When You Have Been Disappointed by God Too Often
By Rev. Dr. Paul Scott Wilson
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Reading: Luke 24:13-35
I am honoured to preach in this summer series on favourite Bible stories. I love the Road to Emmaus. It is normally only read at Easter. I love that it focuses on two people who have been disappointed by God. I love that they behave just as we might. And I love that this account indirectly teaches something I did not understand in my early faith journey. I grew up thinking that appearances of the resurrected Jesus ended with the first disciples, and people will see him again at the end of time, when he returns to establish his eternal kingdom here on earth. But see if you agree that this text suggests that resurrection appearances of Jesus continue, and may be far more common than I was taught, and that can make a huge difference for our relationship with God, particularly in this time of political and economic upheaval.
Two disciples walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a three-hour hike, on first Easter Sunday, and arrive near evening. They must have left in the early afternoon. A stranger joins them along the way, who seems to know nothing of what has happened in Jerusalem the last few days, although the whole city is talking about it. They tell the stranger about Jesus, “mighty in deed and word before God and the people”. They hoped that he would be a soldier king like David and overthrow the Roman powers, freeing Israel, but this week the authorities arrested him and on Friday crucified him like a common criminal. His body was then taken from the cross and placed in a tomb, sealed with a massive stone. Yet just this morning, numerous women went together to his tomb and it was empty, and they say they saw “a vision of angels”.
We do not know much about these two disciples, Cleopas and an unnamed other. Cleopas is referred to only this once in the Bible. He is just an ordinary person like you and me. The person with him is not even named but we may suspect it is his wife. In a patriarchal society naming only the husband might have been felt to be enough. They leave Jerusalem together. They travel together. They go to the same house. They eat together. But what is most interesting about them is when they leave Jerusalem. It is only after hearing what the numerous women report to Peter and the apostles: ‘the stone is rolled away, the tomb is empty, the body is gone, and angels appeared saying that Jesus is alive, as he himself had prophesied.’ Cleopas and his wife hear this report, and they depart for Emmaus. Its a little like leaving a tied Blue Jays game at the end of the eighth inning. The other disciples in Jerusalem go nowhere, they stick around to find out what is going on, but these two make tracks for home. What’s up with them? What is so urgent in Emmaus? Do they have to water the plants, let out the dog, or babysit that they do not wait and find out what is happening?
I love that they are so much like us. They are just ordinary people whose way of dealing with grief could have been ours. They go because, here may be the real reason, they have been disappointed too often by God. Jesus was their dearest friend and leader. God led them to believe he was the Messiah, the hope of Israel. He is now dead and their future seems dead with him. Where was God that this happened? Moreover, what the numerous women report is impossible, especially the part about a vision of angels who claim Jesus is alive. Luke says that the rest of the disciples also think the women tell “an idle tale” (24:11). The women’s vision is nonsense, nurtured by grief. Denying that Jesus is dead merely makes the grief worse by prolonging the pain. Besides, a lot of very sick people do terrible things for which they claim they had divine visions. Today we recall cult murderers like Jim Jones and Charles Manson. Claims of divine visions need to be tested and verified by the larger community. Cleopas and his wife head home to get on with their grief in their own way. When they start out, they are heart-broken—utterly, bitterly, disappointed in God.
A woman communications specialist advises Christians not ask others, “Do you believe in God?” It is too direct. We may sound like one of those strangers at the door with religious pamphlets. If you want to know someone better, ask instead a more inviting question, “Who is God in the story of your life?’ or “Was there a religious or spiritual background to your childhood, or your earlier life? How do you define that now?”[1]
One woman disappointed with God became pregnant as a teenager, and she felt that all she received from the church—and God—was judgement. A man remembers when he was young, sitting on the window ledge of his second-floor hospital room and the window gave way. He fell and nearly died, had many operations, and for all these decades has been able to walk only with pain. He has no use for God. I do not need to tell you about people disappointed with God. Was there an experience in your life when you felt God was late in showing up or did not show up at all—perhaps when you lost your job, investment, health, or marriage? Looking at the sad state of world affairs right now, we can see millions of people who may have given up on God. They are victims of war, poverty, or natural disasters like Nepal; or worried about what jobs will survive AI; or anxious about the trade war with the United States.
Cleopas and his wife are disappointed, and could have asked, ‘If God was here, why did this happen?’ But perhaps we have it wrong. When we think God has abandoned us, when we are most disappointed with God, God may be very close. That is how it was with Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, and God raised him on the third day. The risen Jesus chooses this ordinary couple, to be—in Luke’s Gospel at least—the first two people to see him alive again, and Jesus chooses them even over the Apostles. This couple has given up on him, but he has not given up on them. When he appears to them as a stranger along the road, they explain about Jesus. But this stranger ends up knowing more than they do. He gently rebukes their lack of faith: “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?” So he teaches them what the Bible says. During all this, Luke says, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him”. Why? I love the mystery of this. We do not know. Maybe so they will not be distracted from what Jesus wants them to teach others: “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures”, including how the Messiah would suffer and die, and would rise on the third day so all people through faith in him could receive eternal life.
Some people may think that the risen Christ revealed himself only to people of strong faith. This text says that is not the case. The faith of this couple is gone, and maybe that is why Jesus chooses to appear to them. When they finally arrive at their adobe house at Emmaus, Jesus remains incognito and accepts their invitation to stay for supper, since it is almost evening. Before the meal, he “took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them”. The action of this stranger must have startled them. Their friend Jesus had used the same words and actions at the Last Supper, a few days earlier: he took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread. We use those same words and actions in our communion service, perhaps for some people with similar result. The text says, “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” They then recall, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking with us along the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” They only recognize him when he chooses to reveal himself, when he knows they can understand. Just a glimpse, a word, a gesture, and he is gone. And in the light of the rising moon, they rush back to Jerusalem to tell the others, ‘Jesus is risen!’
In the Bible, the resurrected Jesus appears to many people, sometimes in recognizable form, but often not, he is incognito. To the Apostle Paul on the Road to Damascus he comes as a bright light and voice. (Acts 9:4-6, 18:9-10; 22:6-11; 23:11; 26:14; 2 Corinthians 12:8-9). In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdelene talks to the risen Christ, but thinks he is the gardener (20:15). In Matthew, Jesus promises, ‘Lo, I will be with you always” (28:20), which suggests they should continue to expect to see him. When he appears to the final eleven disciples on the mountain before his ascension, they “worshipped him, but some doubted,” in other words, some of these apostles who know him intimately don’t recognize him and are unsure if it is really him’ (28:17). In his parable of the sheep and the goats, he is incognito, for the people ask, “‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’” (Matthew 25:44-55.) At the end of John’s Gospel a stranger on the shore directs the disciples to cast their nets again, and the disciples do so, and only after their boat nearly sinks with the fish caught, does Peter recognize that the stranger is Jesus. That Gospel then ends with these wonderful words, “There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (21:25.) John thinks these appearances happen all the time—he says, in effect to us, look for Jesus in your own lives. Jesus says to us as to Thomas, “You have believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.” (20:29.)
That was then. What about now? Consider three ways in which we may look for the resurrected Jesus to encounter us today:
1) CHRIST IS PRESENT IN WORDS HEARD. Christ may be heard in the Bible, in sermons, prayers, hymns, or even in the words from friends or strangers. My Grannie told me how my Grandpa died. She called to him three times to come for lunch when he was upstairs in his study, working on a sermon. He did not answer, so she went up. As she put her hand on the doorknob of his study, she distinctly heard a voice say, “My grace is sufficient for you”. These are words that the apostle Paul records that he heard Christ speak to him in a vision (2 Corinthians 12:8). “My grace is sufficient for you.” Grannie opened the door and found Grandpa dead, slumped over his roll-top desk. It was just a few words she heard, in a moment’s hearing, an auditory glimpse of Jesus, yet she knew who spoke to her. She was sustained by that experience not just through her time of mourning, but for the rest of her life.
2) CHRIST IS PRESENT SERVING PEOPLE IN NEED, the sick, the hungry, the poor, the grieving. In the Lord’s Supper, when we take, bless, break, and give the bread, he is presiding and makes us a community in his blood.
The Rev. Dr. Stephen Farris, who has preached here many times, once visited a church where his father had been the minister. An elderly woman spoke to him about his parents well, whom she remembered well. Their newborn baby girl has died, just a few days old. On a Sunday shortly after, Stephen’s mother attended church and was in the choir, sitting as usual directly behind his father in the pulpit. As he began preaching, he could hear her quiet sobs behind him. He reached back behind him through the folds of his gown, grasped her hand, and held it until he finished the sermon. Are acts of kindness like that not a glimpse of Christ?
3) CHRIST IS PRESENT IN UNEXPECTED PLACES. A woman in Windsor went away to stay with friends in Ottawa for a week, following the funeral of her husband. When she returned to her house, she closed the door, felt terribly alone, and was desperately worried about her son in jail in Detroit. She left her bags at the door and went upstairs in tears. She said she heard Jesus speak to her, saying, “Do you not think that I can be as present to your son behind bars as I am present to you?”
A friend[2] tells of Ruth Graham, wife of evangelist Billy Graham, visiting the huge Angola Prison in Louisiana. Violence there had dropped by a miraculous 80% after a Baptist Seminary started offering prisoners theological courses and degrees. Some prisoners serving life sentences became ordained and started congregations and hospices within the prison. Ruth was struck with how depressing the prison was. She spoke to one inmate who became a pastor. “Paul,” she blurted out, “with only prison life ahead of you in this dreary, dull, gray place, how can you hang on to hope?” Paul smiled. “Well, Mrs. Graham,” he offered, “as you know, hope is a person, and I have fallen head over heels in love with him.””
I do not know in what circumstances you find yourself today. But I know that the risen Christ, through the Holy Spirit, continues to care for all people, often incognito. I suspect that if, as a church, we gave our personal testimonies more often to one another, we all might say, “There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
[1] “Phoebe Zerwick, “What Deathbed Visions Teach Us About Living”, The New York Times, Mar 13, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/magazine/deathbed-visions-research.html.
[2] Professor John Rottman of Calvin Seminary.