April 19, 2026

“But We Had Hoped”

Thinking of all the bombs dropped and missiles fired in Iran and Lebanon, destroying lives by the hundreds (and how we thought for a brief moment it might be done, only see it continue), I was reminded of how I myself am acquainted with grief.  I have lost everyone in my original nuclear family except one brother – my mother and father, my older brother, my sister – and now my wife — all gone.  I am acquainted with grief.  And I know that none of you have been spared the weight of pain in the face of loss when someone dear to you is gone.  And, I can only imagine the darkness that fell over the lives of those families and neighbors left behind in our current war-torn lands.

So we can empathize with Cleopas and the other disciple on the road to Emmaus.  They were walking with a posture that is all too familiar to you and me – head down, feet shuffling, eyes practically glazed over by the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”  It was an undeniable part of human experience in the time of Shakespeare, and it is so today.

When greeted by a stranger on the road who noticed their forlorn discussion, these disciples recounted the litany of their woes: how Jesus, who was a mighty prophet, had been handed over, condemned to death, and crucified.  You can hear the familiar ring of crushed dreams and broken hearts in these words, and in their pitiful lament, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

Oh, what a deep and well-known chord those words strike in our hearts: “But we had hoped . . .”  They are words of defeat, words of resignation.

“But we had hoped that the folly of racial hatred and discrimination could yield to the power of dream, that as people of all races and nationalities shared a common purpose and destiny, they could come to respect and value one another, that no one would be denied opportunity in our land because of the neighborhood in which they were born, or the color of their skin.”

“But we had hoped that America could live in peace, and that wisdom could prevail among global leaders, and a sense of mutuality and striving for the common good could mark international relations.”

“But we had hoped that our investments would be safe and productive, and provide us with the security we need for the future.”

“But we had hoped that our family, or our church, or our community would realize its potential.”

“But we had hoped that our jobs would be fulfilling, that our children would be successful, that our dreams would be materialized.”

There are at least two life-changing lessons to be learned from the plaintive cry of these two woebegone disciples.  The first is that perhaps it would serve us well to be more discerning in that for which we hope.  They were looking for a redeemer of Israel, and thought Jesus just might be the man.  Unfortunately, their hope did not run deep enough, or carry far enough.  They were expecting a revolutionary leader who would rally the zealots and overthrow the Roman oppressors.  The redeemer of Israel was standing right before them, but they were looking for the wrong sort of redemption.

Residents of the middle-east, walking that very road to Emmaus, continue to make the same mistake today.  They are looking for peace, but believe “peace” means achieving all the rights, privileges, gains and ambitions that their own side desires in the conflict, rather than mutual sacrifice.

You and I have the same problem.  We hope for personal gain and prosperity, but think that such gains are monetary in nature, instead of having to do with growth in wisdom and spirit.  We hope for peace and security as a nation, but think that it means only achieving our own short term national interests, instead of pursuing the betterment of life and the maximization of opportunity for all peoples.

Perhaps the first thing to learn from these two travelers who Jesus called “foolish and slow of heart” is that we must give adequate attention to the substance of our hope.  If we are careful and discerning, we may discover that a trustworthy object of hope has been disclosed to us already.  If we hope for large budgets and worldly success, or victory and domination by our side, our kind, our race, our people, we will likely in the end be frustrated.  If we hope in our own lives and institutions for things of the spirit such as wisdom and compassion and understanding, and in our world for common purpose, mutual effort, and recognition of a shared fate, our hope is grounded in that which transcends the smallness of our vision, and abides when lesser dreams collapse.

But there is another lesson from this encounter with Jesus; it is found in the startling revelation to these despairing travelers.  The fulfillment of their hope came to the disciples in the last way they ever expected.  The stranger they met on the road, the very one who seemed so out-of-it and unaware, was himself redemption incarnate.  The realization of our hopes comes not only as a redefinition of that hope, but often as a profound and utter surprise.

When the world has beaten us down, and the darkness falls like an anvil, at the very point of our greatest despair, there may be in store some unparalleled wonder of transformation waiting to unfold.  Madeleine L’Engle said, “The strange turning of what seemed to be a horrendous No to a glorious Yes is always the message of Easter.”¹

Too much living is being wasted because we are waiting around for something better, or even worse, have already given up on life.  But life is a treasure.  Jesus taught that lesson more powerfully than any other.  And the resurrection is the exclamation mark on that message.  Our lives need to be lived as statements, testimonies to the inestimable worth of being alive, beacons to assist any lost souls out there in finding the abundant life that was the cornerstone of Jesus’ message.  How many of us commit the tragic sin of living as though we were already dead?

Frederick Buechner tells the story of encountering such a lost soul while grocery shopping with his wife.  He said, “I was on one side of the store and she was on the other, and over a shelf of breakfast cereal and cake mix I said, ‘Don’t forget the cream,’ and she said, ‘All right, but don’t you forget you’re trying to lose weight,’ and I said, ‘Oh well, you only live once.’  And . . . the woman at the checkout counter [who had overheard the conversation] . . . said, ‘Don’t you think once is enough?’  That was it.

“It was a mild jest,” Buechner acknowledged, “and I laughed mildly. . . but . . . I had a feeling that what by some rare chance I had happened to hear was a human being saying something like this: ‘People come and people go, most of them strangers.  I’m sick of them, and I’m sick of myself too.  One day’s very much like another. . . I’ll live my life out to the last, and I expect to have good days as well as bad.  But when the end comes, I won’t complain.  One life will do me very nicely.’  Then somebody plunked a bottle of something down on the counter and the cash register rang open and the check-out clerk with her hair damp on her forehead said, ‘Don’t you think once is enough?’”²

Don’t live as though life were a burden to be carried, an ordeal to be endured.  You have already been granted a fulfillment of your hopes.  You have been the recipient of an abundance of lessons – so many things you have learned the hard way.  You are a finer, and greater person now than you were some years ago.  What are you going to do with all the lessons that have cost so much for you to learn,  curl up in a corner somewhere and die?  Why not take your life experience and go share it with others?  Why not give your heart for the sake of the Good News?  Why not give the last ounce of your being, the last breath in your lungs to make your world a little better place?

When you go from here, may the sun shine on your face.  May you hear the death defying songs of birds, and sense the struggle of tiny bright flowers breaking through the earth.  May the wonder of Christ’s love, the power of his ministry, and the mystery of his resurrection overtake you.  But even when the sun does not shine, and when it seems that darkness reigns and hope is gone, be alert; look for the wondrous surprise of grace, the miracle of opportunity that is waiting to be revealed.

You have witnessed the power of resurrection in hearts and homes the rest of the world has given up on.  So carry the message of hope.  Go into your own corner of the world and testify to the power of resurrected dreams and lives because of the love of Christ.

You have seen the new life of peace break down walls and melt cold wars.  So proclaim the resurrection.  Go to the dark places of hatred, discrimination, hopelessness, and fear and give voice to the irrepressible force of redeeming grace.

You have known the promise of a newborn baby’s cry and the victory song of those who are redeemed by love.  So offer a word of hope.  Go to the ones who have given up; go to the ones with empty hearts who live on the brink of despair; go to the very chambers of death and  proclaim life!

¹ Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season.

² Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark, 1981.