3rd Sunday of Easter 2026

Sermon: 3rd Sunday of Easter 2026

Texts: Acts 2:14a, 36-41, Luke 24:13-35

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What does it mean to welcome Christ the Stranger? In today’s Gospel, we have two followers of Jesus who at first seem to be unable to recognize Jesus. He seems to them a stranger, and one that seems to be unaware of the talk of the town at that, so perhaps even a foreigner who is not aware of the tragedy that just took place. The two were so upset about what had happened to Jesus, so cast down at the injustice, so disappointed at the hopes that they had for the people Israel, that they were “kept from recognizing Jesus” among them. Does that sound familiar to any of us? Haven’t we all faced, or are facing, such dire circumstances, perhaps personally or collectively, that we are kept from recognizing Jesus in our midst? The clang of tragedies, of wars, of social upheaval, of corruption become a great blinder of our spiritual awareness. We can become so dejected that we stop seeing God in the everyday, we stop witnessing the glory of existence, and with that can come apathy to the cry of the neighbor, for why bother? Today, we are subjected to so much bad news that we only see the bad. The good, like the covert Risen Jesus, is often hidden or quiet. It is not highlighted. To say this is not to negate the direness of bad news however, for crises are real things that must be faced with responsibility and moral clarity. What we want to realize is that God is that as we navigate the difficult moments, we should attune our spiritual senses to where the Risen Jesus is tagging along. That in the shadow of this corrupt generation as Peter says in Acts, we can be saved from despair by looking at Christ the Stranger acting in our midst. Welcoming him then means to crack open

the borders of our expectations to see where this stranger will lead, to what undiscovered reality will He reveal.

We might ask, why does Christ come to us as a stranger? Aside from the dejection, why is the Risen Christ unrecognizable at first glance, and why does He play along with this strangeness? He doesn’t come out and say, “it’s me, Jesus!” Instead, he just tags along and joins in their conversation. God often does that, when He just pops up when we least expect it, and it is only afterwards that we realize, Oh my God, that was Jesus in that moment! Interesting enough, throughout this story, Jesus was only recognizable by His acts rather than His appearance. In the interpretation of scripture, in the breaking of bread, Jesus becomes recognizable. Perhaps this is why He comes as a stranger. He does not seek for us to know His Risen self by mere external appearance, it is not by how similar He looks to us, or even how similar He looked to how He was remembered before the Resurrection. Jesus is recognizable by the wounds, the breaking of the bread, and the “burning of the heart within us”. It’s as if to say, we are to let go of all the certainties that might box us in regards to recognizing Jesus, to let go of categories that might limit the scope of our finding Him. Christ the Stranger opens the possibilities of His presence, for in the preached Word, in the shared meal, in the passionate fire of God’s Kingdom burning within us, in these things, He makes Himself known. Sometimes we need this Stranger to change up our downcast spirits. We need the Stranger to come and show us that what we thought was a foregone conclusion is actually an invitation into something new and unknown.

So as we encounter such a Stranger, as He burns our hearts with the gospel that can’t be contained, when He shows us a way out of despondency, our response of faith should be like the two followers on the way to Emmaus: “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” We are to exercise a hospitality of the new and strange thing, for the power of the Resurrection is no ordinary occurrence, it transforms and challenges. Stay with us, share our bread, give us a Good Word, in these things, God is turning us away from despair. By opening up their hearts to the stranger, they were able to receive new sight. A sight that could see God amid the disappointment, a sight that could see the Kingdom of God growing when they thought all was said and done. That indeed, as the women testified, the tomb was empty, and He is now here breaking bread with us.

Indeed, we should not let the oppressive powers of this world dictate our imagination. Instead, we should listen to the Risen One whose acts brings us the goodness of God. The Palestinian theologian Lamma Mansour said: “We cannot allow our vision of what is possible to be dictated by the powers and principalities of this world. We cannot leave the task of imagination to oppressors. This living hope that we have in God empowers us to envision a different reality; to challenge the imaginations of exclusion and supremacy”. Like the two followers, we should invite the Risen One to reconfigure our imagination to one that sends us out to say “The Lord is risen indeed!”. This proclamation of the Risen Lord, who accompanies even when we don’t recognize Him immediately, allows us to break from the constraints of despair. As the Easter season rolls on, I’ve been blessed of seeing in my algorithms all the Eastern Orthodox Easter celebrations, as people collectively shout the paschal greeting “Christ is Risen!”, a

radiant joy that matches the fire of all the candles together. In every language, throughout different ethnicities and nations, a whole host of humanity, strangers that in Christ become friends, we are uplifted to see the world through the eyes that recognize the new world. We have been given new sight in Christ. So to the world’s problems, we declare that Christ is Risen. To our sickness and our worries we declare Christ is Risen. To our communities we witness that Christ is Risen. Once we recognize this reality, we can see the new possibilities that our old distracted vision could not. The declaration Christ is Risen can be taken as a daily affirmation, a spiritual practice if you will, to remind ourselves that things do not need to be constrained by our disappointments or the ideologies of those who oppress. Instead, we can expect anything from Christ the Stranger. We can be open to the imagination of the Resurrection, by which we see God’s saving grace transforming our perspective from one of death, to one of divine hopefulness and compassion. We have a living hope that seeks to include more people to the table, more people to be fed, more people to be loved, more people to have mercy upon. Truly, let the inner room of your heart sing the new song of the resurrection, and make space for someone to break bread with you and remind you that God has and will complete His promises, and has made all things new. Do not be afraid, tune in to the presence of Jesus all around you, open your hearts, for He walks with us on the Way to the Kingdom. Let us then pray: