Latest / St. Paul Podcast / Walking together, 4.19.2026

Transcript

Walking together, 4.19.2026 · St. Paul Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone and welcome to the St.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark Neethammer, Senior Pastor at St.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church, located in Davenport, Iowa, part of the Greater Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right here, each week, you will find beautiful music and a message of hope and good news to guide your life.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am hopeful that this podcast can inspire you and help you on your journey of faith as you grow in love and trust in our God.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad you have tuned in today.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: In just a moment, we're going to hear a story from the very end of Luke's Gospel.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's called The Road to Emmaus.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: It is a beautiful story with lots of these really interesting, intriguing details.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: There is so much to unpack here that you could probably read the story a hundred times and find some different detail to focus on each time you read it.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So for today, anyway, though, uh whether this story is very familiar to you or not, I want to invite you, as you listen, to think about these two disciples that are kind of the central part of the story.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine, if you would, how they would be feeling as the story unfolds.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: What are their emotions?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Or how would you be feeling if everything you'd planned for, hoped for was now just sort of falling apart.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So pay some special attention to what you hear from these disciples and their particular point of view.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: So here is a slightly abbreviated version of the story of the road to Emmaus from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now on that same day, two of Jesus' followers were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And while they were talking, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he said to them, What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: They stood still looking sad.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: He asked them, What things?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they replied, The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty indeed and word before God and all the people.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: How our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Moreover, some women of our group astounded us.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: As they came near the village to which they were going, Jesus walked ahead as if he were going on.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: But they urged him strongly, saying, Stay with us.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost evening, the day is now nearly over.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: So Jesus went in to stay with them.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And when he was at the table with them, he took bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then their eyes were opened.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: They recognized him and he vanished from their sight.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, now we've heard the story.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: We've heard about these two followers of Jesus and how they're processing all the events of Easter morning in the past few days.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: So now let's take a listen to this reflection about what our faith tells us when our hopes, our expectations aren't always met.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it was uh a little over a week ago, last Friday evening.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh our family, at least, was glued to the TV, along with about 27 million other people.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: We were waiting to watch the splashdown of Artemis II, the capsule returning to Earth after 10 days in space.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was a few days before that they had kind of filled the headlines.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: They officially flew farther into space than any previous human beings had done, and now it was time to watch them return home.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if any of you were as fascinated by all of this as I was, but I will admit here, I spent a couple hours on last Friday listening to a variety of experts talk about all sorts of aspects of this landing.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: There were physicists and literal rocket scientists explaining all the preparation for this mission.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: How every mathematical calculation about the timing of things and this perfect engineering of all sorts of aspects of the rocket would result in this safe and secure landing.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: They had planned and planned and planned some more, and now it was time to see if everything would come together just as it was supposed to.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: It made for some great drama, of course, and we now know that it resulted in this flawless, uh safe re-entry for those four astronauts.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually the following day I was watching some clip of a press conference where one of the NASA officials were uh was sharing about kind of the emotions of that landing, the pressure of having all these millions of people watching, and he said something along the lines of we knew we were prepared, we had planned for everything, we believed everything was going to go smoothly, but how it all unfolded, it was even more than we could have hoped for.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was that phrase that what we could have hoped for that sort of caught my attention a little bit because it seemed exceptionally true.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: There has been no shortage of terrible things in the news recently.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's no shortage of struggle or stress in our own lives and everyone else's.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it felt to me like part of what captured America's attention last week was simply the prospect of good news.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: That everything would come together just as it should, a perfect landing, joy on people's faces, that it would be exactly as we had hoped.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Especially because it seems like more often than not, it's just not the case.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: No matter how much planning is involved, our hopes don't always meet with reality.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually that exact phrase that also shows up in this gospel reading that I just read for you a moment ago, where two of Jesus' followers have left the city of Jerusalem and they're walking along this road that leads to a village called Emmaus.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And as they're walking, they encounter this Jesus who is somehow completely unrecognizable to them.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: So they start telling this total stranger everything that has happened.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: They say to this man, don't you know what's taken place the last few days?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: How can you be so clueless?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they go on to talk about all that Jesus had done, who he was, this prophet who was supposed to be the Messiah, their savior, the one they had dropped everything to follow.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: But instead he was mocked and beaten and killed, and now he was dead.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then these two disciples say this painfully honest line.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: But we had hoped that and forwards, they summed up what everyone had been thinking and feeling, they expected a very different outcome from Jesus' life and his ministry.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And when that didn't happen, when their hopes weren't realized, no one was quite sure what to do next, how to move forward.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: I often forget this is actually uh taking place on Easter evening.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's known as the Road to Emma story, but it's really an Easter story, even though in our timeline here, it's been a couple weeks since we celebrated Easter with the flowers and the joy and all the fun uh excitement of that day.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: But here in the story, we're taken back to Easter night.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And as far as these two know, Jesus is still dead.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: They haven't seen anything themselves to the contrary.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: This God that they staked their lives on, the Messiah they thought was going to change the world, change their world.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: He died this most humiliating and shameful death.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: All those promises he had made of a new life, a new way of living, a new kingdom of God, none of it happened.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Even worse, his body's now missing, there's all sorts of rumors about where it could be, everything sort of feels like it's unraveling, it's falling apart, nothing is how it was supposed to be.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: So they tell this man walking alongside him.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: But we had hoped, we had hoped for so much more.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And in some way or another, I think all of us have been on that road to Emmaus.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: There may or may not be strangers walking beside us, we might have named it out loud, or just quietly to ourselves, the kinds of things we have hoped for.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: The things that didn't turn out the way we wanted them to, or didn't come together despite all of our careful plans, our hopes and dreams.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: We have our own versions that could sound anything like I'd hoped to have a child by now.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I hoped to grow old to enjoy retirement.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'd hoped to get that job.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: We'd hoped that the tumor was benign.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'd hoped to be happier, healthier, less stressed, more financially secure than I am right now.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'd hoped to be anywhere but here, physically, emotionally.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: I hoped for stronger faith.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: I had hoped things would be different.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how you would finish that sentence, but I am pretty sure every single one of us at some point in our lives have started a sentence that starts with, I had so hoped.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And instead, here we are.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite authors, Barbara Brown Taylor, is her name.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: She writes about how we've all walked our own road to Emmaus, and she describes it like this It's the road you walk when your team has lost, your candidate has been defeated, your loved one has died.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is the long road back to the empty house, piles of unopened mail, to life as usual, even when nothing may be usual ever again.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or put it in a different way, a theologian named Frederick Biegner says this Emmaus is where we go, where these two disciples went, to try to forget about Jesus and the great failure of his life.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a place where we find ourselves when it occurs to us that maybe God makes no difference in our lives at all.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, what I want to point out to you this morning is maybe the very best detail of this story is found in the way Jesus responds as they're walking.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: These two are unloading all about their dashed dreams, their unrealized hopes as the three of them are walking along this road, the two completely unaware that they are talking to the risen Christ, that they're actually grieving.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: What Jesus doesn't do in that moment is interrupt them and say, hey, don't worry, it's me.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Surprise! It's all gonna be okay.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus doesn't immediately redirect their disappointment or tell them that God hasn't given them more than they can handle.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't try to offer a quick fix to their deep grief.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: He just keeps walking, listening, I imagine sort of nodding along, affirming, acknowledging all that they are feeling in this moment.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so I believe it is with each of us.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: As we walk along that road of grief or disappointment or frustration, God is not interested in instantly cheering us up or telling us to look on the bright side.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: God does not insist on a faith that is based entirely on positivity or optimism.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: God just chooses to walk with us in our pain, in our sadness, our confusion, maybe slowly, but maybe quietly guiding us back to some light, maybe helping us make sense of what is unfolding around us.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: But what I love most about this story is the blindness of these two disciples doesn't keep their Christ from showing up.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus doesn't limit his post-resurrection appearances to those with total confidence in him.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: There are no preconditions.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's no demonstrations of sheer faith required in order to have that full assurance, that presence of God.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is willing to engage with those who don't recognize him even when they're standing right beside him.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: For those who have decided they would rather quit faith altogether and are heading back home, walking the other way, it doesn't matter.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: God is right there.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Still listening.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm often asked some version of a question of why should I believe in God when so many bad things are happening in our world, which is a fair question.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And today at least, I might redirect them to this beautiful personal nature of this story.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: We are all walking our own varieties of that road to Emmaus because we all carry our own varieties of disappointment, frustration, sadness.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: We too have hoped that Jesus might be the one to make everything right in the world.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: We have hoped for so many things to simply be different than they are.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, we get to live in this Easter world, not in a world where Christ has risen, but where Christ is risen.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: My prayer for us this morning.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: It might simply be that we could find some peace today, knowing that even when nothing is going according to how we hoped it would, God still shows up.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: God still promises to walk alongside us wherever that road may lead.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: For the kingdom Kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever hopes you might be holding on to today, or whatever disappointments might feel particularly heavy, may you find some peace today.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Knowing that you do not walk that road alone.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: God has promised to be beside you, whatever life leads to next.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you've enjoyed this podcast and thanks for your support of the ministries of St.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Our commitment to endeavors that lend hope to other people stretches across the country and around the world.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: We hope that in a good way you feel a part of that reach.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Tune in next Thursday for another edition of the St.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.