Emmaus Roads

April 19, 2026

1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35

            Before we get to the Easter story from our Luke reading today, I want to spend some time in the theology of our passage from 1 Peter.  And I think we need to spend time here because it has been yet another week of bad theology being spewed from the mouths of self-righteous, egotistical know-nothings.  If we don’t counter the bad theology with a dose good theology… it becomes hard to know the difference… or worse yet, to believe that there is no difference.

            Our reading from 1 Peter started at verse 17, but let’s back up a few verses to give a bit more context to what is being said here.  Reading from verse 13 through 17… “Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.  Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.  Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’  If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.”

            A point I’ve been making in our Wednesday Bible study is that… as Presbyterians… our theology is centered on grace.  Not just grace, but unconditional grace.  And you pretty much have to quantify it like that… unconditional grace.  Because every Christian says they believe in grace, but that understanding of grace then sits on this sliding conditional scale.  I would argue that the more you move on that scale from unconditional towards conditional… is a movement away from God and toward the self-righteous.  Like so many things we see around us today… I think it has to do with control.  We want some sort of control.  We have always wanted to have some sort of say… to be able to put limits on God’s grace… in telling God who God is… what God can do… and yes, why God loves me more than everyone else.  But… we don’t get to set policy over grace.  Grace belongs to God alone.  God is gracious as God decides what is gracious.  In the same way God is just as God decides what is just.  It is God who does the new thing.  Our task is to perceive it.  It is our task to understand holiness as God is holy as revealed to us through Jesus Christ.  It is our task to follow the way of God… or as 1 Peter language puts it… to “live in reverent fear…”.

This sort of tension between politics and religion that is surrounding us at the moment is nothing new.  It’s neither exclusively American nor Christian.  Leaders have always tried to say how their agenda is God’s agenda… they have always sought ways to manipulate religion to legitimize their power… that God allows their unjust actions as long as it satisfies God’s just ends.  Ends that then often look just like their own.  The truth we have to remember… and follow… is that Christ never used an unjust action to satisfy God’s just ends.  If Christ is the model of our faith… anything else that is not Christlike… but deemed to be holy… needs to be questioned and ultimately rejected. 

In our tradition… that’s another role of the prophets played… to keep the egos of rulers in check through the truth of God’s ways.  It was the prophet Nathan who had to keep King David in check after that business with Bathsheba.  Ahab and Jezebel’s illegal actions were checked by Elijah.  Psalm 146 says… “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.  When their breath departs, they will return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.  The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous.  The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.”  The resurrection of Jesus… again… is not about a dead body coming back to life.  Resurrection is God’s check against the ways of this world.  All the evil that is exposed by resurrection in the actions of Holy Week.  All the conditional grace that is manipulated to justify the violence and the sin… resurrection reveals God’s new gracious thing being enacted… do you not perceive it?  This is how God redeems the whole of creation… through the new life of resurrection.       

As Presbyterians… everything we understand about God through Christ comes from unconditional grace.  The righteousness of God springs from God’s unconditional grace.  The mercy of God springs from God’s unconditional grace.  The steadfast love of God springs from God’s unconditional grace.  All those characteristics and qualities that we understand as holy through the life, ministry, and resurrection of Christ springs from God’s unconditional grace.  Our own faithful self-discipline is to spring from God’s unconditional grace.  Our own discipleship… our own actions… that’s the only place where we have some control.  What will we do with this knowledge of unconditional grace… of resurrection life?

            Prepare your minds for action.  Discipleship is action.  It is the doing.  It is the living.  It is the faith of grace becoming incarnate through our own bodies.  It does not say, “Prepare your minds for belief.”  Belief is like the Law.  It works as a guide.  It is there for discipline and direction when we need it.  But belief is not faith.  Belief can be manipulated by the world.  Belief can be infected by the lies we tell ourselves.  Following the rules of the Law is not faith.  The Law can be corrupted.  Following the rules of belief is not faith.  Belief can be corrupted.  Faith is the life-giving spirit of God in action.  Faith is the Christlike fruit that gets produced.  Faith is choosing the way of Christ when the way of the world would be more rewarding and easier.

            This is what the writer of 1 Peter is encouraging these early Christians to do.  To be of Christ... to be of that same unconditional grace… to not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.  The gospel of the self-righteous is centered on a conditional grace that springs from their ignorant desires.  Conditional grace is limited to certain believers… believers of this or that… of this way of reading scripture, of this type of baptism, of this church or that church, of this way of political and social identity.  Conditional grace is earned through the right identity shaped by right belief… with partiality through the beliefs of the self-righteous… not the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds.

            Alright… with these ideas swimming around in your mind let’s hear our Easter story from Luke’s gospel… as two disciples walk down the road to Emmaus. 

            READ

            In this story, it is the dichotomy of not-seeing and seeing that always grabs my focus.  These two disciples leaving Jerusalem… their hope once again wiped away from the ways of the world.  They had hoped Jesus would be the one who would redeem Israel.  A footnote in my NRSV study Bible has the alternate translation that they had hoped he would have been the one to set Israel free.  Freedom means different things to different people.  Had these two been there also at the entrance to Jerusalem?  Had they had their hands full of palms… waving them enthusiastically… their eyes full of the symbolism of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.  What had been their hope?  How were they thinking about freedom?  Here was their holy Barrabas come with the power of God to overthrow the Empire of Rome… to replace it with the Empire of the Son of David?  The hope of greater violence to secure the peace to be maintained with a different threat of violence?  What was the freedom they sought?  What is the full weight of the disappointment they are carrying on this day as they walk this road?

            They had come to beat the world at its own game, but they were outplayed by the chief priests and leaders who used the Romans to kill the man upon which they had placed their hope.  These two disciples are fully conformed to ignorant desires… to use the words of 1 Peter.  When the breath of the mortal Jesus left his body, all their plans perished along with him… to use the words of the Psalmist.  Some of the women had come and told them a fantastical tale that day… but the world said women were not to be trusted or believed… that women did not make for reliable witnesses.  None of their ignorant conditions being met… they left Jerusalem and stepped onto this road of disappointment.

            Jesus was the incarnation of unconditional grace… and these two disciples did not know him… could not recognize him standing there beside them.  They are the embodiment of bad theology.  They can say the name.  They can tell the story.  The words are right, but they lack understanding.  You could say… these two literally wouldn’t know Jesus if he was standing right there in front of them.    

So… Jesus starts to educate them with good theology.  He counters their ignorance.  I would like to think that he begins to strip away all the conditions they have laid upon the grace of God… all those conditions that weigh God’s grace down to make it more palatable to the ways of the world.  See the good from the bad.  Know the truth of God over the lies of the world.  Understand the fruit that each bears so you too might be holy as God is holy.  Maybe Christ even finished using words that sounded something like the words from 1 Peter… “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.”  Whatever it is that he says to them… it is the breaking of the bread that finally opens their eyes for them to perceive the unconditional grace that is Christ himself… the unconditional grace that did not take on any of the world’s conditions… did not return violence for violence… or employ the world’s means to achieve God’s ends.  The breaking of the bread is the true sign of loving one another deeply from the heart.   This is how God redeems the whole of creation… through the new life of resurrection.

I always feel that Jesus then disappears because once their sight is gained… they no longer need to look upon Jesus… they now see with the eyes of Jesus.  The blind can see.

Bad theology puts us back at the beginning of the road to Emmaus.  It keeps us from that time… that destination… when we gather at table… when the truth of Christ Jesus is revealed to us in the breaking of bread.  Bad theology tries to reveal to us every conditional Jesus except the one Jesus of unconditional grace who was crucified… dead… and buried for not fulfilling the expectations of this world.  The same unconditional Jesus that God raised on third day… the unconditional grace that cannot die… that will not die.  Amen.