We are in the third week of our Easter message series, (Im)Possible, and the third week of the season of Easter. As a Church we continue to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection throughout April into May. Easter tends to be a cheery time of year as Winter yields to Spring and we experience the freshness of the season – the smell of cut grass, the sound of kids playing outside, the sight of flowers blossoming.

This Easter feels a bit different. We live in a very uncertain time. In the shadow of COVID 19 we do not know exactly how we are supposed to act. In that way it is very much like the experience of the first Easter season. The apostles and early followers of Jesus did not wake up on Easter morning filled with confidence and hope for the future. Instead they were filled with fear and doubt and uncertainty. Their world had been rocked with Jesus’ death on the cross. Their hopes and dreams for the future were sealed with Jesus in the tomb. So they were very unsettled and disquieted, much as we are today. They didn’t know what the future held.

But that mood changed through the course of that first Easter season. Over a period of 40 days their spirits lifted. As they discovered the empty tomb and interacted with the risen Jesus, their mood and their perspective on life changed completely. As they came to faith in the risen Jesus, they discovered a renewed sense of hope and confidence in the future. Our goal for this series is that the same might happen for you. Wherever you are on the faith journey, we want this series to either bring you to faith in the Resurrection or deepen your faith so that you have a renewed sense of hope.

Over the last two weeks we have looked primarily at faith. Today and for the balance of this series our focus will be more on hope. Hope is faith directed to the future. How we feel about the future has a great impact on the present. That’s very clear right now. Many people in our community feel stressed or disquieted not because of what has happened to them but because of a concern, a fear, a worry about what might happen. There is simply less confidence that goodness is coming to us. We have fear and concern that troubles and problems are coming and will continue to come our way.

Hope is so important to hold onto. Hope is the sunlight of the soul; without it, our inner world walks about in shadows. But like a sunrise in the heart, hope sheds light over our view of everything, casting all things in a new light. Hope is unique; hope looks forward, anticipating the good that is coming. Hope reaches into the future to take hold of something we do not yet have, may not yet even see. Strong hope seizes the future that is not yet; it is the confident expectation of goodness coming to us.

Maybe you are struggling to have any confidence in the future. Let me encourage you to instead think for a moment about goodness coming to you. What would that goodness look like? Put another way – what are you hoping for in the future? Maybe simply for your family to be ok. Well what does that look like? What are you hoping for? What should you be hoping for? It is a trickier question to answer than you might think.

To help us process it, today we are going to look at another story about an encounter between the risen Jesus and his first followers. The past two weeks we read from the Gospel of John. This week we are reading from the Gospel of Luke.

Here is what Luke tells us, “That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus and they were conversing about the things that had occurred.” (Luke 24:13-14)

So this is evening on that very first Easter Sunday. Two of Jesus disciples were leaving Jerusalem and taking a seven mile walk to a town called Emmaus. It would have been a journey that would have taken about two hours to complete on foot.

They were conversing about Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem a week earlier and then his sudden fall only a few days later as he was arrested, sentenced to death and nailed to a cross. They are walking away from the other followers of Jesus because they believe his movement is dead. There is nothing left for them there. They have to look for a positive future somewhere else. Like all of Jesus’ followers, they had followed Jesus because they believed he would make their lives better but his death meant the end of that belief. They are walking west, into the sunset, at the close of day, which adds an element of melancholy to the tale that Luke tells. It is getting darker and darker.

Luke continues, “And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.” (Luke 24:15-16)

As they are walking and talking about the events that were about Jesus, Jesus himself draws near to them, but they don’t recognize him. This reveals the darkness of their minds and how little progress they had made in trying to understand what had happened. They were talking about Jesus, but they couldn’t even recognize him when he was right next to them.

This can happen all the time. Many times we can find ourselves in this current situation with conversations that go round and round and round but don’t necessarily bring us any kind of clarity. We need some perspective and clarity that goes beyond our knowledge, wisdom and understanding. On our own we struggle or with others who don’t have any more insight than we have we get stuck in fruitless thinking.

So these two followers of Jesus are talking about Jesus and it is going nowhere. And Jesus starts walking with them but they are unable to see that it is him. Luke writes, “He asked them, ‘What are you discussing as you walk along?’ They stopped, looking downcast”. (Luke 24:17)

Ever ask a question and it just stops people in their tracks? You accidentally hit a pain point. You didn’t know it was a pain point but you ask an innocent question and clearly you hit a nerve. It stops someone completely. That’s what happens here. The disciples literally stop in their tracks. They were walking and that simple question makes them stop and the countenances on their faces change completely. They are downcast, dejected, sad and without hope.

“One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, ‘Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?’” (Luke 24:18)

One of the disciples is named Cleopas. He responds, “Where have you been? Don’t you know what just happened?” It would be like someone saying to you now… What is the Corona virus? What is Covid 19? What else would we be talking about? There really is no other news out there. Everyone is talking about this thing. The whole world is discussing it. Everyone in Jerusalem was talking about Jesus and what happened to him.

But Jesus plays dumb so that they will share what is on their heart. He gives them an opportunity to express themselves to him, and so he asks what sort of things?

“They said to him, ‘The things that happened to Jesus, the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him.’” (Luke 24:19-20)

If someone asked us what we were talking about we might answer – Covid 19 – this virus that has the whole world shut down. It shut down every major sport and gathering if people. It has people isolated in their homes and it is impacting the whole economy and our whole way of life.

Cleopas says that they were talking about Jesus of Nazareth. He describes him as mighty in both word and deed. Maybe you have never thought about Jesus in that way. Often the pictures of Jesus in religious pop culture make him look soft and weak. He is gently carrying a lamb or softly speaking with someone. Those images don’t really capture the real impact of Jesus. Crowds of people followed him because he was mighty and powerful in word and deed. When he spoke he spoke with power and authority. But he didn’t just give good speeches, he acted powerfully. Cleopas had followed Jesus because he was mighty and powerful. And then he says perhaps the saddest line in this story, “But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel.” (Luke 24:21)

We were hoping. Other translations say, we had hoped. In other words, they had stopped hoping and had lost hope. “We had hoped” are words of total dejection. Not only have things gone badly, but the months they spent with Jesus now seem a waste of time. They could have been looking for a better life somewhere else. These are the words of people whose hopes are dead and buried.

Let’s look at hope for a moment. We could say that there are three degrees of hope.

The first is casual hope. I hope it doesn’t rain tonight. I hope my grass comes in full this Spring. I hope dinner turns out right. I hope the baseball season starts soon. I hope we can still go on vacation this summer. Casual hopes are good things we desire that bring pleasure and satisfaction into our lives. When we lose out on casual hopes we suffer some disappointment. We might be in a bad mood, but we move on and get over it pretty quickly.

The second degree of hope is precious hope. These are hopes for the major areas of our lives. You hope to have a great and life-giving marriage. You hope to run or be a part of a successful business that can feed your family. You further hope to make a positive impact on the world. It is a precious hope to have a family that loves and supports one another.

Our precious hopes are far more valuable and deeper than our casual hopes. When those hopes are dashed, it can really break our heart. It takes more time to recover from major setbacks to our precious hopes or when we realize a precious hope will not be realized. But the loss of those precious hopes still does not absolutely devastate us, that’s for the even deeper degree of hope.

Then there is the third degree of hope. There is our ultimate hope. Our ultimate hope is what we rest our hearts and souls upon. There really is only one ultimate hope that you can have in and for your life. Your ultimate hope is what you ultimately believe will bring satisfaction, blessing and happiness into your life. And only God and his kingdom and the values of that kingdom are worthy of our ultimate hope.

When our hopes are in their proper places, attached to the right things, not only do we flourish more fully as human beings, but we are rescued from a thousand heartbreaks. The problem of course is that we mix up these different degrees of hope. We turn casual hopes into precious hopes and make precious hope our ultimate hope.

This is what Cleopas and the other disciple had done. They were hoping that Israel would be redeemed. Everyone knew that Israel needed to be redeemed. The nation and the people had lost their way. They were supposed to be a light to all nations, but instead were just a part of the Roman Empire. God had promised that the whole world would be blessed through the nation of Israel but instead they had become so insular and self-centered and weak they couldn’t bless anyone. So many of the Israelites hoped that God would redeem them by sending a Messiah who would overthrow the power of the Roman Empire. It was a precious hope they mistook for their ultimate hope.

“And he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in the Scriptures.” (Luke 24:25-27)

Jesus corrects them. He tells them that their hopes were out of order and misguided. What you thought had dashed your hope – the death of Jesus – was actually necessary for your hope to be fulfilled. You were hoping that Israel would be redeemed. You thought of the redemption as over throwing the Romans. Your hope was too small. You were hoping in something that was much smaller than God’s plans. In order to redeem Israel, the Messiah had to suffer and die and enter his glory. Now that the Messiah suffered, died and rose again, now that he has entered into his glory, Israel would become a light to the nations. The whole world would be blessed by Israel through the death and resurrection of the Suffering Servant.

So they had been hoping all wrong. Their hoping had to be adjusted. They needed to make God and his promises their ultimate hope – not something so much smaller.

“As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going farther. But they urged him, ‘Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.’ So he went into stay with them.” (Luke 24:28-29)

So Jesus pretends like he is going on but the two disciples ask Jesus to say with them. Remember, they still believe that they are offering hospitality to a stranger. Freed from their focus on self, the two begin to listen to the stranger, to turn outward, and then invite him to dine with them. Cleopas and his friend move from their own sadness to a willingness to care for someone else. And it prepares them to recognize God’s presence.

“And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.” (Luke 24:30-31)

In the breaking of the bread, their eyes are opened and they recognize Jesus. As he says the same words at the institution of the Eucharist, they see that this stranger is in fact Jesus. The Son of God has been traveling with them all along.

“Then they said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?’” (Luke 24:32)

When Jesus had spoken to them about the Scriptures and put the story of what God was doing in a larger context, their hearts were burning within them. Hope was being restored in them. So much so that they ran back to Jerusalem, which they had just, left to tell others what they had experienced.

So what are you hoping for? What you hoping for on the other end of this crisis? I would encourage you make a list of what you are hoping for on the other end of this crisis. List as many things as you can think of. Don’t be shy. Make it a list of a 10 or 50 or 100 things. Then give each one a degree that you think it is. Is it a casual hope, a precious hope or your ultimate hope.

Then bring it to God in prayer. God, what do you want to do with this thing I am hoping for. How does it fit into your larger story? Maybe this crisis that you think has dashed your hopes is a way in which God wants to raise up something far greater and far bigger than you can imagine.

One last thing, it is my hope that each of us take these message series and apply them to our lives. The Rebuilt Parish Association, which provides the outline for these message series, also produce video and discussion questions for small groups. Now we cannot do small groups while quarantined, unless you and friends use a video conferencing app, but both the videos and discussion questions are on our parish website, on the “Living the Message” page, under small groups. Check it out.