Walking Companion
The Rev’d Devin McLachlan
Fourth Sunday of Easter
19 April, 2026
Luke 24.13–35, The Road to Emmaus
They stood still, looking sad.
One of the best things my brother ever did for me was to take me out hiking in the Olympic mountains a few days after our father’s funeral. It was about a month after my 18th birthday, and went out to the Olympics. They are a temperate rainforest in the Pacific Northwest.
It was an incredibly healing three or four days, of enormous old growth cedar trees and mossy logs and rolling glacial rivers over rounded stones. There was bird song in the air. There was a near-constant mist with the occasional surprise of sunlight. There were steep paths to work out my grief on, walking up and down.I have no idea where we went. I'm pretty sure my brother had a map. I didn't have a clue.
But there is something deeply healing about heading out onto the road.
It was true on the road to Emmaus, and it’s true today. But here’s something I didn’t really click on for the first half century I’ve been hearing this story —which is that Jesus was also travelling along the road.
συνεπορεύετο (syne-poreueto) is the verb Luke uses; Jesus began travellingwith them. They didn’t bump into Jesus, nor did he pass them by. . He went from being a stranger to traveling with them. Just like like that in that wonderful suddenness that the gospels have. It's an almost Markan moment, rather than Lukan, in its immediacy: Suddenly Jesus was there and walking alongside them. He became in the end, quite literally, their companion.[1]
I don’t know which way Cleopas and the disciple were headed — towards Emmaus, or simply just getting away from Jerusalem like Brave Sir Robin. It’s clear that the disciples had no clear plan; they were grieving, confused, heartbroken and sad, and so they set out on the road.
I love that scholars cannot agree where Emmaus is — it is a very generic place name and the most ancient manuscripts we have give the distance as anywhere from 7 to 160 stades,[2]
I think that vagueness is deliberate on Luke’s part, a stylistic confusion symbolic of the disciples own confused journey. It was not important where the two disciples where headed, just that it was away from Jerusalem, with no clear plan in mind beyond escape and grief.
And in that very broken journey, Jesus began travelling with them. Jesus, Luke writes, drew near — using the same word the synoptic Gospels use when Jesus says the Kingdom is at hand.
You and I, we are only sometimes good at drawing near to God. But Jesus, desires always to draw near to us. All the time, God draws near, to walk alongside us in our grief and confusion. To share the story that the prophets have been telling for ages. To ask us to tell our story. I love that moment in the Gospel today, Jesus innocently asking: “What things?”
People need to talk when important things happen to us, Barbara Crofton writes. We make a story out of the events in our lives. We discern the manner in which they fit together, or else the randomness of life overwhelms us. And, when terrible things happen – even life-threatening things, physical things, events demanding a practical and immediate response – we continue to need to make a story of it in order to get through it.
Some of us do that naturally. Some of us don't know when to shut up. (That’s me.) Some of us struggle and need to be cued by Jesus.
What things? Jesus asks. They stood still and looked sad. And so Jesus invited them to begin telling their story, and he shared stories of his own.
Here’s a little piece that might be part of your story: How may of you are Godparents? Hold up your hand if you’re a godparent. Thank you for your ministry. And most of you here have godparents, or if you were baptised as an adult you may have sponsors, mentors, and the witnesses of a whole congregation.
You might be surprised to learn that our word ‘gossip’ comes from the Old English ‘God sib’ — God siblings, the relationship between two godparents. The word didn’t originally refer to backbiting and whispering that gets condemned in the epistles. It was that god sibs were – and are – expected to talk about, and with, their godchildren.
Whether or not we are godparents, as Christians we find, that people need traveling companions to share their joy, to share their grief. To set aside time to listen. Even if you have to bound it, to say I have a quarter hour or I have two miles or 60 stadea and I want to hear your story. To walk, to travel alongside ,sometimes literally. An invitation to a meal, to a prayer ,to a blessing, to be a companion — literally to share bread.
As they came near the village to which they were going, Jesus walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.”
And it was in that invitation that their sorrow was changed to joy. Abide with us, the disciples say. The King James Version has it quite clearly and it will be familiar to those of you who attend Compline: Abide with us, for the night is at hand and the day is now past.
Abide with us, through walking and stories. Through hospitality and breaking bread. Even just by slowing down and letting Jesus catch you up on the road.
That is is a ministry we all can do: to journey for a moment alongside a friend or a stranger. To tell stories, and share a meal, and break bread. We journey and tell stories and break bread because that is what the risen Lord has done for us. And in doing so, he has turned our sorrow into joy and made our joys ever more complete.
So, you might make plans today over coffee after church with someone you haven't seen for a while or an old friend or a newcomer. You might drop a note to your godchild or telephone one of your godparents.
The world is complicated, worrisome, confusing. We find ourselves turned around, walking away from Jerusalem instead of towards it. Now is the time to slow our pace and listen; to tell stories, to share meals and break bread. Making companions of one another. Making a companion of the one who abides with us always, even Jesus Christ, our constant companion on the road.
[1] Middle English: from Old French compaignon, literally ‘one who breaks bread with another’, based on Latin com- ‘together with’ + panis ‘bread’.
[2] “Seven Stades to Emmaus” Stephen Reece, New Testament Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2 https://www.academia.edu/30821102/Seven_Stades_to_Emmaus