This week’s audio is a little different.
While Samantha Johnson graciously filled in at Lincoln Park-Lynnwood, Pastor Donn was attending the Morning Cup Fall Summit, a gathering of Toastmasters. So instead of our usual Sunday sermon recording (since we don’t have a recording available from the sanctuary), we’re sharing a version of the ecumenical reflection he offered at that conference.
A gathering devoted to communication is an especially appropriate place to think about the story of the two disciples walking toward Emmaus.
They are talking, trying to make sense of everything that has happened. Jesus joins them, but they don’t recognize him. And instead of immediately explaining everything, Jesus asks a question.
Then he listens.
As Pastor Donn points out, there’s something deeply human about being heard, and something sacred about it.
Only later, after they have walked together, talked together, and finally shared a table, do the disciples recognize who has been with them all along.
That offers a different way of thinking about God’s presence. The Emmaus story doesn’t promise that people of faith will always feel God near them. These disciples are walking in the presence of Christ without knowing it. Recognition comes later.
Perhaps that happens more often than we realize: through someone who listens when we need to be heard, someone who encourages or challenges us, or an ordinary conversation whose importance becomes clear only afterward.
At the Summit, the service closed with words from the United Church of Canada: “We are not alone. We live in God’s world.”
The road to Emmaus gives those words flesh and blood. We are not alone because God is present. Christ may be walking beside us even when we don’t recognize him. And God has given us one another.
Sometimes grace has already joined us on the road before we know enough to call it grace.
We’d love to see you in person at Lincoln Park-Lynnwood United Methodist Church, 3120 Pershing Street, Knoxville, TN. Come as you are. We’re not in the judging business. We’re in the welcoming business.
