which is the power flowing through and sustaining all of this.
The cruelty and the suffering make a lot more noise. They are a lot more visible. And the quiet pulse of love often vanishes from our sight. But the resurrection reveals it to us. And it is our lifelong work to be looking for it, to be paying attention.
We look for it when we seek and serve Christ in all persons. When we continue and persevere in prayer and in the breaking of the bread. We look for it when we come to this table. And we look for it everywhere in the world. And we look and listen for it beating within our own lives.
The Christian life is paying attention to the reality of God’s love at the heart of all things. The resurrection reveals it. We now attend to it.
The Easter season—fifty days long. It began two Sundays ago, and it goes all the way through Pentecost. Our opening hymn called it the Queen of Seasons, the feast of feasts—the Queen of Seasons—because we need a great deal, an expansive amount of time, to realize that our calling as Christians is that paying of attention to the truth of God’s love at the heart of all things.
So as we walk down this road these fifty days, that is what I ask you to do: to look, to listen, to feel the pulse of God’s love, and to see the face of Christ in all the places where you go.
In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.