Sermon: From "We Had Hoped" to "He Was There"
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There are seasons in life when the path ahead feels both full of possibility and strangely difficult to see. I find myself in one of those seasons now.
I am in the midst of transition again, completing this chapter of my ordination journey and beginning the search for my first call as a priest. It is a holy threshold, and I am deeply aware of that. And still, it is also a place of unknowing. I do not yet know where I will be sent or what shape this next season will take. Some days, trust comes easily. Other days, it feels quieter, more fragile, harder to hold onto in the absence of clarity.
It is not the first time I have stood in a place like this. Years ago, during another season of unexpected change, I was introduced to a simple practice: mapping my life. Laying out the moments, the turning points, the relationships and decisions that had shaped me, and then returning to those moments with a different question. Not just what happened, but where God had been. Not only where I recognized God at the time, but where, looking back, I could begin to see a presence I had missed.
That practice has stayed with me. It has become a way of paying attention, of learning to see my life not as a series of disconnected events, but as a story held together by something deeper than I often perceive in the moment.
This week, as I preached on the road to Emmaus, I realized how much I needed that way of seeing again.
Because the story of Emmaus is not only about what happened on that road long ago. It is about the shape of the life of faith itself—how often we walk through seasons we do not understand, how frequently meaning comes into focus only in hindsight, how Christ’s presence is not dependent on our ability to recognize it.
In many ways, this sermon is a reflection from within that tension, from a place of trust and uncertainty held together. It is the sermon I needed to hear, because I needed to be reminded that not seeing clearly does not mean Christ is absent. I needed the reminder that confusion is not the opposite of faith and that there is a way of walking forward even when the story has not yet resolved.
If you find yourself in a season like that—between what has been and what will be, holding both hope and questions—this reflection is for you.
Before you read, you might consider taking a few quiet moments to reflect on your own story. Not to solve it or tidy it up, but simply to notice it. To hold it with a kind of gentle curiosity. To wonder, even now, what might be unfolding beneath the surface.
Because one of the quiet truths at the heart of the Christian life is this: we are often being accompanied in ways we do not yet have eyes to see.
And sometimes, it is only by pausing—by remembering, by reflecting, by listening—that we begin to recognize the presence that has been with us all along.
Listening with you,
Nicole +
Sermon: From "We Had Hoped" to "He Was There"
Luke 24:13-35 3rd Sunday of Easter April 19, 2026 Episcopal Church of the Nativity
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Almost ten years ago, I encountered a practice that changed the way I see the life of faith—this journey we are on with God. Our family was at a training as we prepared to move to work with a non-profit in South Asia, and we were asked to do something that felt unusual at the time: to map our lives.
We were given dozens of post-it notes and told to write down moments from the beginning of our lives until that day—people who had shaped us, places that had marked us, events that had changed our direction. We spread them out and began to group them into chapters or seasons of our lives, noticing the turning points that marked something new.
Then we were asked to look at those seasons and name what God had been doing in each one—not what we thought at the time, but what we could see now, looking back. Where had God been present? Where had we recognized him? And where had he been there all along, and we didn’t know it?
It was the first time I had stepped back far enough to see my life as a whole story instead of a series of disconnected moments. What struck me most was a kind of coherence I hadn’t noticed before—threads running through it, patterns emerging, moments that had shaped me in ways I couldn’t have understood at the time.
And ever since that day, it has become a practice I return to. At the end of each year, I sit down and write out what’s happened—not every detail, but the moments that mattered. The turning points, the questions, the places where something shifted. And I ask: Where was God in this? Where did I notice him? Where did I miss him? Where did someone else’s presence make him visible to me in a way I couldn’t have seen on my own?
Over time, I’ve come to realize that what I’m doing in that practice is not just remembering. I’m learning how to see. I’m learning how to recognize a presence that was there long before I had the language for it. And in many ways, that is exactly what is happening in the story we just heard.
We know the story of the road to Emmaus well—the story of two disciples who encounter Jesus but don’t recognize him. But today, I want us to listen to it a little differently.
I want us to see this not just as a story about resurrection, but as a story about how we come to know Christ at all. Because what we are watching unfold here is not just their story. It is a pattern. The Christian life is not a straight line of clarity and certainty. It is a journey of coming to know Jesus—often slowly, often indirectly, often only in hindsight.
And this story begins where so many of our stories begin: In confusion. Two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem. They had believed in Jesus as the Messiah. They had begun to imagine a future because of him, and now that future has collapsed in ways they cannot understand.
Jesus joins them on the road and asks them what they are discussing. They recount what has happened, who Jesus was, what they had believed—and then they say the line that reveals the depth of their disorientation: “We had hoped.”
We had hoped that he was the one. We had hoped the story would go a certain way. We had hoped we understood what God was doing. So, they do what we all do when life no longer fits the story we thought we were living: They tell the story again. They try to piece it together. And if we are honest, we know that place.
I was there myself when I first encountered this life-mapping practice. Our family had so clearly felt God leading us to take on roles at a non-profit in India. We had been moving toward that goal for over a year. We were preparing to sell our house. Everything was aligning. We were four months away from moving when everything changed. Political shifts affected our visas, and suddenly we were told we could not go.
And in that moment, it wasn’t just the plan that fell apart. It was the clarity. Because underneath everything was that same quiet phrase: We had hoped. We had hoped this was the path. We had hoped we understood what God was doing. And suddenly, we didn’t.
That is exactly where these disciples are. They are not rejecting faith. They are trying to make sense of it. And Jesus comes near and walks with them. Not at the end of the story. Not once they figure it out. But right there, in the middle of it. And they do not recognize him.
That detail tells us something essential: Christ is present long before he is recognized. Our awareness of God is not what brings God near. God is already near—already walking with us—even in those seasons where we cannot see clearly at all. And that means something deeply comforting: You can be in the presence of God and not know it. You can be accompanied, even when you feel alone. You can be walking with Christ, even when your faith feels uncertain.
So, Jesus meets the disciples in the place they are at, in the story they are able to tell at the moment. He listens without rushing to correct them, drawing them out as they name their disappointment and confusion. And then, slowly, he begins to reinterpret their story. Not by erasing their pain, but by placing it inside something larger. He takes this disconnected moment and places it inside the bigger picture for them, all the chapters and seasons of history that have brought them to this place.
He walks them through the Scriptures, showing them that the story of God has always been bigger than they realized, that what feels like an ending may not be the end. And still, they do not recognize him. But something is happening. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” they later say.
That line always intrigues me. Because it suggests that there are ways of knowing that come before recognition. There are ways of knowing that are not about certainty, but about resonance. Their minds haven’t caught up yet. Their theology isn’t fully formed, but their hearts are awake. Something in them is stirring.
And I think this matters deeply for us, especially for those of us who have known what it is to question, to wrestle, to feel like we no longer “know” God in the ways we once did. Because maybe faith is not first about clarity. Maybe it’s not about having everything figured out. It’s not even about recognizing God immediately. It’s about learning to notice the burning, to pay attention to the places where something in us comes alive. To trust that even when we don’t understand, something deeper is happening.
So, finally, the two disciples reach the place where they are going, and they invite Jesus to stay with them. “Stay with us.” It is such a simple gesture, but it is the moment when everything turns. Because knowing Christ does not happen only in thinking or understanding. It happens in participation. In relationship.
At the table, Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. And it is in that act—in that familiar, embodied, shared moment—that their eyes are opened. They recognize him not through explanation, but through participation. They encounter him through something that engages not just their minds, but their whole selves.
And then he vanishes. Which at first feels like loss again, until we realize that what has changed is not his presence, but their capacity to see. They now know him differently. And that changes everything. They get up. They turn around. They return to Jerusalem and the other disciples. Because once they see, they cannot keep walking away. They have encountered the living Christ in a way that reorients them.
And when I look back at that season of my own life, when everything had unraveled, and I laid out my story in that room, something shifted for me, too. Not because everything suddenly made sense. It didn’t. The future was still unclear. It would be months before a new path opened, longer still before we arrived in Bangladesh.
But when I looked at the story as a whole, I could see something I hadn’t been able to see before. I could see the confusion, the searching, the slow shifts. And I could see that God had been present in all of it, even when I didn’t recognize him. And it felt, unmistakably, like Emmaus—not a single moment of revelation, but a path. A journey of coming to know.
And that is why this story matters. Because it is not just their story. It is the pattern of our lives with God. There are moments of confusion when what we hoped for falls apart. There are seasons of conversation, where we try to make sense of our story. There are encounters with God we don’t recognize at the time. There is a slow reinterpretation that begins to shift how we see. And there are invitations to stay, to participate, to remain open. And, over time, there is recognition. Often not in the moment but in hindsight.
And I think that is the invitation of this story for us today—That we would learn to see our lives not as disconnected moments, but as a path—a story in which God is at work, even when we cannot yet see how.
And so the question becomes: Where are you on the road?
Are you in that place of “we had hoped,” where the story no longer holds the way it once did?
Are you trying to make sense of something that has shifted?
Are you beginning to see differently, even if you cannot yet name why?
Are you being invited to stay, quietly, to sit with Jesus?
Or are you in a moment of recognition, where you can look back and say, “He was with me all along”?
Wherever you are, the promise of this story is the same. Christ is already on the road with you. Not waiting for you to figure it out. Not standing at the end. But present in the middle of it— walking beside you, listening to your story, meeting you in ways you may not recognize yet.
And over time, our eyes are opened. Not all at once, but enough. Enough to keep going. Enough to turn around when we need to. Enough to trust that the one who walks with us now has been with us all along— and will continue to meet us again and again on the road ahead.
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