The Third Sunday of Easter
April 19, 2026
Scripture
On the Sunday after Good Friday two men who knew Jesus were walking to the village of Emmaus talking about the latest events. They had never seen a week like they had just been through: the last supper, a violent arrest in the garden, the political trial, the horrendous crucifixion, and just that morning, the final mystery: an empty tomb.
The followers of the Jesus were now frightened and confused. Jesus had entered Jerusalem to acclaim. On Palm Sunday his presence brought the possibility of freedom to the occupied people, but a few days later that hope was gone. The Roman occupation was still in effect. The oppression continued. Everyone wondered what would happen next?
They met a man who was going their way and welcomed his company. As they walked the stranger explained how the current events made some kind of sense. It was getting dark when they arrived at their destination so they invited the stranger to stay. During dinner when the two men realized they were talking with Jesus, he disappeared. They were astonished, but they immediately started back to Jerusalem to tell the others what happened.
That is where the story ends.
Group 4
I believe one of the ongoing values of Seekers is that of reexamining our spiritual lives. As part of that tradition I regularly write a spiritual report in which I examine how my spiritual life has grown or shrunk as I live my life with Deborah, the church, and within myself. I consider my priorities and the day to day choices I’ve made; then after prayer and reflection realign my heart and mind.
I think of the exercise we started in September at Wellspring as a community spiritual report. We have been asked to think deeply about who we are and how we live our Christian beliefs. Every person who is part of this process is adding their life to the total balance of Seekers energy, and belief, and making the whole process better. We really are in this together.
I joined two groups: 1 and 4. Group 1 because the Guide to Seekers Church is necessary to keep us connected to our history, and has to be updated to be a useful reference for our future members.
I joined Group 4 to better understand Seekers desire for social justice; and specifically how we use our building to promote justice in the world.
Group 4 is trying to describe Seekers’ commitment to fairness, freedom, and social justice. We asked how each of us would express our ideas in Seekers core documents? This sermon is my attempt to answer to this question. Here is what I suggested:
Seekers could…
1. create partnerships with people and groups who share our values and beliefs.
2. practice disciplines that promote spiritual growth, courage, and introspection.
3. promote and support creative and artistic projects that express our social values.
4. honor our connections to Christian history that strengthen social justice, and try to amend that history
I am going to talk about the first three points today. In number 4 about Christian history I am referring to how the church created and promoted antisemitism. That is a deep and thorny issue that will take a lot more study than I am capable of right now. So I am going to leave that idea for another time.
1. create partnerships with people and groups who share our values and beliefs.
I grew up with an outsider’s view of American society; as a Japanese-American kid in the Latino side of Los Angeles. My neighborhood was blue-collar, and lower-middle class. Mexican culture was dominant. No one in that neighborhood had a lot of money or privilege. Some of my friend’s families were poor. They did not have good clothes or enough to eat, and lived in squalid places, but people without resources rely on their friends and family to survive.
In college a friend told me that when he was in elementary school his family fell apart because of drug addictions. Luckily he had been spending a lot of his time in his neighbor’s house to get away from the chaos so he moved in there and they supported him through high school, when he moved out on his own. I remember that he liked to tell me how he cooked dinner.
When my dad got old his legs became weak and he lost his balance easily. He told me that sometimes he would fall in an awkward place – between the wall and the bed, or in a cramped space in the bathroom and he couldn’t get himself out. If that happened in the middle of the night, he told me, he would just fall asleep on the floor and wait for my sister to wake up. My sister told me that sometimes she could not lift him up and would go next door to get their neighbor to come help get him on his feet.
We had known the guy next door for more than fifty years, we had grown up together in and out of each other’s houses. I knew deep down that I could rely on him and his sister (who lived on the other side of dad’s house) to help if help was needed.
Here in the District, most of the people who use our building share our values. Consider this partial list of potential friends:
Jewish and Arab folks working for peace as Standing Together,
a neighborhood project to provide free meals the Community Meal and Potluck,
honoring victims of hate and violence: the Montgomery County Lynching Memorial Project, and
various immigrant support groups, people who stand with and are part of the migrant community.
How about a minor miracle of good work, education, art, and music: Carpe Diem,
Keeping folk music alive? the Folklore Society of Greater Washington, and the Institute of Musical Traditions,
the rock and roll summer camp – Groove Camp,
reminding adults to move and play with Interplay,
if you can imagine Interplay with musical instruments, that is Music for People, and
the Tango community, people with impeccable posture who create a candle-lit wonderland here in this very space…
Good people need to work together to solve problems, and support each other because we can count on our friends, not this government.
2. Practice disciplines that promote spiritual growth, courage, and introspection.
3. Promote and support creative and artistic projects that express our social values.
The theology and many of the regular spiritual disciplines of Seekers church promote growth and encourage introspection. Our Sunday services have spaces of deep silence where we collectively discover and share insights from our lives. We value creativity in our community life, and we support, capital-A Art, and the people who create it.
One spiritual practice at the heart of Seekers is call. I think calls are embodied dreams. Call can orient us in the world and often reveal the next step to take. I don’t think I exaggerate too much when I say we live or die following our call.
My call is to music. One way I feel I am contributing to a better world is by organizing music for our Sunday services, and at the monthly singalong by singing with whomever shows up.
In each of those venues I have heard wonderful music that has made us laugh or inwardly weep; we’ve sung songs and heard music that helps us feel strong, or reminds us of what we’ve lost, or fills us with hope. Singing together can be a creative act of presence and truth if we will allow it.
In an emailed meditation on April 17th Brian McLaren says that in his mind he creates an internal reality. That internal reality shapes his values and they, in turn, affect his external behavior. He then realized that he was making the world around him resemble his internal reality. He saw that his internal reality could be ugly or beautiful, thereby creating a world in which ugliness is everywhere, or one where beauty abounds.
McLaren then cites an idea from Alexis Wright, an Australian author, in which she advises each of us to accomplish an “inward migration” away from what other people say we should think, so we can develop strengths of our own. I think the “inward migration” is the “journey inward” that we are familiar with at from Church of the Savior.
By migrating to an inner place where we are free of the influences from outside our own minds and hearts, we can build an internal reality based on our own experience and truth. McLaren sees this inward migration as a way to enter “the kingdom of God within you.” (Luke 17:21).
McLaren concludes by recalling that Jesus said “Whenever two or three of you gather in my name, there I am…,” and that we might understand Jesus urging us to “live by a … story where beauty abounds … Even two or three of you can gather together embodying my way of being in the world … you can be cells of resistance, outposts of transformation, seedbeds of beauty.”
Courage
In an Inward Outward post earlier this month Kate Lasso wrote an essay that helped me understand a profound truth. She said that good and bad exist together on the world. That fear narrows our world and causes us to hide, and that resurrection calls us out of hiding. She writes:
“When Jesus shows his wounds, he makes clear that the violence he endured was real. God does not erase injustice; God carries it and accompanies all who suffer. The wounds remain—but they are no longer the end of the story. There is more.”
Conclusion
The social environment of Jerusalem described at the beginning of my sermon feels similar to our present moment. The scripture ended with good news, but our story goes on. We feel unsure of the future. We are frightened and confused. The injustice exists, and the occupation continues.
In this moment of anxiety and uncertainty how do we save the world, or ourselves? I think we could:
1. create friendships with people and groups who share our values and beliefs.
2. practice disciplines that promote spiritual growth, courage, and introspection.
3. promote and support creative and artistic projects that express our social values.
In the gospel story the two men, let’s imagine them as our friends, immediately returned to the city. They had personally experienced resurrection. They brought the good news to their people; let us remember that we too are their people.
Christ is risen, allelujah, amen.