The Emmaus Road courtesy of The Missional Network (April 15, 2020)

Welcome, friends, as we continue the Easter season. I have meticulously checked my sources for this week, but if I’m off again — you’ll let me know!

RCL Readings

Acts 2:14a, 36-41

The First Lesson — Peter’s Pentecost Proclamation

Summary

Picking up from Peter’s Pentecost address — which has already happened at this point in the text, but not yet in our observance of the season — this passage reaches its climax: Peter declares that God has made the crucified Jesus both Lord and Messiah. The crowd, cut to the heart, asks what they should do. Peter calls them to repent and be baptized in Jesus’ name for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, promising that the gift is for them, their children, and all who are far away. About three thousand respond and are baptized that day.

Key Ideas for Preaching 1

1. The scandal of the cross transformed: Peter boldly declares that the one whom ‘you crucified’ God has made Lord. The resurrection is not a recovery from defeat but the vindication of Jesus. Preach the audacity of Easter proclamation in the face of complicity and failure.

2. Conversion begins with being ‘cut to the heart.’ The question ‘What should we do?’ is the right response to genuine conviction. Preachers can explore what it means to be moved before being moved to act.

3. Baptism as both boundary-crossing and gift-receiving: the promise extends to those ‘far away.’ This phrase resonates with Gentile inclusion (including us!) and has ongoing implications for who belongs in the community of faith.

4. The communal shape of salvation: three thousand are added. Repentance in Acts is never merely private; it is the beginning of participation in a new community.

Significant Cautions

⚠ The phrase ‘you crucified him’ has been historically weaponized as anti-Jewish polemic. Preachers must be careful to contextualize this as Peter speaking to a Jewish crowd about a shared moment of failure — not as a timeless indictment of Jewish people. Scapegoating must be actively resisted.

⚠ Avoid presenting ‘repent and be baptized’ as a simple transactional formula. The broader narrative of Acts shows that response to the gospel is a lifelong reorientation, not a one-time transaction.

⚠ The ‘three thousand’ figure can tempt triumphalism. Balance the celebration of growth with the call to depth of discipleship that follows in Acts 2:42-47.

Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19

The Psalm — A Song of Deliverance and Vows

Summary

This psalm of thanksgiving opens with a declaration of love for God rooted in personal experience: the psalmist called out in distress and God heard. Death, Sheol, and anguish had surrounded the speaker, but God delivered. The appointed portion then jumps to verses 12-19, where the psalmist asks what can be offered in return, and answers: lifting the cup of salvation, calling on the Lord’s name, and fulfilling vows before the assembly. The Lord is praised for holding precious the death of his faithful ones.

Key Ideas for Preaching

1. The psalm models an honest spirituality that begins not in abstract doctrine but in lived distress. Preachers can invite congregations to name their own ‘cords of death’ as the starting point for genuine praise.

2. The rhetorical question — ‘What shall I return to the Lord?’ — is a profound invitation to examine gratitude. Rather than a transactional mindset, the psalmist’s answer centers on public, communal acknowledgment.

3. ‘The cup of salvation’ offers natural connections to Eucharistic theology and to the Easter season. This is a rich image to develop in preaching or liturgy.

4. Verse 15 — that the death of God’s faithful ones is ‘precious’ — is surprising and worth exploring. It resists cheap comfort and affirms that God takes suffering and mortality with the utmost seriousness.

Significant Cautions

⚠ The phrase ‘precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones’ can be misread as glorifying martyrdom or suffering for its own sake. Careful exegesis shows it means the opposite: God does not take the loss of beloved ones lightly.

⚠ The psalm’s confident, first-person voice can feel alienating to worshippers in the middle of suffering who cannot yet say ‘the Lord has dealt bountifully with me.’ Acknowledge that some are still in the distress described in verse 3.

⚠ Avoid truncating the psalm’s communal dimension. The vows are made ‘in the presence of all his people’ — the act of testimony is public, not merely private.

1 Peter 1:17-23

The Epistle — Ransomed to Love

Summary

The epistle calls its audience — communities living in exile and social marginalization — to live in reverent fear during their time of exile, grounded in the knowledge of what has ransomed them. They were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, the unblemished lamb, foreknown before the foundation of the world and revealed in the last times for their sake. This knowledge should lead to sincere, unhypocritical love for one another, because they have been born anew through the living and enduring word of God.

Key Ideas for Preaching

1. The language of exile and sojourning is powerful for contemporary congregations who feel like cultural minorities or displaced persons. ‘Exile’ is both a literal reality for some and a metaphor for the church’s relationship to the surrounding culture.

2. The contrast between ‘perishable’ and ‘imperishable’ runs through this passage and the wider letter. Preachers can explore what it means to be founded on something that neither corrodes nor fades.

3. The image of Christ as the unblemished lamb connects Passover, Isaiah 53, and Easter. This Paschal resonance is especially powerful in the Easter season.

4. The passage ends with a call to genuine (literally ‘non-hypocritical’) love. The indicative — you have been ransomed — grounds the imperative — now love one another. This is a clean example of grace preceding ethical demand.

Significant Cautions

⚠ The language of ‘reverent fear’ needs careful handling. It should not be used to cultivate anxiety or an image of God as threatening. The context makes clear it is the fear that reorients priorities, not the fear that paralyzes.

⚠ The sacrificial language of ‘precious blood’ can be heard through frameworks of penal substitution in ways that distort the text. The emphasis here is on the costliness and preciousness of redemption, not on appeasing an angry God.

⚠ The phrase ‘futile ways inherited from your ancestors’ could be used to disparage Jewish tradition or the religious heritage of non-Western communities. Preachers should contextualize this as a reference to specific pagan practices of the letter’s Gentile audience, not a broad dismissal of religious inheritance.

Luke 24:13-35

The Gospel — The Road to Emmaus

Summary

On the afternoon of the resurrection, two disciples walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, discussing the catastrophic events of the past days. A stranger joins them, and they are unable to recognize him. They explain their shattered hopes: they had trusted Jesus would redeem Israel, but he was crucified, and reports of an empty tomb have only confused them further. The stranger — Jesus — calls them foolish and slow of heart, then interprets for them all that Moses and the prophets said concerning himself. When they arrive, they urge the stranger to stay; at the table, he takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. At that moment, their eyes are opened, and he vanishes. They return to Jerusalem to report that their hearts were burning as he opened the scriptures, and that they recognized him in the breaking of the bread.

Key Ideas for Preaching

1. This story is a paradigm of Christian formation: scripture interpreted, community gathered, bread broken, and witness sent. It traces the basic shape of Sunday worship itself.

2. The disciples’ grief and confusion at the outset is a realistic portrait of faith struggling with loss. Preachers can honor the congregation’s own ‘we had hoped’ moments as legitimate stages in the life of faith, not failures.

3. Recognition in the breaking of the bread: Jesus becomes known not through argument or vision but through a domestic, eucharistic gesture. This is a rich opportunity to explore how Christ is encountered in ordinary acts.

4. The burning heart: the disciples report that something was happening in them during the Scripture interpretation, even before they recognized Jesus. Preachers can reflect on the ways God is already present and at work that remain unrealized.

5. The movement from dejection to witness is rapid. They immediately return to Jerusalem. The encounter with the risen Christ is not an end in itself but sends people back into community.

Significant Cautions

⚠ Jesus’ rebuke — ‘foolish and slow of heart’ — can be preached dismissively toward people who struggle with faith. Preach it with tenderness; these are grieving disciples, not obstinate opponents.

⚠ The eucharistic interpretation of the bread-breaking, while theologically rich, should be handled with ecumenical sensitivity. In contexts where the Lord’s Supper is not celebrated weekly, avoid implying that the only valid meeting place with Christ is formal Communion.

⚠ This text has been used in supersessionist ways, suggesting that Jewish reading of the scriptures is incomplete or ‘blind.’ Resist this. Jesus opens the scriptures from within Jewish tradition, not against it. The text is about revelatory interpretation, not invalidation.

⚠ The disappearance of Jesus can prompt speculative preaching about the nature of resurrection bodies. Stay close to Luke’s focus: the point is not how he vanished but that his presence was real and is now internalized by the disciples.

Thematic Connections

The four readings share a deep coherence. Acts and the Psalms both describe a movement from distress or confusion toward praise and testimony — paralleling the Emmaus disciples who return to Jerusalem to proclaim what they have seen. First Peter grounds ethical life in the costliness of redemption, just as the Emmaus story grounds recognition in the physical, eucharistic act of bread-breaking. All four texts resist easy triumphalism: faith is depicted as tested, hearts are slow and confused before they burn, and the call to love is placed within the context of exile and sojourning.

Preachers may choose to anchor the week’s message (“drive the train” in Delmer’s parlance) in the Emmaus narrative while drawing on Acts for the pattern of proclamation, the Psalm for the vocabulary of deliverance and gratitude, and First Peter for the ethical implications of Easter faith.

Narrative Lectionary Texts

The Reading

Acts 9:1–19a

The Primary Text — Paul’s Conversion

Summary

Saul is on his way to Damascus, armed with official letters and a mission: find followers of Jesus, arrest them, and bring them back to Jerusalem in chains. He is not a passive bystander to the persecution of the early church — he is running it. Then, on the road, a blinding light stops him cold, and a voice asks, ‘Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ Saul asks who is speaking. The answer: Jesus, the one Saul has been hunting. Saul is left blind, led by the hand into the city, and does not eat or drink for three days.

Meanwhile, God speaks to a disciple in Damascus named Ananias and tells him to find Saul and restore his sight. Ananias pushes back — he knows exactly who Saul is and what he has been doing. God tells him to go anyway: Saul has been chosen to carry the name of Jesus to nations, kings, and the people of Israel, and he will suffer for it. Ananias goes. He calls Saul ‘brother,’ lays hands on him, and Saul’s sight is restored. He gets up, is baptized, and eats. The man who came to Damascus to destroy the church is now inside it.

Key Ideas for Preaching

1. Saul is stopped in the middle of doing something he was fully convinced was right. This is worth sitting with. He was not lazy or indifferent — he was zealous, organized, and certain. The road to Damascus is a story about what happens when certainty meets the living God. Preachers can ask: What would it look like for us to be stopped on our own road?

2. The risen Jesus identifies himself with those Saul has been persecuting: ‘Why are you persecuting me?’ This is one of the most striking lines in Acts. What is done to Christ’s people is done to Christ. This has implications for how the church talks about suffering, solidarity, and who Jesus stands with.

3. Ananias is the quiet hero of this story. He receives a frightening assignment and says so honestly — then goes anyway. He is asked to trust that God is already at work in the most dangerous person he knows. This is a powerful text for preaching on obedience, fear, and what it means to be sent to someone you would rather avoid.

4. The first word Ananias speaks to Saul is ‘brother.’ Before Saul had done anything to earn it, before any proof of change, Ananias named his family. That word is doing a lot of work. Preachers might linger here when talking about welcome, reconciliation, or what it costs to extend trust.

5. Saul’s conversion involves three days of blindness — a clear echo of the three days of the tomb. He enters Damascus unable to see or eat, and comes out restored and fed. The baptismal pattern here is not subtle. This text can open up rich reflection on what dying and rising actually look like in a human life.

Significant Cautions

⚠ It is easy to preach this story as a dramatic turnaround and leave it at that — the bad guy became the good guy. But the text is more unsettling than that. God chose Saul before Saul chose God, and the community that was supposed to benefit had every reason not to trust him. Do not smooth over the strangeness of how this conversion unfolds.

⚠ Saul’s pre-conversion zeal came from deep religious conviction. Be careful not to use this text to suggest that sincere religious belief is inherently dangerous, or to paint Judaism as the villain. Saul was acting in accordance with what he understood faithfulness to require. The story is about transformation, not about condemning the tradition he came from.

⚠ This passage mentions that Saul will suffer greatly for the name of Jesus. Resist the temptation to rush past this. Suffering is named as part of Saul’s calling from the beginning, not as a surprise or setback. A sermon that only celebrates the dramatic conversion without accounting for what it cost him will miss something important.

⚠ Dramatic conversion stories can leave people in the congregation feeling like their own quieter, slower journey of faith does not measure up. It is worth explicitly noting that most people do not get knocked off a horse—and that is fine. The point of the story is not the method but the mercy.

Matthew 6:24

The Supplemental Text — Serving Two Masters

Summary

This single verse from the Sermon on the Mount states a simple but demanding truth: no one can serve two masters. You will end up devoted to one and dismissive of the other. Jesus applies this directly to the choice between God and money, but the logic extends further — the verse is about the impossibility of divided ultimate loyalty.

Key Ideas for Preaching

1. Paired with Acts 9, this verse sharpens what Saul’s conversion actually meant. He had been a man of single-minded devotion — but devoted to the wrong thing. After Damascus, that same intensity is redirected. The supplemental text invites reflection on what we are actually devoted to, and whether it is possible to hold two ultimate allegiances at once.

2. The word translated ‘devoted’ or ‘loyal’ in this verse carries the sense of deep attachment — not just preference. This is not a text about disliking something slightly. It is about what holds the center of a person’s life. That is worth naming plainly for a congregation.

Significant Cautions

⚠ Matthew 6:24 specifically names money, and preachers sometimes skip over that in favor of a more general application. Do not avoid the economic edge of the verse. Jesus said what he said. That does not mean a sermon has to be only about money, but the specific example should be acknowledged.

⚠ This verse can come across as all-or-nothing in a way that discourages honest struggle. Most people in the congregation are not certain what they serve — they are trying to figure it out. Preach the verse as an invitation to clarity, not a verdict on those who are still sorting through competing loyalties.

Thematic Connections

Both texts this week circle around the same question: what does it look like when something — or someone — has the full weight of your loyalty? Saul had given everything to a cause, only to be stopped. Ananias had every reason to protect himself, and was sent anyway. The supplemental verse from Matthew names the underlying issue plainly: you cannot split your ultimate devotion. These texts together make a strong case for examining what is actually at the center of a life, and what it looks like when that center shifts.

Preachers will likely want to build the sermon around the Acts passage, using the Matthew verse either as an opening lens or a closing challenge. The story of Ananias offers a second angle that is easy to overlook — a sermon focused entirely on his call and courage could be just as powerful as one centered on Saul’s dramatic turnaround.

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