Sermon: Seeking the Hidden Christ (Luke 24:13-35)
Preached live at Islington United Church, Sunday April 26th, 2026
Scripture Reading: The Road to Emmaus, Luke 24:13-35
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. 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?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. 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. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.” Then he 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.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Watch Islington United Church’s Worship Livestream Below
Sermon begins at 25:55.
Sermon Text: “Seeking the Hidden Christ”
Sometimes the answers we’re looking for are right under our nose, and we don’t even know it.
Maybe you’ve heard this saying before. The idea being that sometimes the truth, or the thing we’re looking for, is so obvious… too obvious, in fact… that we completely miss it, even if it’s staring us square in the face.
I’m guessing we’ve all had moments like this. You know the ones I mean…
You’re frantically searching for your keys before you leave the house. You’ve checked the kitchen counter three times. You’ve patted down the hallway table. You’ve triple-checked your purse. Now you’re panicking because you’re going to be late for church, and you still can’t find the car keys. And then, a thought occurs. Aha, let me check my coat pocket. And there they are. You think, How did I not think of that before?
Or you’re searching everywhere for your glasses. You’ve checked the nightstand, the bathroom counter, you’re retracing your steps through the whole house. And then you go to scratch your head, and there they are, your glasses perched right on top of your head.
In these moments, it’s not just that we’ve forgotten something… It’s that we’re looking, but not really seeing what’s there.
And I wonder if the disciples in our Gospel story might relate.
Let’s picture ourselves in their shoes for a moment. It’s Sunday, three days after Jesus was crucified. Two disciples are leaving Jerusalem on their way to a town called Emmaus. They have no clue Jesus is alive, however they’d heard about some strange things happening at the tomb earlier in the day. And so here they are walking on the road and a stranger comes to walk beside them. This stranger is actually Jesus, the risen Christ, and yet they don’t even notice! Not until the breaking and the blessing of the bread.
When I first read this story, I couldn’t help but wonder, how did they miss that? Wasn’t it obvious… when he started to illuminate the deeper meanings of the scriptures, and their hearts were burning?
But the author of Luke gives us this small detail, he says: “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him”. And later, when these two travellers recount the story to the other disciples, they say that “the risen Christ had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
Jesus purposefully veiled himself until the time was right for these disciples to “see him.”
And so, although the disciples may have thought afterwards, How did we not see him before? The truth is: they couldn’t have possibly, because Christ purposefully hid himself in plain sight. The disciples were not yet ready.
But all the while, even as they walked unaware, lamenting the death of the man whom they had thought was their Messiah… wondering what was next… their hearts burned within them. The Spirit was softening them. As this stranger spoke words of Truth, they became more and more receptive. And finally, when they were ready, Jesus revealed himself.
And that kind of timing… well, most of us probably know something of that experience.
There are moments in our own lives when we are unclear about our next steps… where we may be searching for clarity… seeking answers. Asking: What’s next? Why aren’t things working out the way I thought they would? Where is God in all of this?
And sometimes we can be in that space… seeking, waiting, longing, hoping… until finally… some kind of clarity arrives. And when it arrives, we can sometimes feel a little silly… like how did I miss that? How did I not see that or think of that before?
I can think of many instances in my own life where this was certainly the case. But perhaps the biggest – was trying to figure out what the purpose of my life was, and what career I was supposed to be pursuing.
I spent many years grappling with this question of life purpose, trying to discern what God wanted for me and from me…
For most of my 20s, I changed careers every 2-3 years. Business and marketing. Event facilitation. Freelance writing. Singer-songwriter. Business coaching and life coaching. At each step, it felt like I was building toward something God had intended for me. I had a sense of being guided towards something… but nothing was quite right. The destination remained completely veiled.
Maybe you have experienced something similar, where you’ve struggled with your sense of purpose – whether that be early, mid or late career. Whether you are a parent whose kids have now grown up and left home. Whether you have now retired, and are trying to figure out what to fill your days with…
Along my own path of wondering and grappling… I reached my crisis point in the summer of 2022. I kept praying and asking God to just tell me: What am I supposed to be doing with my life? And I sat in this liminal space, what I called the “void” for many months… until, finally… I received a revelation.
The hidden Christ finally revealed himself to me… I won’t go into the details of how, but I’ll say it was a sequence of events that included a vision, a conversation with a friend, and a conversation with my mother that made it all very clear to me. And this revelation was not what I expected or even hoped for. But it was crystal clear. This revelation very clearly pointed me towards returning both to the church and to school to pursue ministry, as well as obtaining my qualifications as a psychotherapist… and I have been working towards those things for the past three years now.
Sometimes, when we do finally receive the revelation, or the clarity that we seek, it’s not what we expect. Just like the disciples on the road to Emmaus… they had hoped that Jesus of Nazareth would be the one to redeem Israel in the world’s eyes.
None of them thought that their Messiah would be crucified and put to death. They didn’t get the Messiah they thought they would get, or even wanted. But they got the Messiah they needed: a Messiah who offered spiritual redemption, not in the world’s eyes, but in God’s eyes.
And isn’t that what Jesus had been saying all along? That his kingdom did not belong to the world, but rather was of the Spirit?
And in that way, I can see myself in these two disciples walking that road to Emmaus. Because these disciples had expectations about what their lives, the world around them, AND their Messiah were supposed to look like. They had an idea of what “redemption” was supposed to mean.
And when things didn’t unfold the way they had hoped, when it seemed as though nothing had changed… they couldn’t yet see what God was actually doing.
God is always at work in our lives, but sometimes it takes looking back in hindsight to notice.
Looking back now, I can see little signs from my early life, that my vocational calling, was in fact, the path God had always intended for me.
I think back to one particular memory, when I was 7 or 8 years old. For context, my dad is a Presbyterian minister, and growing up, he ministered to a congregation in North York. So I grew up in that church. Every Sunday morning after the service, everyone would make their way out of the sanctuary to the hall for coffee and tea and biscuits. The kids would come up from Sunday School, and while the other kids would head to the hall to find their parents, I would make my way to the sanctuary and wait until everyone had left.
Now, there was this period, for about 10-15 minutes after the service, when the microphones would still be on. And so I would head up to the pulpit. I’d tap tap tap on the microphone. I’d clear my throat. I’d flip open the Bible – sometimes it was already open to the passage that was shared during worship that day. And I would start to read. I’d look at the empty pews and imagine that I was addressing a congregation. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.
I’d say that little 7-year-old me was following the lead of the Spirit in those moments. She had a hunch about what God was guiding her towards. But as I got older, I became more and more resistant to the idea that my professional life would involve the church in any way, shape or form.
But all that time, the hidden Christ walked next to me, feeding my heart and illuminating my mind with spiritual truth, until one day I was finally ready for my eyes to be opened to what the Spirit had in store for me.
Looking back now, I can say with certainty, had Christ revealed this calling to me any earlier, I would not have listened. And so the Spirit, veiled as it was, prepared me. It helped me develop my skills and my gifts until I was ready.
And this, I think, is often how the Spirit operates for each of us.
We are all Christ’s disciples, walking the road to Emmaus. Sometimes we take little scenic detours along the way, but we walk the path nonetheless.
Sometimes God walks beside us, silently instructing and guiding us. Sometimes God reveals Godself to us in extraordinary moments of sudden clarity. And sometimes God is hidden in plain sight, but it doesn’t mean that God is not there.
Sometimes it means that the time is not yet right, for the Spirit to reveal to us our next steps.
Now, just because the Spirit might choose when the timing is right does not mean that we only play a passive role, or that it’s totally out of our hands.
Perhaps, “faith” also means training our spiritual sight, so that we might begin to see what’s hidden right in front of us. We can do this by opening ourselves to the possibility that God is always right in front of us, in the people that we meet, in the absolute ordinariness of our lives, and in the absolute chaos of the world… and in all the accompanying confusion, loss, grief, and challenges that we encounter.
Can we learn to see the Divine in all things. In the extraordinary, in our challenges, and in the absolute most mundane aspects of our existence?
Whether it’s in that morning cup of coffee, when that first sip of caffeine hits your lips, and you feel human again.
Or in that frantic search for the keys or the glasses, and the relief when we find them.
In that conversation you had with a stranger, maybe now a friend, that creates a feeling of warmth in your heart.
And in those bigger moments too, when clarity finally arrives after you’ve been contemplating your next steps.
So my prayer for all of us today, is that we can all become just a little better at discerning what is right in front of us.
The risen Christ is already here. Walking the road alongside you. The answers, the Clarity that you seek, are already within you… even if they haven’t been revealed to you yet.
And while we wait for that clarity, we can also do the work… of slowing down… of making space for Christ to enter our hearts. We can ask the questions, and we can listen for answers. We can soften our resistance, and let go of our expectations of what we think spiritual redemption is supposed to look like… both in our personal lives, but also in the world around us.
Because it can be very easy when we look at what is going on in the world right now, to get swallowed up in despair… to believe that Christ is nowhere, he is absent… but can we actually see what the Spirit is doing right now? Probably not. But maybe one day, it will become clearer.
So let us all pay attention just a little more… not in an anxious way, but with the openness of someone who knows that even, when hidden, Christ walks with us.
Because the answer you’re searching for, the presence you’re longing for, the truth you need to hear… might be right under your nose. You just don’t know it yet.
Amen.