There is a famine in our land. We have never been more
fed. We have never felt more hollow. The proof of the
famine is the hunger we still feel. The source of our
hunger is difficult to diagnose. After all, the shelves are
filled, the technologies are advancing, and anything you
desire can be DoorDashed.
Perhaps it is not until we have tried to ease it with
everything else that we discover, by process of
elimination, our hunger is for God. We are hungry
for a table. For the unhurried lingering, for the slow
conversation, for the simple grace of being known by
someone sitting close enough to pass the salt.
You can see the hunger in the posture of our lives. I
saw it last week in a cafeteria filled with middle school
students sitting elbow to elbow, each one inside a tiny
screen. You see it in family members ordering separate
meals to different rooms of the house. You see it in the
disappearance of the places we used to gather without
even needing a reason—places like front porches
and fellowship halls and kitchen counters where life
happened together. I fear we have mistaken the feed for
the meal. And we are starving.
A few weeks ago, I was engaging in one of my favorite
pastimes. I was eating in a restaurant alone. Solitary,
all by myself, no need to converse. But business was
slow, and the server had time to talk. It was a lovely
conversation, but when she found out I was a pastor
at Second Presbyterian Church, she stopped the
conversation, looked me directly in the eyes, and asked
a question I cannot shake.
She asked, “Can just anybody go there?”
Now listen. She was not being hostile. But she needed
to know—before she risked walking through these
doors—whether she would be welcomed in this
space. And I would suggest that question is a kind of
indictment we need to take seriously because she was
asking about this church. But she was also asking about
us, about us collectively, and she was asking about him,
about Jesus, about whether the Jesus we claim has
survived our handling of him. The idols we create in our
image will never feed the hunger in our souls. We need
Jesus. We need the Jesus of the Gospels—the one who
cannot be commandeered and refuses to be recruited.
Every generation tries to press Jesus into its service.
We drape him in our symbols, send him to fight our
battles, bend his words toward our purposes, claim his
blessing as our possession. But Jesus will not be made
an ornament for our cause. He will not be wielded as a
weapon. And in moments like ours, our refusal to bow to
images and idols matters deeply, desperately.
For when sacred language is used to bless conquest,
or divide the world into who belongs and who does
not, or to baptize domination in the name of God—we
in the church should not shrug or flinch. We must not
capitulate or acquiesce. Because at the center of the
gospel is not a banner we wave but a table to which we
are summoned.
Throughout the gospels, it is at the table where Jesus
keeps getting himself in trouble. He eats with all the
wrong people. Sinners and tax collectors. Pharisees and
outcasts. The ones nobody made room for. And when
he’s not sitting with them at the table, he’s telling these
outlandish stories about feasts where the least expected
guests are given the best seats at the table. When he’s
not telling stories, he’s gathering crowds on hillsides and
feeding them, or breaking bread with his closest friends,
or sharing a table with the one who would betray him.
His command to his disciples is to extend the table.
Yes, from the very beginning, we have wanted a Savior
with a sword. And from the very beginning, our Lord has
led us to a table.
And so, it is Easter evening. A pair of disciples are
walking together seven miles in the wrong direction.
Back in Jerusalem, that’s where the story is still
unfolding. In Jerusalem, that’s where it’s all happening.
Emmaus is where you go when you’ve already given
up. To walk away is to let disappointment and despair
choose your direction. And they are walking away. And
they are not alone.
There are many reasons people walk away. Many
reasons people walk away from community, from
church, from faith, from this story, from the hope it holds.
Maybe they have been wounded. They have asked hard
questions and been given simplistic platitudes. They
have watched the faith they loved get weaponized, or
bow to powers it was never meant to serve. They have
shown up in the middle of a crisis and nobody noticed.
They have wondered, “Can just anybody go there?”
The cost of belonging was conformity, and they would
not pay it. They could not reconcile the Jesus they
read about with the Christianity they saw. And so they
stepped away. They drifted. Or they were sent away.
Or they simply could not stay. Hope, once held in their
hearts, now feels foolish at best, a cruel trick at worst.
So they walk away.
And here is what happens on the road to Emmaus.
A stranger comes alongside them. It is a peculiar
fact in the Gospels that after his resurrection, Jesus
is unrecognizable to his closest friends. Mary in the
garden mistakes him for a gardener. Two disciples on
the road to Emmaus do not recognize this stranger in
their midst who asks a simple question. “What are you
talking about?” And they stop.
Do you know that there is grace in being asked the right
question at the right moment? Jesus walks alongside
these disciples and asks: What are you carrying, not
in your hands, but in your hearts? Why are your faces
downcast and stained with tears? How is it with your
soul? How are you? What are you talking about?
They tell him everything. The whole story. The message
and the miracles. The thrill of hope and the depth of
disappointment. The tables they have shared with
laughter and joy and friendship and the cross on
which their Lord was crucified. And when they are
finished, they speak some of the saddest words in all of
scripture. “We had hoped that he was the one, the one
to redeem us.”
We had hoped.
They wanted redemption that looked like power. They
wanted a God who would meet the world on its terms
and bend it their way. And they were not wrong that
redemption was coming. They were wrong about its
shape. And we still are. We know these stories. We read
them. We understand the heart of the Gospel. And still,
we want a God who does things our way. Still, we want a
God who acts on our timeline. Still, we want a God who
leaves our enemies in the pit, on the losing end.
From the very beginning, we have wanted a sword.
From the very beginning, he has set a table. So, my
friends at Second Church, when the name of God is
used to dominate or divide, to diminish, demean, or
dehumanize, do not call it faith. Call it blasphemy. But
remember this when you do: the temptation is not only
out there. It lives in us. In every human heart.
And still the stranger finds us on the road. Still
the stranger comes alongside us in our misplaced
expectation and our dashed hope. In our
disappointment and our defeat, he walks with us.
And so, they arrive at Emmaus. The day is nearly over.
And they do something radical, in their time no less
than in ours: they invite a stranger in. Stay. Eat with us.
Perhaps some part of them remembers the hillside, the
loaves and the fish, the day when they demanded Jesus
send the crowds away and he answered simply, “No,
You give them something to eat.”
And so they do. They set a table in Emmaus. They
prepare to be the hosts. They sit down at the table
together, and there, everything reverses. He takes the
bread. He blesses it. He breaks it. He gives it to them.
And they see him.
There is no argument. No explanation. No theological
proposition. Just bread broken at a borrowed table.
Just the Guest becoming the Host. And their eyes are
opened. Of course they are. After all, this is where he is
always most himself. Where he is always recognizable.
Where he is always most powerful. Not in displays of
brute force or domination, but at table, an ordinary table,
ordinary food, people grieving a future they thought
would take a different shape.
And the table changes what they see. And the table
changes who they are. Suddenly the stranger is a guest,
the guest is a host, and the host is a witness.
Forty years ago, a young couple walked into an
elementary school on Easter Sunday morning. They
were looking for a church and had seen a sign in a
wheat field that said a new church will be planted in this
spot. For now, worship at the elementary school.
The couple was new to the area. They had two small
daughters. They did not know a soul. They walked into
the elementary school cafeteria on Easter morning, and
a man hurried up to them. He was holding a stack of
bulletins, and they reached out to receive their bulletin.
And he asked a question. “Are you the ushers?”
Tim and Susan looked at each other. “No. We’re visitors.
First time.”
The man smiled a broad smile and handed them the
whole stack. “Well, can you be the ushers today?”
There is grace in the right question asked at the right
moment. They walked in as guests. They walked out as
hosts. And here’s the twist in the story: they never left.
They did not just find a community. They were pulled
into a people, into a story that has shaped their lives.
Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Overland Park,
Kansas, became their spiritual home—the place where
their daughters were raised, where their friendships
grew deep, where their griefs were held and their
faith took root. When their daughters were married,
the church gathered. When their grandchildren were
baptized, the church bore witness. And when the
diagnosis came, the church showed up and stayed.
In that sanctuary, in the life of that community, their
daughter heard a call to ministry. And she was ordained
on that chancel. Their daughter is my wife, Sara.
That is the power of an invitation. That is the power of
a table set by grace and a covenant kept for life. That’s
what you need. That’s what you want. That’s why you’re
here. You don’t want the conjured-up Jesus holding a
sword in his hand and vengeance on his mind. You want
the Jesus who turns the tables of injustice, who turns the
guests to hosts, who turns the world upside down.
In Emmaus, the moment the bread is broken, everything
changes. I love this detail in the text in Luke 24. They
don’t even finish the meal. The meal was never the
point. Luke says that same hour, they rise from the table,
in the dark, and walk seven miles back. I would only
quibble with one detail in Luke’s Gospel. I don’t think
they walked. I think they ran. Listen to the words on their
lips: the Lord has risen indeed. Those are not words to
be spoken at a slow pace. They sprint back to Jerusalem
to tell the truth of resurrection. The Lord has risen
indeed! And Easter comes again.
Just moments ago, children came to the baptismal font
in their parents’ arms. They are growing up in a time
when the name of Jesus is invoked to justify cruelty,
protect power, and sanctify exclusion. You know that’s
true. And yet this morning, you told them they belong
to God’s grace. You made covenant to be their family
of faith. And no pressure, but their lives will be shaped
by what you do next, whether you tell them the truth
about who Jesus is, whether you make room for the
stranger when fear tells you to lock the doors, whether
you name the idols of our age and refuse to bow down.
It occurs to me that whenever sacred words or images
are bent toward domination, the church’s answer
must not be a louder argument, but a font that claims
us, a table that welcomes us, a people who will not
sacrifice the gospel on the altar of power. Because you
cannot receive this bread and keep your appetite for
conquest. You cannot receive this welcome and refuse
it to a stranger. We must be the community of the
turned around. Back to Jerusalem. Back to the story.
Back to community.
Can just anybody go there?
Yes. Yes. So, come on in. But be warned. This table will
dismantle you. It will dismantle your arrogance. It will
dismantle your fear. And it will feed your deepest hunger.
The Guest becomes Host. The stranger is the Way. The
sword bent on conquest turns to bread for a famished
world. O God, may it be so