Worship
Service for April 19, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Sing to the Lord a new song, a song of
hope and rejoicing!
P: Praise God for wonderful acts of mercy and
kindness!
L: God has remembered God’s faithful ones.
P: God has poured blessing upon blessing upon
us!
L: Praise the Lord, all the earth, shout your
praise!
P: Rejoice, for God is truly with us. AMEN.
Opening
Hymn – Lift High the Cross #371
Blue Hymnal
Prayer of Confession
Easter is such a wonderful season, Lord. Hope springs anew in our hearts. As the earth is being refreshed by the warmth
of spring, so we have been refreshed and made new by the resurrection of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And we want to stay
in this euphoria forever. But You have
called us to go into the valley, to those who need to hear of Your love and to feel
Your caring presence. In his words of
hope, Jesus prepared his disciples to be witnesses. We have heard these words before, but far too
often, we have turned our backs to this message. We don’t quite believe that we are capable of
actually living our whole lives in Your love.
So, we act in ways that are often neglectful and hurtful of others. We take more time pampering ourselves than we
do helping other people. It is easier to
justify our selfish desires than it is to witness to Your transforming
love. Stop us in our tracks, O Lord. Turn us around. Help us face our weakness and Your forgiving
grace. Heal us of our sins and place us
again on the paths of peace. We ask this
in Jesus’ name. (Silent
prayers are offered)
AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: God has remembered God’s steadfast love to
all people. We are healed and called to
again be God’s beloved children and witnesses.
Receive that healing love. God is
love and in God there is no darkness or fear.
P: We trust in the word of the Lord and know
that we are forgiven. Thanks be to God. AMEN!
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Gracious
God, we come before you as travelers on the road—
sometimes
hopeful, sometimes weary, sometimes certain of Your presence, and sometimes
wondering if You are anywhere near at all.
Like those disciples on the road to Emmaus, we carry with us
conversations of confusion and disappointment.
We had hoped for so many things, O God—healing that has not yet come, answers
that still elude us, and peace that feels just out of reach. And yet, You draw near to us. Even when we do not recognize You, even when
our eyes are clouded by grief or fear, You walk beside us. Holy Lord, open our eyes, we pray. Open our hearts to recognize You in the
ordinary moments—in the song of the birds in the garden, in the sharing of
stories with one another, and in the quiet companionship of those who journey
with us.
Patient God, You listen as we pour out
our hearts. You do not rush us past our
sorrow, but meet us within it. You take
what feels broken and begin, gently, to make it whole. So we bring before You now all that weighs on
us: the burdens we carry for ourselves, and the concerns we hold for others. We lift up those who are walking difficult
roads—those facing illness or uncertainty, those grieving losses both recent
and long-held, those who feel alone or forgotten. Be their companion, O Christ. Draw near to them in ways they can feel and
know. We especially pray for…
We pray for our community, that we
might be people who recognize You in one another, who offer hospitality as
freely as You do, who make room at the table for all. We pray for Your church, that our hearts
might burn within us again—not with fear or division, but with the fire of Your
love and Your truth.
And
we pray for this world, so often filled with brokenness and uncertainty. Walk alongside all who suffer from violence,
injustice, and fear. Guide leaders
toward wisdom and compassion. Help us to
be bearers of your peace in every place we go.
And
when our journey feels long, remind us that You are already walking beside us, leading
us home. And now we offer up to You are
deepest prayers in this time of silence.
We
pray all this in your holy name, Jesus Christ, our companion on the way who
taught us to pray together saying… Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy
name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give
us this day our daily bread. Forgive us
our debts as we forgive our debtors. And
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and
the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn –
O Love That Will Not Let Me Go Hymn #384/606
Scripture
Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm
34:1-10
Second Scripture Reading – Luke
24:13-35
Sermon
– The
Road to Emmaus
Based on Luke 24:13–35
There are some walks in life that
change us. Not because the road itself
is remarkable, although it can be. Not
because the scenery is necessarily breathtaking, although that can certainly
add to the transformational change. But most
pointedly because of what happens along the way—what is said, what is felt, what
is experienced, or who shows up beside us when we least expect it.
Luke tells us about one of those
walks. Two disciples, leaving Jerusalem
were headed toward a town called Emmaus which is about seven miles away. That’s approximately like walking from here
to Monongahela—just far enough for grief to settle in, for questions to think
about, just far enough for hope to feel like a memory.
These two disciples are talking as
they walk, of course they are talking. Because
when life falls apart, we have to find ways of processing it and for many of us
that is talking it out, rehearsing how the words sound and feel in our head and
heart, retelling what happened. We try
to make sense of what doesn’t make sense.
“We had hoped…” they said. That might be one of the most heartbreaking
phrases in all of Scripture. “We had
hoped he was the one…” Not we hope. Not we believe. But we had hoped. Past tense faith.
We know that language. We’ve spoken it ourselves. We had hoped the diagnosis would be
different. We had hoped this last
relationship would be the one. We had
hoped the church would grow. We had
hoped the world would be kinder by now.
We had hoped things would be different.
We had hoped that resurrection would look… clearer.
These disciples were not walking
toward Emmaus because they were excited.
They’re walking because they don’t know what else to do. Jerusalem has become a place of confusion,
fear, and disappointment. So, they
leave. And somewhere on that road, somewhere
between grief and resignation, Jesus comes near. But they don’t recognize him. Which is strange, isn’t it? Because you would think that resurrection
would be obvious. You would think that
if Jesus showed up, they would know. But
they don’t.
Maybe that’s because resurrection
doesn’t always look like what we expect.
Jesus doesn’t transfigure into a gleaming white being in blazing light
and not as a triumphant king. He comes
as a stranger, a traveler, just some random conversation partner. A stranger who accompanies us in our
melancholy discontent, our grief, our sorrows or sadness.
“What are you talking about?” he
asks them. And they stop walking. “Are you the only one who doesn’t know what’s
happened?” Which is kind of humorous if
you think about it. Them explaining the
story to him…to the one who IS the story.
But they tell it.
There was this man, Jesus of
Nazareth, a prophet, who was powerful in word and deed, who did miraculous
things, handed over be crucified. “We
had hoped…” And then they add this
strange, fragile detail: “Some of the women went to the tomb… and said it was
empty.”
In that small detail, there is a
glimmer of hope that flickers just for a moment, but it doesn’t take hold. Because sometimes even the smallest piece of
good news feels too fragile to trust.
And then Jesus speaks. He doesn’t speak to them with condemnation—but
with an invitation. He walks them
through the story, the whole story, beginning with Moses, continuing through
the prophets. In doing so, he reframes
everything. He doesn’t erase their
grief—but he places it inside a bigger picture, a larger story.
There’s a scene from the movie
“Latter Days” in which a Mormon missionary finds a woman crying on the steps
outside the hospital. He hands her his
handkerchief and asks if she’s ok. Initially
she says that she’s fine. But as they
sit together in silence, she says that she wasn’t ready for her beloved to
die. And she can’t make sense of it. The missionary asks her if she ever reads the
Sunday Comics. Taken aback by this seemingly
callous question she doesn’t respond, but the missionary continues. “When I was a child, I learned that the
colors in the Sunday comics are just made of tiny little dots. I’d hold the newspaper up to my face, as
close as I could get and I’d just see this mass of dots. I’d like to think that from God’s perspective;
life, everything is all connected and it’s beautiful and funny, and good. From this close, we can’t expect it to make
sense right now.”
Jesus explained to the travelers a
clearer image of God’s perspective, a story where suffering is not the end, where
death is not the final word. And this is
where I think this passage meets us so powerfully today. Because we are living in a time where many
people feel like those disciples walking away from Jerusalem in sadness and
disappointment, trying to make sense of things.
Faith after disappointment is not
the same as faith before it. Faith after
loss walks a little slower. It asks
deeper questions. It doesn’t accept easy
answers. But here’s the good news of
Emmaus: Jesus meets us there, on the road.
In the middle of our questions. In
the middle of our confusion. In the
middle of our “we had hoped.”
However, recognition doesn’t come
right away. They walk awhile with him. Hopefully, they listen. Maybe, there’s something stirring inside that
pulls them even if they don’t yet see. It’s
only later that they say, “Were not our hearts burning within us?” Isn’t that interesting? Awareness comes after the experience,
in hindsight. After hearing, after
listening, after understanding.
Think about the moments in your own
life when something sacred was happening, but you didn’t realize it at the
time. A conversation that stayed with
you or a quiet moment that later felt like grace, or a person who showed up
just when you needed them. It is often
only later that we think, “God was in that.”
My sister Joy died in 2021 after a rather
short battle with cancer. She and I had
talked about all the things we’d do when she and I retired. About the places we’d go, the new hobbies we
each wanted to learn and try, about the people in our lives that we’d get to
spend more time with. I had already
begun making plans for my Sabbatical and she was excited to think about possibly
joining me in some of those travels. My
sister was somewhat of a polyglot, meaning a person that can speak many
languages. She was also fascinated by
culture and history. She was a French
Major in college, but fluent in Spanish as well, and knew quite a bit of German. She had even picked up some of the Asian
languages while being an interpreter at Philadelphia’s National Park and Independence
Hall.
After she died, I went to Spain as
part of my Sabbatical and found an intense connection with her there in Cordoba
for some reason. But it wasn’t until I
got to Bayeau, France a small town in Normandy that the gravity of all she’d
gone through in her illness and the deep sense of loss I felt over her death
hit me. It was a wonderful little town with
a river that ran through it. Next to the
river was a walk that wound it’s way along the banks. I decided to spend an afternoon walking
there. Thoughts of my sister Joy flooded
through me, and that same sadness the disciples felt on the road to Emmaus came
to me, as well. “We had hoped”. We had hoped to be doing some of this trip
together. We had hoped…so many things. As her loss poured over me, I saw a willow tree
next to the river. We’d spent many hours
playing in and climbing my Aunt’s Willow Tree when we were children. Not far from the tree was a bench where I
needed to sit down. A woman pulling a
cart and her young daughter passed nearby.
The girl started picking up some of the willow branches, playing with them
and I started to cry. The woman noticed
me and began speaking to me in French.
Of course, I had no idea what she was saying, and in English simply said,
that I was sorry I couldn’t speak French, but I was okay. I continued in English saying that my sister
and I used to play under my aunt’s willow tree back home, and that she had recently
died. The woman didn’t say anything more
in French or English, but she and her daughter stayed a little while near the
river, under the willow tree. When they left
she passed by me and very briefly placed her hand on my shoulder and went on
her way.
The Emmaus story reminds us that God
is often present in ways we don’t immediately recognize. But recognition comes through hospitality, through
presence, through a brief touch of a hand on the shoulder, through a shared meal
or table, when we sit with one another and care for one another.
I think, perhaps, one of the reasons
we’re losing people to searching for God in other places is that we’re lost the
communal nature of being with one another, where the recognition of God’s presence
is strongly met. We live in a world
where people are hungry—not just for information, but for connection, for
belonging, for a place where they can sit and be known.
And maybe the most important thing
this story about Emmaus says to us is this: the story of the resurrection isn’t
only about Christ or just an event for us to remember; it’s a presence that
walks with us. Even when we don’t
recognize it, even when we feel like we’re moving in the wrong direction, even
when our faith feels like “we had hoped.”
In that Christ comes near, walks
beside us, listens to our story, reframes our understanding, and then reveals
himself in ways we often only recognize later.
So maybe this week, the invitation is simple: pay attention to the road,
pay attention to the conversations, pay attention to what feels like the Holy
Spirit at work. You just might discover that
Christ is there in the midst of it all and you are no longer walking alone.
And when you do, when your eyes are
opened, even for a moment, allow the “we had hoped” to shift inside you to a
more profound peace in knowing that hope is always pulling us forward. Carry the story, tell someone yours, because the
transformation in Christ’s resurrection is always moving, always calling, always
sending us into the world with hearts that burn, and lives that bear witness to
a presence we did not expect but now cannot deny.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Generous and gracious God, we offer these gifts
as signs of our gratitude and trust in You.
Take what we bring and use it to bring hope, healing, and new life into
the world. Multiply these offerings, and
multiply our willingness to serve, so that Your love may be made known in every
place. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Closing
Hymn – I Sing the Mighty Power of
God Hymn
#288/128
Benediction –
Go now
as people who have walked the road with Christ.
Even when you did not recognize him, he was with you. And as you go, may your hearts burn within
you, with the light of resurrection and the warmth of God’s love. Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord. AMEN
Postlude
