On the Road with Jesus / Luke 24:15-35 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday April 19th 2026 / Season of Easter / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / April 19th 2026, Season of Easter / Luke 24:15-35 “On the Road with Jesus”

“While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. And He said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered Him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And He said to them, “What things?” And they said to Him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered Him up to be condemned to death, and crucified Him. But we had hoped that He was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find His body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that He was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but Him they did not see.” And He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if He were going farther, but they urged Him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So He went in to stay with them. When He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him. And He vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while He opened to us the Scriptures?” And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends there is a Chinese proverb worth considering today, it goes like this, “to know the road ahead, ask those coming back.”[1] Today we will think about those two followers of Jesus on the Road to Emmaus and their experience with the risen Lord — who’d returned from the dead — and we’ll think about what our following the road of faith in the footsteps of Jesus actually looks like compared with what people often think it looks like, but first let’s remember last week’s reading from the book of Acts where we heard about how the Sanhedrin had desired to kill Saint Peter and the apostles for preaching about Jesus and teaching in His name, and they almost would have, if it hadn’t been for a very wise Jewish leader, “a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law held in honour by all the people,” You’ll remember how he said to the Sanhedrin, “in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” Thankfully they took his advice. Gamaliel also asked them to remember some of the people who had claimed to be great leaders and messiahs in their past who had amounted to nothing, “before these days Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered.”

This passage from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles comes after Jesus had revealed Himself as risen from the dead to women like Mary Magdalene and to His Eleven remaining disciples, and after His ascension, after Judas was replaced by Matthias to restore the Twelve, and after the Day of Pentecost and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the comforter: and certainly after the Road to Emmaus which happened during the afternoon on that first Easter Sunday.

As Cleopas, and the other follower of Jesus who was with Cleopas, walked down the road to Emmaus they could be counted among all of those who were in the midst of being scattered. For the two of them Jesus was just as dead as Theudas and Judas the Galilean were, who Gamaliel would later speak of. They themselves and many of Jesus’ followers were all leaving town after the Passover. That great crowed of people who’d hailed Jesus with Hosannas on Palm Sunday as He’d road into Jerusalem were now all left to their own devices, everything had fallen apart … everyone was scattering. Even the disciples were locked away in the upper room for fear of the Jews, all seemed lost. But unlike the false messiahs who had gotten everyone’s hopes up, who had made everyone excited but let them down; Jesus didn’t let His followers scatter in a listless fashion; He didn’t leave them in despair, alone to wander the road without assurance. Unlike those men from before who had made false claims and then died never to return again Jesus’ resurrection claims were true just as He promised. Even still as Jesus joined the two men on the road to Emmaus they at first did not recognize Him.   

The idea of being on a road to something is popular – it is used as a metaphor in life all the time. Sometime people say that they are on the “straight and narrow” meaning that they are actively trying to avoid temptations in life, to make amends, to do better: You’ve likely heard or said, “The path to heaven is straight and narrow but the road to hell is long and winding” This is based on a passage from Matthew chapter seven about the narrow gate.[2] The road trip or travel movie has been very popular too and usually involves some sort of quest for something important and it often focuses on friends traveling a road together. There’ll be some sage and wise character who says to the protagonist something like, “It’s a dangerous business … going out your door. You step onto the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to” This sort of story is ancient and permeates culture. And we too have our own personal stories about being on a road trip sometimes they’re tragic, sometimes funny, and sometimes only funny later. The two followers of Jesus on the Road to Emmaus maybe have the best road trip story ever.

A lot of Christians get caught up in the idea of progress on the road. They look at their lives and believe that they should be getting better, that it should be getting easier to resist sin and that by virtue of their traveling faithfully on the path down the road that they ought to – by their own efforts – be getting closer to their goal somehow. That it should be like driving somewhere on the highway; let’s say you’re bombing down the highway to Edmonton or Winnipeg: and as you drive you see a sign that says, 253 km to Edmonton or Winnipeg, and then once you have gone a bit further you see 200 km to Edmonton or Winnipeg. In the same sort of way some Christians believe that by following Jesus’ example and staying out of the ditches of sin (one to the left and one to the right), by avoiding being pulled over by the cops of the law, that in doing so they are getting themselves closer to the end goal, to their final destination. People begin to think that every good work is registered by God like having traveled an extra kilometer on the road. They get so twisted up in this thinking that they begin to believe that when they are making “progress,” the way the World measures progress, that somehow they are ‘good’ Christians and that when they aren’t making “progress,” the way the World measures progress, that somehow they are ‘bad’ Christians. Thinking of it this way will lead you to despair because you’ll never be able to get to your destination this way, not based on your own merit, not based on your own work, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”[3] Sin is like sugar in the gas tank. Progress in the World’s understanding need not be applied to our travel on the Road, on Jesus’ Way, and we will see why in a moment.

But first we should look at the nature of the road that we are on: Jesus says “I am the Way the Truth and the Life no one comes to the Father but by Me.” John the Baptiser was to prepare in the wilderness the way of the Lord; he was to “make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”[4] Satan works always to pull us off the Road, off the Highway prepared for us, but sometimes we by our own stubbornness and willfulness can get ourselves off the road without any extra help from Satan. We see this in Jeremiah when the people said, “We will follow our own plans, and everyone will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.” Our Heavenly Father replied to these people saying, “My people have forgotten Me; they make offerings to false gods; [these false gods] made them stumble in their ways, in the ancient roads, and to walk into side roads, not the highway.”[5] Dear ones remember it is always good to avoid those who say, “I think I know a short cut,” or “I think I know another way.”

In terms of progress, it doesn’t make a difference if you have one more day of travel left on the Road or if you have another hundred years. Every single day upon the Road you will fail, everyday you will end up in the ditch, you will get a flat tire, you will have engine problems, you will get into fender benders and serious accidents: Every day you will need to have your tier changed, you will need to have your engine repaired, you will need to be towed out of the ditch, you will need to have body work done, you will need the jaws of life to save you and every time it will be Jesus who saves you, it wont be you … not even for the sorts of problems the World counts as little things, like changing a flat tire. Even still we don’t stop going down the road, we trust that the Lord knows how many days we have left to go and when our time of travel will be over, we don’t personally schedule the end of our trip on the calendar circling it in red, no we leave all of that up to the Lord and His wisdom and will.

When we think of the Road to Emmaus and the two followers of Jesus who find themselves with Jesus on that road, we have to remember two important things:

1) This is a real event that happened – this isn’t a cleverly crafted story with a moral at the end; this is an account of something that happened historically to these people in time.

2) Jesus was really with them, they didn’t out of hopeful desperation mistake someone as Jesus: it was really Him.

What does this mean for us? When they sat down with this person that they thought was a stranger and who had become their fellow traveler and this man broke bread with them that was the moment that they recognised Jesus for who He truly was. Suddenly they knew Jesus was with them. Each Sunday here at Mount Olive we are provided an opportunity for a pit stop, a chance to stop along the road and break bread together with Jesus. Do you recognize Him in the meal? This is a key important part of the Christian life, Saint Paul teaches us that we are to discern the presence of Jesus in Holy Communion, we are to recognise His presence with us in the Meal, and that failure to do so is a very dangerous thing.[6] That’s why we prepare people young and old before they receive it.

This Gospel Reading from Saint Luke therefore is one of those passages of Scripture that refreshes the soul, you hear this and you know “Jesus is with me in the breaking of the bread” and amazingly I don’t need to ask Him to stay and be with me, although I’m sure He appreciates that we desire Him to stay, we don’t have to ask because Jesus has promised to be with us always … and when we die we know we will be with Him in paradise. It is a great comfort to hear Jesus says to us, “Wherever two or three are gathered there I will be with them also.” These two walked the road to Emmaus and Jesus was with them, wherever you go Jesus will be with you also. What a blessing it is to break bread together today with Christ here present with us as He promises and as He was with these disciples from our Gospel reading.

When Cleopas and his fellow believer realised that they had just communed with Jesus, they acted quickly, “they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened [with them] on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of the bread.” Dear ones as Pentecost approaches we see what the Sanhedrien couldn’t see, we see Jesus working to hold His followers together just as He holds us together even now and we know the outcome of Gamaliel’s words, words that have become prophetic, when he said, “for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!’” He was right. Praise be to Jesus — this Easter season and always — because the heavenly plan of His blessed incarnation, the plan for Jesus to come and walk the road before us perfectly without sin, because the undertaking of the cross, that painful road that lead through the valley of the shadow of death and death itself and the shedding of Jesus’ blood for our forgiveness, did not fail. This plan, this undertaking was not of man it is of God.

“To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.” The followers on the Road to Emmaus met Christ who alone has came back from the road that lead through death and the grave to eternal life and its ultimate end, and in Jesus we are not left to wander aimlessly, we need not forge or construct our own roads, we know The Way ahead and where to walk because He has gone on ahead of us and has come back to teach us The Way. While we desire to arrive at the final destination we trust that it is Jesus who both waits there for our arrival, while He is likewise with us as each day we go. Because of this the road’s length matters not and the time it takes to travel it matters not, and progress on The Road for the Christian is not measured empirically, it’s not measured by kilometers or miles and you’ll see no posted speed limit as you travel this Road: What you will find along the Road will be the call to a repentant heart, the declaration of the forgiveness of your sins, and roadside rest stops (meant for the breaking of bread), these will be the only road side signs for you, watch for them in Christ Jesus and you will arrive safe and sound. Amen.     

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.”

[1] Foresight 7. Oxford Treasury of Sayings & Quotations, 4th Ed. Oxford University Press 2011, Pg 175.
[2] Matthew 7:13-14
[3] Romans 3:23
[4] Isaiah 40:3
[5] Jeremiah 18:15
[6] 1 Corinthians 11:29

Photo Credit: Main photo of  a highway in a desert wilderness from rawpixel.