Hi everyone,

Welcome to worship for this 3rd Sunday of Easter, landing on April 19, 2026!

The bulletin for this service can be found here. You can use it to follow along with the service and sermon, or just with the words on your screen. The sermon is also on this page below the video.

If you’d like a fuller online worship experience, you are invited to have a lit candle in your space that can be extinguished near the end of the service after the sending hymn. You are also welcome to participate in communion if you’re comfortable, by having something small to eat and drink prepared for the right time in the service. Further instruction will be given at the appropriate time.

May God’s presence be apparent to you and fill you with hope and love, this day and always!

God of all, open our eyes this day to your presence among us, that our hearts might burn with more zeal for your truth, love, and community through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Have you seen God lately?

I mean, not literally seen God with your bare eyes, like just chillin’ on your living room couch, or walking a dog down the street, or in some random AI-generated picture posted on social media or something, but I mean have you seen, in the past while, evidence of God’s presence in and around your life?  Have you, in the not-too-distant past, felt the truth of God’s promises of grace and mercy?  Have you recently been moved by God’s apparent love for you or those around you or even those you don’t know personally? 

I’m not asking you all this in a judgemental way or anything, but just to get your thinking juices flowing in how we could better recognise God working and moving and just being in and around our lives.  I think about this thing we started doing here at Grace way back in 2019.  If you remember, we used to start our worship services with an “open mic” type thing that we called God moments.  We’d ask people to come up here to the front (or maybe just stay in their seats if they were shy) and share about something that happened that week where they most clearly saw God or felt God’s presence or just knew that God was with them.  Stories ranged from finding safety at a time when things were looking unsafe, or encountering a friendly stranger during a dark or lonely time, or someone even shared how his 10-year-old son showed great care and concern for him right after he stumbled off his bike and fell into a lake.  Admittedly, that last one was pretty interesting and slightly humorous, although I won’t tell you who the pastor was that shared it.

I thought this “God Moment” sharing idea was pretty good while it lasted.  I remember enjoying hearing the stories that were told, as it was a good way for us here to get to know each other better.  It seemed helpful to us to be reminded that God is with us just as God had promised, as we learned together how we could see God more clearly.  And I could tell that this time of openness, sharing, and listening to these God Moments that were becoming more apparent and prominent in our lives put us in a better place to engage in the worship that immediately followed.  So it really was good while it lasted.

But then, the pandemic happened, and we had to shift how we did church.  And, in the hustle and bustle of pivoting our worship online, in the adjusting of the whole structure of our services to be more conducive to a 16:9 aspect ratio, and in the whole learning curve of figuring out new technology and new ways of doing old things, this time of sharing our God Moments was sadly dropped.

Of course, I’d blame the pandemic and the disruption it caused to our everyday lives for the loss of this practice.  Of course, I’d say that it was in the consideration of the time constraints that people had that forced us to streamline and make certain cuts so that people didn’t have to stare at their computer screens for too long.  Of course, I would have said that it was just a logistical nightmare to get these God Moment submissions from anyone who wanted to share in time for the recording, editing, and posting of our videos that it was easier to just not.

I mean, if anyone asked why we stopped sharing our God moments, those would be the reasons that I’d give because… there’s no way that we would have just… stopped seeing God, right?

But if there ever was a time that people actually did stop seeing God, perhaps the pandemic would have been one of them.  When things were so different, so disruptive, so depressing, it is always harder to see any good news or blessing in our lives.  In a period of our collective histories that was so not what we wanted, so not what we had expected or hoped for, or so not what we might think we deserved or were entitled to, I can see how God, to us, may have become unrecognisable.  In difficult times like the pandemic and all that it was and wasn’t for us, it might have seemed like those God moments became real scarce real fast, and it might even feel like God had left us entirely.

And I would imagine that this is what the disciples and the followers of Jesus felt after witnessing their teacher and mentor on trial for being a fraud.  I would think that their worlds would have been crushed when they saw the one that they had supposed would be their saviour hanging on a cross like a common criminal.  I would assume that their faith would have been obliterated as they saw Jesus, all he was about, all that he stood for, and all that they had hoped in, ended by the powers that be by putting him to death.

How could God be seen in that?  How could God even be present in any way in such pain and torture?  How could they not think that God had left them when they were feeling such despair?

And so it’s in this context and frame of mind that Jesus meets Cleopas and his unnamed friend on the road to Emmaus.  It’s in the thick of these emotions when Jesus joins them on their journey.  It’s in this disappointment, deflation, and desolation that they are feeling when Jesus appears.

So I can kind of understand why these disciples didn’t recognise him right away, as they weren’t exactly expecting him.  In fact, Jesus might have been the last person that they would have thought to appear in front of them.  Sure, they were told a wild tale that Jesus was back.  They were given some eye witness accounts of an empty tomb.  They might have even been reminded that this is what Jesus was teaching them all along.

But still, they couldn’t see Jesus in this fresh-from-under-a-rock stranger that butt in their conversation and had no idea of what was going on in world news.  They couldn’t recognise Jesus when this stranger was mansplaining to them what the scriptures say and how all these things were to happen.  They didn’t realise it was Jesus right in front of them as they weren’t feeling like they were empathized with, given compassion to, or even loved… not yet anyway.

So isn’t it funny that it’s exactly in these wrong places that we look for Jesus?  Like maybe in the fear that will drive us behind closed and locked doors.  Maybe in our paradigms and understandings of the world that tells us we can contain others in the tombs and boxes that we stuff them into.  Or maybe even in our yearning for strength and control that makes us turn to instruments of destruction and death.  We might try to find or bring out Jesus in these places and are surprised when we don’t or can’t.

Because… that’s not where Cleopas and his buddy ended up seeing Jesus at all.  That’s not where Jesus’ nature and character and lessons for life were revealed.  That’s not where they had their divine God Moment.

It wasn’t in the correcting, but it was in the community.  it wasn’t in the fear-mongering, but it was in the fellowship.  It wasn’t in the breaking down of opposing opinions and thoughts and shaming others as wrong, but it was in the breaking of bread and sharing and showing love.  Not in rebuke, but in reconciliation.  Not in the hurt, but in the healing.  Not in the genocide of difference, but in the grace of the divine.

I know, it’s hard to see God in a world that is so thirsty for more power.  It’s difficult to live out or even remember Jesus’ teachings in a world that tells us that we’re judged by our wealth, how respected we are, and how many “likes” and subscribers we have.  It’s darn near impossible to have God moments when we’re in a world that so blinds us with empty promises.  But let’s not forget what we learn on the road to Emmaus, where Jesus is concretely conceptualised in compassion, care, and community.  Where Jesus is most manifested in the surprise meeting, the showing of mercy, and the sharing of a meal.  Where Jesus is so radiantly recognised in relationship.

Friends, it’s in all this where the good news of the gospel can be revealed.  It’s in the love and equality of all people where Jesus is present.  It’s in the openness and humility in accepting the value and worth of others, regardless of who they are, where they’re from, or even what they believe, that we experience these God Moments.

So I ask again, have you seen God lately?

I have.  In the calling by name as with Mary in the garden.  In the sharing of peace as with the disciples in the upper room.  And in the breaking of bread with all the saints of all times and places, that brings to us the healing and forgiveness of these resurrective God moments. 

Thanks be to God.  Amen.