Lectionary Readings: Third Sunday of Easter, Year A

Have you ever gone to watch a motivational speaker? Someone who has in mind to help you bring out the very best of yourself, to help you achieve more than you are now, and to bring you up to your full potential? That was really more of a thing back a few decades ago, but if you went to a seminar like this, at the end of the seminar you probably found yourself excited about life, about the possibilities of what you could accomplish, or about how your life could improve.

I went to one of these seminars over twenty years ago, and during that time several of us overcame our fears – long held irrational fears – and we began to create new visions of our future, and answer the age old mysteries. In fact, at that seminar, I understood the answer to the mysterious question: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It was a moment of grand dreams and visions of an exciting future, filled with plans that would improve my life.

But as is usually the case, this exciting moment ran headfirst into the reality of life. Which is that I lost heart fairly quickly when confronted with physical, situational, or even interpersonal roadblocks. What started out as a feeling of a grand and beautiful expansion of my world – a heart burning with possibilities – quickly turned into heartburn, as I realized some of these grand ideas would not simply materialize before me like magic, and that not everyone wanted what I wanted.

There is a difference between burning hearts like what I’ve just described – this belief of a great and wonderful world that is suited specifically to what I want and desire – and the burning of the hearts that the disciples on the road to Emmaus experienced. Sometimes we think of the future, or we experience things that make us excited, and we label them as good because it creates a hope for the future in us about the possibilities for our own lives and those we love. It expands and magnifies the world as we see it – and so it feels good.

But this is not what the disciples on the road to Emmaus experienced. We are told in the Gospel that the day Jesus rose from the dead, that two of them were walking to this village and were talking about all the things that had recently happened in Jerusalem. As they were walking Jesus himself came near and walked with them, and asked them what they were talking about on their way to the village. The disciples stopped, looking sad, and said to Jesus, “Are you the only person in the world right now who is not talking about what just happened in Jerusalem?” And Jesus pretends not to know, and asks them, “What things?” And they tell him all about Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross, and how it had all come to happen, and then they say, “We had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel.” What they are really saying is, “It’s kind of hard for a messiah to redeem Israel when he’s dead, right?”

But then Jesus says, “How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe! It was totally necessary that the Messiah had to suffer these things!” Then he begins to open up the scriptures to them, and he interprets to them everything the scriptures said about the Messiah from beginning to end. 

And as they get to the village, Jesus walks ahead as though he’s going beyond Emmaus, but the disciples say, “It is almost evening, and it will be unsafe to travel alone. Stay with us.” Because night was falling, and the prospect of thieves and other dangers on the road to Jerusalem existed, they showed their concern for his safety, and they offered him hospitality. And so Jesus stays with them, accepting their kindness.

At dinner he takes the bread, he blesses the bread, he breaks it, and he gives it to them. And at that moment, the eyes of their faith are opened, and Jesus is made known to them in the breaking of the bread. This is where the two disciples realize that this stranger on the road is Jesus, risen from the dead, the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets. And, after Jesus has disappeared from their presence, they look at each other and say “Were our hearts not burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

“Were our hearts not burning?”

How exactly is this different from the burning hearts that we experience when we envision great things for the future? When we experience a passion and burning desire for something new in our own lives?

The difference is twofold. First, we are told that the things that Jesus was opening up to them were all the law and the prophets – the scriptures as these two men knew them. Jesus was explaining to them all the things that the scriptures had to say about the Messiah, and how all that the scriptures say led up to the person of Jesus dying on the cross and rising to life three days later. Jesus was not opening up the scriptures to give them a grand vision for the future, so that they could live in the excitement of the possibilities for them and their loved ones. No. Jesus was opening up the scriptures to show them all of the things that God had done and was currently doing. Jesus opened up the eyes of their faith, so that they could behold God in all God’s redeeming work. Jesus opened the eyes of their faith so that they could see the work of God everywhere they turned. Right then, and right there. 

The difference between the burning hearts we experience after a gung ho drive for the future, and which eventually turns to heartburn – because it is based on human desires and dreams – and the burning hearts of these disciples is this: the motivational push sees the world as something that needs to be changed for the better, because we see it as somehow, something is wrong with the way things are. The second one – the burning heart that the disciples experienced – changes us. The burning heart of the disciples changes our worldview so that no matter where we look, we see the redeeming work of God already active and already on fire in the world around us. The first type of burning heart sees the world as something that needs to change so that our own lives become better, while the second, the road to Emmaus burn, shows us how God is already changing the world for the benefit of all God’s children. The first sees darkness with a hope of light out before us in an ambiguous future. And the second sees light among this present, evil age, and shows us that all is not so dark after all.

The second major difference is that the motivational drive, at best, sees people as bystanders in the story that is to be written about us. And, at worst, sees people as an obstacle to creating the vision of our future that we desire. People are either non-entities, or they are an obstacle for us in creating our own vision of the future. Somewhere in the middle thought, people may be tools – a means to an end – for what we want to accomplish, but the burning of our hearts rests firmly in the expectation that life will be better for us, and not for everyone. It is personal, and it is individual, and it is focused on what we want and desire, rather God’s plan for all humanity.

The burning hearts that the disciples experienced was an opening of their minds to see the world as already full of God’s work. And in Jerusalem at that time, God had done a great and mighty work already, and it was here and now, in the breaking of bread, in the shared meal, that the eyes of their faith were opened. It was all about the community – the relationship – between God and humanity. And also, it was about the relationship between ourselves and others.

Just like these disciples walking on the road to Emmaus, sad and dejected at the death of their teacher, we can only come to a full and true understanding of how it is to live in community – both with God, and with others – when we have experienced the gratuitousness of God’s love. We usually think of the word gratuitous as meaning unnecessary, unjustified, or perhaps even excessive – like “gratuitous violence” in a movie. Gratuitousness just means that it is completely free, and not earned by any of us. It means that we have come to the realization that we did nothing to earn the love that God has for us – and yet it is freely given to us. These disciples saw the work that God was already doing in the world around them, and when the eyes of their faith were opened to the risen Jesus, that is when they came to understand not just the present reality of God’s work in the world, but also what that meant for the future. What it meant not just for their own future, but the future of all humanity. Their belief, the eyes of their faith had been opened in the breaking of bread with Jesus, and they had learned that their very lives were a gift from God. And they learned that if their lives were a gift from God, then everything that happened in that life was that gift becoming real and tangible. And this is why their hearts burned within them.

The apostle Paul said that we are all members of the Body of Christ, and that when one of us suffers, all of us suffer. And when one of us is honored, all of us rejoice. And that level of community and cohesiveness comes from an encounter with the risen Jesus. Because our relationship with God – our ability to understand what God is already doing in the world, and our ability to understand that this life is the embodiment of God’s love for us is the key that opens the way for us to live in true communion – in harmony and peace – with everyone else in this world. 

Our hearts burn, truly burn, when they see the face of God, and rush to share this love with everyone else. The disciples had recognized the danger of continuing on at such a late hour, so they invited Jesus in for his own safety, and as a kindness. But after Jesus broke bread with them and disappeared, they themselves ran back to Jerusalem, risking the dangers of the night so that they could tell the good news to the rest of the disciples.

The only thing that can motivate this sort of selflessness, this sort of fearlessness, is Love. And the only thing that can foster and engender this kind of Love in any of us is when we have encountered the Love of God in the person of the risen Christ. 

We might have grand dreams when we’ve been motivated, and it might cause our hearts to burn with the possibilities we see for our own future. But if these visions of the future are all wrapped up in how it will benefit us or those we love, then they will always eventually turn into heartburn, because the world does not exist for us alone.It is when we face the risen Christ, like the disciples did, that we will come to understand that all life is a gift from God, and that everything that happens in this life is the manifestation of God’s love for us.

It is when the eyes of our faith are opened, and we behold God in all God’s redeeming work in everything around us, that our hearts will burn, and keep burning, because the source of that fire is infinite.

[No video of this available at the moment. Unexpected technical difficulties.]

[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on April 19, 2026.]