RCL Easter 3A [i]
19 April 2026
Saint Helen’s Anglican Parish
Vancouver BC
In January of 2012, I had the privilege of travelling with a group of Jewish and Christian clergy from the United States and Canada to Israel. In hindsight the trip was far too short, and we did not have as many meaningful encounters with Palestinians as we might have wished. But the trip was a rich encounter between congregational leaders who shared a common responsibility to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures that are central to both our traditions.
One of my lasting memories is that of visiting a yeshiva, a school dedicated to training religious leaders. The students sat in pairs with a Tanakh, the Hebrew texts that were the Bible for Jesus and his followers, and commentaries. Unlike my theological college classrooms, students were actively talking with one another, sometimes loudly and energetically, about a text that they were studying. The head teacher told us that the school was guided by the belief that such conversations, even debates, were valuable in mining all the meanings that were embodied in each text.
It was a wonderful reminder that what the Scriptures say may not always be what the Scriptures mean. I remember when I was growing up in Colorado Springs, a centre of conservative Christian evangelical organizations, having a classmate who always called his parents by their first names. This was something that was truly radical for me, and, when I asked him to explain, he quoted Matthew 23.9: “And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father, the one in heaven.” When I tried this on my parents, I quickly learned from my parents’ reaction that there were various ways of understanding the meaning of that text!
In today’s reading from the Gospel according to Luke, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus have their own experience of learning that what the Scriptures say may not always be what the Scriptures mean. Just like the students in the yeshiva, the two disciples are talking with one another, trying to make sense of the events of the previous week and of that Sunday in particular. They are so caught up in their conversation that they are unable to recognize Jesus when he sidles up to them on the road. After trying to explain themselves, Jesus breaks open the Scriptures to them in words that I believe Jesus speaks to every generation:
Then Jesus said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. [ii]
My friends, one of the reasons that we gather Sunday after Sunday is break open the Scriptures through our prayers, our singing, our reflections. We are seeking to find the Word, with a capital ‘W’, within the words that fill our worship. And how do we find the Word? We find the Word by asking not whether something is biblical but whether it is Christ-like. Let me give you an example.
One of the major themes in the Gospel according to Matthew is reconciliation within the Christian community. At one point in the Gospel, Jesus gives his followers this teaching:
“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.” [iii]
There are Christian communities where this text is used to justify the practice of ‘shunning’, of exiling a ‘sinner’ from the community and ceasing to have any relationship with that person. I cannot deny that it’s biblical.
But, if I ask the question, is it Christ-like, I find myself drawn to a different conclusion. When I look at how Jesus relates to tax collectors and sinners, to gentiles and women, I find that he has this tendency to sit with them and share a meal. In fact, the most frequent complaint made about Jesus is precisely his willingness to be in relationship with those whom the ‘religious’ folk will have nothing to do. So, the Word tells me that those with whom I have the greatest conflict, with whom I am in the greatest need of reconciliation, are not to be shunned but embraced. They are God’s beloved in whom the good news needs to be re-awakened, renewed, revealed.
So, my friends, welcome to the challenge of finding the Word among the words. Welcome to a community where the Spirit is constantly inviting us, enticing us, to go beneath the surface so that “may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” [iv] That’s what happened to our friends on the road to Emmaus; they left with the words and then were embraced by the Word. May it be so for us today and in the days to come.
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