Some things take time

The first time I walked the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain was eleven years ago. In the midst of that journey, early one day just after breakfast, I found myself walking with a woman named Lori. We were strangers, but we walked together and soon enough, I asked her the question that was asked so often on the Camino: “Why are you walking?”

She hesitated for a moment. Seeing that hesitation, and knowing that the next village was some ten kilometers away, I said to her, “You can give me the long answer if you like. We have time.”  And so, as we walked, kilometer after kilometer, for the rest of that morning, she did.

Some of the most important things in life need time and space. They can’t be rushed into snippets. One of the hardest things to do in life, at least for me, is to create the time and space for people to tell you the long version of their stories. But it’s worth doing.

Because we humans, by our very natures, want to find meaning in our lives. We need meaning in our lives. In her book, The Power of Meaning, Emily Esfahani Smith observes that there are four pillars of meaning. The first three you might have guessed, they are belonging, purpose and transcendence (which is the experience of going beyond the everyday world to partake in a bigger reality). The fourth, is story-telling. We are the authors of our own stories, and we need the opportunity to tell them so as to create and discover the meaning in our lives. To do that, we need good listeners, and we need time and space. Which is why, I think, that so many people are drawn to journeys like the Camino.

Today’s gospel is about a journey, the road to Emmaus. “Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened.” There’s something about walking together that lends itself to talking, and that’s what these two disciples were doing. We’re still in the afternoon of that first Easter day and there’s a lot for Cleopas and his companion to talk about in the wake of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Their journey takes a turn when all of a sudden Jesus himself comes near and goes with them. But there’s a problem, a recognition problem on the road to Emmaus. Jesus comes near and walks with them, but they don’t recognize him. They are, or had been, followers of Jesus, they’d walked many a road like this with him before, but they don’t recognize him this time around. Maybe he looks different. Maybe he sounds different. The text doesn’t say.

But the recognition problem could have been solved easily. All Jesus had to do was to say, “Hey, it’s me!”

Why didn’t he do that? Is he just messing with them? Wouldn’t it have been better for Cleopas and his companion to have known sooner? In fact, wouldn’t it have been even better if Jesus had appeared to them back in Jerusalem a little earlier on this Easter day, and saved them the bother of escaping the city and heading out on this dusty road to Emmaus?

Or, did Cleopas and his companion need the journey? Maybe Jesus knew that these two needed some time and space that day. After all, some things take time. Telling our stories takes time. Having conversations takes time. Building relationships. Wrestling with our doubts. Dealing with shattered hope and dreams. Finding meaning in the experiences of our lives, especially the hard ones. Growth. Transformation. All of these take time. All of these are a journey.

Jesus knows that Cleopas and his companion are on a difficult journey right now. Their eyes are kept from recognizing him. Jesus asks them what they’re talking about, and they tell him, they tell him their story, a story of meeting a young prophet named Jesus, a man who had changed their lives, who’d taught them how to live, the one in whom they’d placed their hopes and dreams. They told him of how those dreams had been shattered when their own chief priests and leaders had handed Jesus over to be crucified. “But we had hoped” they say, in one of the most poignant phrases in scripture.

Yet even as they tell their tragic story, the healing of their shattered dreams begins. Jesus picks up the story, going back to the scriptures, interpreting to them the things about himself, reframing for them the events they had just lived. And as he speaks, their hearts begin to burn within them.

When’s the last time that your heart burned within you?  What does that even mean?  It certainly means that we’re no longer just in our heads the way we often are.  We’re not talking about logical arguments here.  We’re talking about new insights that move us in some way, that arouse a passion deep within us, whether that passion is anger or joy or beauty or love, or maybe an emotion that we can’t even articulate.  To have your heart burn within you is to be moved, to feel something, it’s a new understanding, it’s the beginning of a transformation deep within your soul that will never leave you the same again.

Their hearts burned within them, something started to shift - but there was no recognition yet.  They came near the village to which they were going, and Jesus walked ahead as if he were going on.  But they urged him strongly, saying, “stay with us because the day is almost over.” 

Hospitality is such an important spiritual practice. Though they hadn’t yet recognized him, though he was still a stranger, they invited him to stay with them. It is a sign of openness, of relationship, it’s an act of compassion towards another.  The practice of hospitality readies them for the next phase of their own transformation.

Jesus goes in to stay with them, they share a meal, and at table Jesus does what he has done with them so many times before: he takes bread, blesses and breaks it, and gives it to them. It is then that their eyes are opened, and they recognize him. And Cleopas and his companion are transformed. A new chapter in their story begins. They get up, and though the day has ended and it is dark, they return to Jerusalem, retracing their steps to find the rest of the disciples and tell their story late into the night.

We need the journey. We need the opportunity to author our own stories, and not have them handed to us pre-packaged. The failure to recognize Jesus in this gospel turns out not to have been a problem, but to have been an opportunity. An opportunity for healing. An opportunity to ask questions. An opportunity to build a relationship. An opportunity for growth, change and new understandings. An opportunity to encounter Jesus, risen and alive and with us.

We have the opportunity to encounter the risen Christ in our lives in so many ways, even if our recognition of Jesus in the moment may be less than complete. We can encounter Jesus in our journeys, in our conversations and questions, in our hopes and in our despair. We may encounter Jesus when we show hospitality to a stranger, or in the intimacy of a shared meal. We may encounter Jesus in our worship and sacraments, whenever we take bread, bless, break and share it together.

It’s ok if we haven’t arrived at our destination yet, it’s ok if we’re not sure who the stranger is, it’s ok to be on the journey, opening up space for our stories, paying attention when our hearts burn within us, being attentive to the opportunity to recognize the risen Christ, risen and alive and with us, in each of our lives.

The road to Emmaus isn’t a recognition problem, it’s a recognition opportunity.

Amen.

Homily: Yr A Easter 3, April 19 2026, Trinity

Readings: Acts 2.14a, 36-41; Ps 116; 1 Peter 1.17-23; Luke 24. 13-35

Image by Matthias Ripp