409 Three Life Lessons

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From “Three Life Lessons”, originally shared on April 16, 2026. It was the 409^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   What can we learn about building a life on the road with Jesus? Three things. Tomorrow, we’re going to find out what they are.

   I served a congregation in Compton, California for 9 years and then a congregation in San Dimas, California for almost 32 years. Yes, I travelled “Straight Outta Compton” to the home of “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”.

   It wasn’t a long trip, but it was a momentous one.

   In addition to regular church and community ministry, I was involved in property improvements inside and outside the church in Compton, and we built a new parish hall and a new, larger, worship and administration building in San Dimas.

   I learned a few things in the process of those projects.

   Three of those lessons stand out, and they all are reflected in Gospel reading that will be shared all over the world this coming Sunday, Luke 24:13-35.

  First life lesson: anyone can hand you a bill. That doesn’t mean that you have to pay it.

   We frequently had bills handed to us during construction that we disputed. Things happened that were not our fault. Work was done that was not contracted. Plans we designed were not followed.

   Jesus had died on the cross. It was God’s plan. Three days later, two of his discouraged followers were leaving Jerusalem, headed for a village about 7 miles away called Emmaus.

   It wasn’t a long trip, but it was momentous.

   On the way, Jesus caught up with them, but they didn’t recognize him. They thought he was dead.

   Who wouldn’t? His disciple John and many others had seen him dead.

   They were heartbroken as they walked, and Jesus asked them what had happened.

   We hear the answer in Luke 24:18-21,

¹⁸ Then 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?” ¹⁹ He 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, ²⁰ and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹ But 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.

   They thought that they were living in a nightmare. They thought that their redeemer was dead. They thought that they had run up a debt for their sins before God, and that they were going to have to pay that bill themselves.

   Did they have to pay that bill? Do we?

   Nope!

   They were on the edge of figuring this out. Women said that they had gone to Jesus’ tomb early that morning and found it empty. Angels had told the women that Jesus had taken his life back again and risen from the dead! The disciples had seen the empty tomb!

   Jesus is astounded that they haven’t figured out what was going on. Jesus opened their eyes to see that everything that had been prophesied in the Bible about the human debt for sin had just been fulfilled in Jesus!

   Their debt of sin had been stamped, “Paid in Full” by Jesus’ death on the cross!

   We learn the same life lesson when we come to live the Christian life.

   When a person becomes a Christian, or goes through a renewed faith and begins experiencing a life transformed by God, friends, and family, and co-workers will notice.

   We are made a new creation. We are born again. When that happens, and people find out, some of them will begin doing things to irritate you just to see if they can get a rise out of you.

   They will try to get you to do things that are contrary to your new life. They will throw the “gotcha” questions at you, give you a demeaning nickname, distance themselves from you, accuse you of being “holier than thou”, or of thinking that you’re better than them. They will say they miss the old you and will try to pull you back to your old self.

   The thing is that you don’t owe them anything, neither beliefs nor behaviors.

   Sometimes, in fact, it takes the hand of God for you to recognize who your friends and family truly are, and who really wants the best for you, and who wants to build you up, to point you to a better future, and to guide you forward.

   You have been made a new Creation by God. The bill for your debt of sin has been paid.

   Second life lesson: you can have it done well, you can have it done fast, and you can have it done cheap. Pick any two.

   If it’s done fast and well, it won’t be cheap. If it’s done well and cheap, it won’t be done fast. If it’s done fast and cheap, it won’t be done well.

   Deitrich Bonhoffer, the German Lutheran pastor murdered by the Nazi’s for his active opposition to the fascists in World War II, spoke to Christians about “cheap grace”. God’s selfless love for us, God’s grace, is free. But it was never cheap. It came only through the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross, giving his life and then taking it back again in his Resurrection.

   This expensive grace is what Jesus reveals when he agrees to stay with the disciples in Emmaus. They still don’t realise that they are with the risen Jesus. But then this happens when they sit down for dinner, in Luke 24:30-31,

³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

   That’s right, they recognized him in the breaking of bread. They realized that they were communing with Jesus. And in that moment, he vanished from their sight, because he was now within them.

   They would no longer see Jesus. They would know him in Holy Communion.

   The 16th century Church reformer Martin Luther described Holy Communion in his Small Catechism, beginning with a question and an answer:

“What is Holy Communion?

   Holy Communion is the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ given with bread and wine, instituted by Christ himself for us to eat and to drink.”

   The forms of bread and wine don’t physically change, but Jesus becomes present in those forms when the words of institution are said by someone trained and ordained for the good order of the sacrament. Those words begin, “In the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread...”

   Jesus instituted Holy Communion in the context of his betrayal unto death on the cross.

   The road to the cross wasn’t long, but it was momentous.

   Sally and I take short drives on Historic Route 66 when we are out running errands. It goes right through the area where Sally and I and, for a while, our son James have lived for almost 40 years.

   Route 66 was one of the first American highways and was synonymous with the romance of the road and new starts for those migrating west. It was popular as a vacation adventure highway when the road was dotted with oddities and local treasures, stretching from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California.

   Its impact on popular culture included the song, “Get Your Kicks On Route 66” and the “Route 66” TV series.

   It was eventually replaced by the United States Interstate system in1985, but it retains its status for many as a highway of possibilities, a road of the imagination, as Historic Route 66.

   Roads are places where change takes form, where work becomes possible, where missionary journeys happen, where lives are transformed.

   In fact, the early Christian movement was known as “The Way” long before it was known as Christianity.

   And how does Jesus describe himself? He says, in John 14:6,

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

   The life of a disciple is built on the work of Jesus on the cross. We are sinners and therefore separated by Sin from the holy God. Jesus is God in flesh and fully human at the same time. He paid the penalty for our Sin himself. The canyon between us and God is bridged by the cross.

   To be a disciple and live a Christian life isn’t cheap or fast. It took the cross of Jesus Christ done well for us to live well in response to it, and we come into his presence in the forms of bread and wine in Holy Communion.

   God builds the foundation of our lives as Christians on the Word, embodied now through the Bible, and on the Sacraments, which are Baptism and Holy Communion.

   The early Christians spent 3-years in instruction before they were welcomed as full members of a local church. If our desire to serve involves no cross-bearing and does not bring meaningful life transformation, it is simply a superficial nod to Jesus. It is fast and it is cheap grace. It will not be a life lived well.

   Third life lesson: everything takes longer and costs more.

   A building contractor, a member of our church who was advising our building committee during our worship-and-administration building construction, sent me a picture of a giant yacht with a small motorboat tied behind it.

   The name on the motorboat was, “Original Contract”. The name on the yacht was, “Change Orders”.

   Change orders are the changes to the original contract that are made once work has begun. They can drive up the cost of the project astronomically. But, sometimes, the client doesn’t know what they want until the project has begun, and sometimes they just get a new idea.

   We see this in our Gospel reading for this coming Sunday. The two disciples who had been on the road to Emmaus with Jesus are stunned, they are excited, they don’t know how to process the feelings they had when Jesus opened up the scripture to them.

   Their eyes were opened to who Jesus was when he broke bread with them.

   They left Emmaus immediately and walked the 7 miles back to Jerusalem. They found the 11 remain disciples that had been the closest to Jesus, and the disciples speak first and then he two who were on the road respond, in Luke 24:34-35,

³⁴ They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

   Literature and all the arts are full of stories that take place a road.

   What road are you on, and is it taking you closer to God or farther away?

   As with “change orders” on a building project, sometimes, people who become disciples of Jesus don’t know what they are getting into until God comes alongside them on their life’s road, opens their eyes, enters their true selves, and their life transformation project begins.

   Maybe the word “sometimes” should be changed to pretty much “always”. God always accepts us as we are. Repentant sinners. But God never leaves us as we are. God makes our hearts, by God’s grace, a place that is fitting for the one true holy God to dwell in. That involves basic transformation. We are imperfect sinful human beings.

   The Christian life doesn’t end in perfection until Jesus returns to bring in a new heaven and a new earth. We don’t need perfection to be accepted by God. We need only to acknowledge our need for a Savior, and that we have one in Jesus Christ.

   Our behavior changes and improves not from fear but from faith, from our relationship with God. We are God’s people, and what we do flows out from who we now are.

   We don’t live to get something from God. We live in response to all that God has already done for us at the cross.

   I was standing between the two buildings that we built at the church I served in San Dimas after the new worship and administration building had been dedicated. People were moving from the new building to the reception in the parish hall, and a member of the congregation approached me and said, “Isn’t this wonderful! This is your legacy!”

   I said, “This isn’t my legacy. These are buildings. My legacy is the lives of those who come to receive the gift of faith in Jesus Christ through the ministry that happens in these buildings.”

   That is the same legacy for all of us.

   What is your road to Emmaus? Is it your coming Baptism? Is it a time of renewal in the Holy Spirit? Is it your daily walk of faith in a living, acting, loving, relationship with the one true living God?

   What is your Historic Route 66? Where has Jesus called you to go? And to whom have you been sent to share your story?

   Who will you encounter today, or tomorrow, or any day, who has never heard the story of salvation, or has never allowed it to sink in, or seen at it work in an actual Christian life?

   Pray that God would fill you with the Holy Spirit and then hit the road.

   Share your story with your friends and relatives and whoever you encounter on your life’s road.

   Communicate the new life that exists in Jesus Christ in you in your own words and deeds for others. Jesus, who is the Way, the way, and the truth, and the life.

   Our lives are not long but, by the grace of God, they are momentous.

   We are made a new Creation in Baptism, we are fed for our life’s road with Jesus in Holy Communion, and we are entrusted with the good news of Jesus Christ, the great lessons of life over death forever!

   These are the lessons that lead to life!

   Christ is Risen! He is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia!