Reflection: Valleys

April 19, 2026

LaSalle

“Listen”

10:15

We begin by reading the ending first…

Luke 24:13-35

²⁸As they came near the village to which they were going, Jesus walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹But 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. ³⁰When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. ³²They 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?” ³³That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. ³⁴They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

There’s so much in this classic story of the Walk to Emmaus to love.  

It ends (or is it the beginning?) with breaking bread, communion.

Jesus revealing himself to them.  Becoming known, because you don’t understand in order to believe, you believe in order to understand.

Do you love someone only after getting to know them.  Or do you love them and then get to know them.  That joyous discovery. 

Ghosts don’t need to gnosh.  Casper doesn’t need a snack. 

Wherever I’ve traveled, people bond and get to know each other over a meal.  The gift of hospitality.  Welcome.   I especially love it when persons get to share food from their culture. Food does indeed feed the soul.  It’s where we get to see an invisible Jesus bringing us together. 

Back in Danville, Pennsylvania, where I served we have our Jubilee Kitchen.  It wasn’t meant to become a soup kitchen. But it did.  Soup kitchens are best a last resort.  When it came my congregation’s turn with our confirmation class, we tried to get away from the soup line.  We prepared the meal family style.  That’s harder to do.  The guests weren’t sure what to do until some of the mommies at the table started serving the others, which was the whole idea.  They felt dignity and pride.  We also asked the guests to clear their plates and bring them to the kitchen when done.  That didn’t work out so well. 

But what gets these disciples to share bread with Jesus?  “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the the love you make.”

Now we go back to verse 13:

¹³Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁴and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵While they were talking [homileo – homiletics in a group] and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. ¹⁸Then 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?” ¹⁹He 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, ²⁰and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹But 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. ²²Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³and 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. ²⁴Some 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.” ²⁵Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” ²⁷Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

~~~

There’s so much in this classic story of the Walk to Emmaus to love. 

Three evenings ago, Thursday:  the upper room, foot-washing, good times.

Two evenings ago, Friday night:  it all came crashing down.  Jesus crucified and buried.

One evening ago, Saturday:  them scared to death, insecure, locking others out, locking themselves in.  Fear is real good at making us imprison ourselves in own jails.  Fear, along with that anger of grief and guilt.  That lethargy of guilt and grief.

And now, Sunday, they are getting out of Dodge. 

~~~

There’s so much in this classic story of the Walk to Emmaus to love. 

Such as the guys busy talking.  Hey, it’s seven miles.  Like walking from here to the other side of Greely.  In the afternoon and then at night. At least no truck traffic.

¹⁴While they were talking about these things…

This line refers to them telling about Jesus, them on the road to Emmaus, them trying to figure it all out. 

Talking about this, speaking about this…

A more tantalizing, telling, accurate translation would be this:

While they were TELLING about this…

Telling.  Can also mean ‘chattering.’  Have you ever been in a room with a bunch of pastors discussing the Bible?  Discussion is being polite.  How quick discussion becomes argument, proving themselves right.

Man-talk in other words, when together in a room discussing problems with zoning or taxes.  Whether Congress, White House, church meeting, VFW, football stadiums, Dunkin Donuts. 

Talking AT, rarely talking WITH. 

Now, this may surprise you, but Men tend to declare.  Language becomes a tool for combat or sport, a means for achieving status, to show off,  to impress everyone in the room how much they think they know, ever convinced that my cause, my opinion, my position is just and right and righteous, and I cannot believe all those others do not agree with me.

It is very telling Luke did not write:   While they were LISTENING about this...

Social media must have been invented to be the perfect declarative communication medium: 

Until along comes Jesus.  Jesus inspiring them to pause and finally listen.  When you learn to really listen, that’s when we begin to open our eyes and see the other person for who they really are. 

Let’s return to Dunce Caps –dunce caps on the heads of all those today who substitute perceptions and opinions with knowledge, facts, truth. 

A wise old owl sat in an oak

The more he heard the less he spoke

The less he spoke the more he heard

Why aren’t we all like that wise old bird?

~~~

What made President Lincoln such a great President, and such a great man: his discipline of listening. 

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin framed it this way:

His capacity to listen to differing points of view, to let his advisors argue with him, question his assumptions. He created a climate in which people felt free to disagree without fear of consequences.

Or as the saying goes, “We have two ears, but only one mouth; so a good leader will listen twice as much as he shouts” 

~~~

There’s so much in this classic story of the Walk to Emmaus to love. 

Such as Jesus walking with them and them not realizing it.  Jesus speaking to us through so many sources

Long ago I once used this reading of the walk to Emmaus as a funeral text for a man born in the manse.  His father, some years dead, was a much revered pastor.   His mother was a member of my first congregation and distressed over her wastrel of a son.  He had his share of troubles.  Born in the manse, he had grown cynical of church.  Now he had died before she did. 

The spirit spoke and this Emmaus scripture became his funeral message.  How often we walk with Jesus but fail to recognize him or hear Jesus speaking through others. The man died of his habits never able to realize he had a friend walking alongside him talking to him and hoping he would open his eyes, his mind, his heart.

Some compare the story of Emmaus to the whole journey of our years.  The seven miles becomes our walk from birth to grave and when we break bread with Jesus.

Jesus walking with them and them not realizing it.  Jesus speaking to us through so many sources

~~~

There’s so much in this classic story of the Walk to Emmaus to love. 

Such as these fellows changing their plans. 

I love the origin of the phrase, “Stuck in a rut.”   A nice turn of a phrase. 

Goes back to wagon wheels and trails.   In Jersey we just have potholes.  Can you still see ruts  out here?  Certainly in Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, some of the ruts left by the thousands of wagons following the same trail – Oregon Trail, Sante Fe Trail.  Some feet deep.  Mud, wagon wheels, hot sun, ruts gouged deeper and deeper.    Once they’re in the rut, tough to change direction.   

Not as if a change in direction ever comes willingly.  Yet, how often have we benefited from an unexpected change in plans?   Jesus intervening.   Last thing on earth I wanted to be was a pastor.  I was going to go into law and politics.  I love both.  But I heard the Bible preached and I came to realize the law can prevent me from lynching my neighbor but the law cannot make me love my neighbor.  Give us a Jesus world where the world isn’t us versus them.  Where we practice “Civil Reciprocity,” owing each other respect, manners, respect. Westminster Presbyterian Church

Fort Collins

April 26, 2026

10 AM

Psalm 23:1-6

¹   The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.²        He makes me lie down in green pastures;     he leads me beside still waters;³        he restores my soul.     He leads me in right paths          for his name’s sake.

⁴   Even though I walk through the darkest valley,          I fear no evil;     for you are with me;          your rod and your staff —          they comfort me.

⁵   You prepare a table before me          in the presence of my enemies;     you anoint my head with oil;          my cup overflows.⁶   Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me          all the days of my life,     and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord          my whole life long.

Ordained in 1978 in my home church in Jersey -- Fanwood Presbyterian Church -- I’ve read Psalm 23 a few times.

[Introduce myself – thank for your reception and your concerns for us, the welcome]

Invariably Psalm 23 is predictably read at funerals.  I’ve used in for every funeral I performed – at last count, 204, not counting my eleven years at my first congregation, a little country church in Pennsylvania. 

We recite Psalm 23 for more than the comfort it provides.  We might hear it as the perfect summary of our days.

Psalm 23 – the first stanza speaks to our little Edith, born last July, a few weeks in the NIC-U – our fourth grandchild, three living.  Edith is why we came to Fort Collins a year ago May. Daughter and son-in-law said a summer before how she needed a grandma.  Gran giving care, babies needing care and security – protected, defended -- whether cabinet locks or warm bottle or Daddy’s funny faces or Mommy’s kisses.  Halcyon happiness from not being in control.  Green pastures.  Still waters.  And I will sing a lullaby…

The last stanza?  Why we use it for funerals.  The promise, as we approach the inevitable end (or is it the real beginning?)   Again, not in control.

Ah, but it’s the middle stanza that speaks, o dear, of adulthood.  When we have to grow up, mostly with the awareness that life is hard and oft unfair.  Kind-of in charge at times, too aware how much happens beyond our control.  The blessing of the dark night of soul which awakens us to ourselves and our need for our Lord – as Lincoln once said: “I have been driven to my knees because I had nowhere else to go.”

The Bible tells us the whole purpose of humanity is to get close as we can to justice. 

~~~

Too often we use the word ‘tragedy’ when we really mean ‘moral atrocity’ or ‘travesty.’

Nonetheless, thank God, for we can still discover flowers in this Psalm 23 valley, moments of joy, when rays of the sun break though cloudy days.  The gift of crafting beauty from amidst what nature, creation, supplies, from human nature too.  When darkest, we see the stars clearest.  Look, a star taking us to Bethlehem.

~~~

Why do we suffer?   Why does evil happen? 

In our theology circles, this is a Question of Theodicy:  the question of the justice of God.  Given what we read or hear from the news is God really just?   Gee, God must really be out of the loop. 

It is the ancient question.  Ageless.  Eternal.  It is the question of fire and ice, terrible and wonderful all together.  Dreadful, awful, tremendous.  It is the reason we have religion.  And the reason we renounce religion. 

Well, suffering and atrocity don’t come from God.  Can’t.  God:  as verb, as this dynamic action we call God, being all holy, all good, all true, all loving. Thus, misery, forsakenness, cannot be the will of God God is just.  Life just isn’t.  We all have reasons for lamentation.  Life often isn’t nice.  Who or what will define us?

Those valleys… But who among us would want to go back to being babies? 

~~~

Now we begin delving into the deep.  We descend into the impassible gulf.  It cannot be lept, only descended into.  With bare feet, we tred on shards of broken glass.

The bitterest truth is that there can be a why suffering -- when you press the issue the way you press a wound to staunch bleeding.  There is a reason for our troubles, our losses, and very often it stems from our own decisions – I bear the scar on my hand, five stiches from being frustrated, angry, in 3^rd grade and pounding my first through the glass of our front door.  A little bloody.

Or suffering from the decisions of others. Decisions that cause famines, downsizing of businesses we built, decisions that harm others.  If someone is killed in a car accident, does it really qualify as an accident? Is it an accident if someone ran the red light or was using their cell phone?  

Or suffering from the caprice of an indifferent nature.  O look, a tumor.  O look, drought, flood, wildfire, germs – oftimes exacerbated by our decisions.

We travel through these valleys of probabilities. 

There can be a why.  This why can obsess us.  ‘Why’ may change our understanding of the facts but cannot change the facts.  So we focus on the how.  How do we wake up tomorrow?  How do we keep going?  How, in fear and trembling, do we cling to faith and hope?  How do we hold onto love and let love hold onto us?  How do we let Jesus’ compassion comfort our aching, hungry hearts and fill the canyon in our souls?  How?

Looks like suffering is the theme today – captured poetically by the middle stanza of Psalm 23 – walking through those valleys of deep darkness.  Whence God?

Well, Peter, in today’s text, offers an answer.  As Pastor Eric explained, Peter wrote to encourage exiled Christians being persecuted for being Christian.  Pastor Eric said:  “Holding onto encouragement and hope in a world not always friendly.” Peter adds a fourth reason for suffering: By serving Christ Jesus rather than using Jesus as a mascot to serve our ambitions. 

1 Peter 2:19-25

¹⁹For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering (pashontes) unjustly. ²⁰If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval [xarpis]. ²¹For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered [epathen] for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.²²   “He committed no sin,          and no deceit was found in his mouth.”²³When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. ²⁴He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. ²⁵For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian [overseer episkopan] of your souls.

Suffering by our choices.  Suffering by others.  Suffering by nature.  Now suffering that results when you do good – righteous suffering – not to be confused with inconvenience.  A fine professor who taught for years in Beirut mentioned how missionaries who lack a refrigerator don’t qualify as suffering for Christ.  Nor sleeping in sleeping bags in the Yucatan, or using latrines --- a happy adventure.  Though you might enjoy porcelain.  Been there in Honduras and Nicaragua.  Make sure you carry an extra 1/3 roll of toilet paper.  Flatten it for your knapsack. 

Peter writes about enduring intentionally against sin and unjust ways, to sweat, risk, labor for a Godly cause. 

Peter speaks of the price of standing up against hatred, for standing up for the will of God revealed in Jesus.  At all costs.  Without counting on getting credit or applause.  Just because it’s the righteous thing to do.

Among our first Sundays here I admired Pastor Eric’s respect for Bonhoeffer and him paying the cost of discipleship for a righteous cause opposing Naziism.  The Cost of Discipleship.  Worth the price. Bonhoeffer, hanged for his faith, remains honored.  Despotic Hitler remains in the trash bin of history. 

Darn it all.   Why won’t the Word of God come to us while we are sitting in our L-Z Boy?  Nope.

A devotion from the 14^th century: true then, true now:

You must forget how you feel about yourself; only look at him and see how he feels about you. He wants to assure you of his love. All the hurt and distress that has come to you only moves him to love you for your weakness or your blindness. He wants to surround you with his love. Only come to him and his tender touch will restore you.  [Christ Jesus] didn’t say ‘You won’t be tempested, you won’t suffer travail, you won’t suffer dis-ease'; but he said,

'Thou shalt not be overcome.

― Julian (Juliana) of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

I recall my first real fistfight.  It’s a bad thing to start a fight, another thing to fight to defend others.  There was a fellow who kept bullying my friend Mike Juppe.  Mike was a small guy and picked on a lot.  Beside him being my friend, I was Junior High Class President and it was my job to stand up to bullies.

We two, trailed by the gang, went into the lavatory.  He started punching me.  It was so silly, I started laughing, finally telling him: ”I have two older brothers who punch better than you.”  Disgusted and embarrassed he stomped out.  He left Mike alone from then on.

Taking the hits for a goodly cause.

I think of Atticus Finch, from our nation’s Greatest American novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  Defending against all odds ill-treated Tom Robinson. Atticus spat on by pathetic Bob Ewell, himself a victim of his poverty and bigotry, Atticus refusing to retaliate, simply wiping his face with his handkerchief.

Taking the hits for goodly cause.

I think of those crossing Selma Bridge.  Stood on that bridge afew years back on a pilgrimage.

Taking the hits for goodly cause.

I think of those rescuing children right now.

Taking the hits for goodly cause.

I think of Janusz Korchak.  We think we know what is important.  Given the news today, do we? 

From a book, I got to know this great man who truly understood what worthy suffering is.  

Korchak was a pediatrician, educator, humanitarian.  He was one of the most famous men in Poland, renown for his work with children, especially orphans, especially Jewish orphans cared for in two orphanages in Warsaw.  Think Dr. Spock, Fred Rogers, Dr. Seuss combined.  Until August, 1942.  The Gestapo demanded that his orphans be loaded aboard the cattle cars to be transported to Treblinka  Extermination Camp.  The Nazi’s informed Dr. Janusz Korczak that he was too important so he would remain behind.  Numerous times he refused to abandon his children.   Even though I walk through the Valley of Deepest Darkness.

An eyewitness described the scene at the railway: 

Janusz Korczak was marching, his head bent forward, holding the hand of a child, without a hat, a leather belt around his waist, and wearing high boots. A few nurses were followed by two hundred children, dressed in clean and meticulously cared for clothes [each carried a blue knapsack and a favorite book or toy], as they were being carried to the altar.

Janusz Korczak understood real greatness. Plenty of so-called Christians could take a lesson from this Jewish man, as we did 2,000 years ago. 

Do you see the children marching in clean clothes, carrying knapsacks, holding a special toy?

~~~

The measure of it all?  What Peter writes: Jesus.  Jesus -- redemptive, sacrificial, wounded for the Godly cause,

Peter writes, and Jesus reveals, to suffer because you care, because you love God and your neighbor and your enemy, because you endeavor to demonstrate in the valley the reign of God as revealed by the Word of God. 

Jesus on the tree, on the cross, because of our sins, because he had to reveal who we are and what we do without faith in God, how we have to face ourselves for us to be redeemed amidst the valley.  We go through the cross to receive the joy.  Only way. 

Jesus crucified.  All the more sacrificial and gutsy, for I believe he didn’t expect resurrection.  Nope.  His prophecies reflected how he thought his sacrifice would inspire all people to rise up in faith and goodness and righteousness.   Jesus, Easter surprised.

For we never have truly wept until we have cried for others.  We only see the world clearly through tears. 

On Palm Sunday Pastor Eric helped teach the kids how the word ‘Hosanna’ means ‘save us’ – notice it isn’t ‘save me,’ it is ‘save us’.

Jesus gives us a different word to listen to, saner than worldly noise. 

Just as Jesus caused those once scared, confused men to change direction.   I doubt they had planned to walk back to Jerusalem at night – 7 more miles and back into the fray.  But now, them no longer afraid of what might happen.  Now given new purpose, new vision, new hope.  Opening their minds, eyes, and hearts to the opportunities to bear witness, come what may.