Solvitur Ambulando

 Third Sunday of Easter, 2026

Readings

Psalm 100

Acts 2:14a, 36-41

Luke 24:13-35

A colleague who found he had his best sermon ideas while walking his dog was once given a gift by his family – a little paper-weight with the words engraved on it, solvitur ambulando, ‘it will be solved in the walking’.  It’s a phrase first used by the 4th century BC Greek philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope, as a clever comeback against a rival philosopher. Like many preachers before him, my friend had discovered that what we think we don’t have sometimes comes to us fully formed along the way. The important thing is to keep moving, because it’s movement, not stagnation, that stimulates creativity. As another old saying puts it, to travel with hope may often be better than arriving at journey’s end.

But, in today’s reading from St Luke’s Gospel, two pilgrims find themselves on a very different kind of journey. Exhausted and depressed by the despairing events of Passover Week, it seems Cleopas and his companion are going nowhere in particular. 

Incidentally, we don’t quite know where Emmaus was. None of the three ancient villages named Emmaus really fits Luke’s geography as well as being close enough for the disciples to run all the way back to Jerusalem that same evening. And the two travellers are not disciples from either of the official lists Matthew and Luke give us. Luke tells us one of today’s disciples is named Cleopas; perhaps the other unnamed disciple was Mrs Cleopas - one of the Marys who stood at the foot of Jesus’ cross, who is identified in the Fourth Gospel as the wife of Clopas.

So the two friends of Jesus are making a journey without much sense of hope, just walking for the sake of being somewhere else when hope itself - and everything they’ve lived for - seemed to have been extinguished.  Even the rumours of resurrection were unsettling, an apparently false hope that felt like more than they could cope with.

The point is, this is a journey we all know about – the sort of journey that many of us have been on at some point in our own lives, the journey to nowhere in particular. 

But then, Luke’s Gospel tells us, a third pilgrim joins them. Hidden from their recognition, they journey toward nowhere with the risen Jesus, not knowing that everything is about to change, that their own resurrection is as close as the next footstep.  This, too, is an experience we know something about, the experience of being drawn, despite ourselves, at a time when we are most alone and most lost, into a new experience of life, a renewed sense of direction and purpose, perhaps from experiencing the courage and wisdom of others that rekindles our own. I think it’s often like that. Right when our journey seems to be headed nowhere is when, if we are prepared to take notice, God offers us a resurrection experience, a new take on the reality of our own life, a new perspective on those who travel alongside us.  

Resurrection, I would like to suggest, is not just a one-time event that we remember, but part and parcel of God’s way of doing business - the God who reaches into our lives, over and over, and draws new life from our despair and hopelessness. The experience of this is the essence of resurrection faith, and I believe that God holds it out to us over and over again; though whether or not we catch hold of it depends on our reflexes.  

And in this gospel story, still submerged in their own depression and lethargy, the two travellers do something remarkable. Their own hearts are burning with the light that the stranger’s words have kindled in them. As they approach the village of Emmaus, and their companion prepares to walk on to his next destination, even though their hearts are breaking, they invite him to supper. It’s as simple as that - be open to one another; show hospitality. As Jesus himself did.

And, true to the promise Jesus made on the night before he died, it’s exactly in that moment, in the action of breaking and sharing bread, that they recognise the risen Christ in the one who has offered and shared himself with them. There’s a hint here of Eucharistic theology, isn't there? It's what we do together, even today. But, just like Mary of Magdala had realised earlier at the empty tomb that same morning, Cleopas and his companion discover they can’t hold on to the Jesus they knew. As soon as they get the point, he fades from their sight.  

Resurrection experiences come all the time, I think; you just can’t hold on to them. Moments of assurance are fleeting. Inspiration is transitory. Health is temporary. But God is in every moment, filling it with holiness and then moving on to the next and beckoning us to keep up. Faithfulness is about remembering, but it’s also about the sort of movement that creates new memories and new possibilities. And we can’t do resurrection faith on our own; hospitality is the open door to creative transformation.

Perhaps part of what this Gospel story is telling us is that to be transformed by resurrection, we need to be on the move. It’s solvitur ambulando all over again. For the spiritual transformation that comes with resurrection faith, we need pilgrimages - pilgrimages that sometimes involve a physical journey, but always involve journeys into new ways of seeing and understanding. Journeys that mean leaving something behind, and being open to learning something new or finding ourselves in a place we haven’t been before. Because God’s Easter Spirit is found most significantly in process, rather than stability. We need to be on the move, because the God of resurrection is also on the move!

Why? Because resurrection is about a whole new way of being, new ways of seeing and understanding, new relationships. And joy that comes on the other side of heartbreak and loss. As Mary of Magdala had also discovered, resurrection jolts us into seeing familiar landscapes in a new way, daring us to let go of old certainties and limitations and allow God to tease our closed minds into recognising new possibilities and believing in an impossible future.

Resurrection dares us to believe in a paradox. And if we can, then nothing will ever be the same again. Because as followers of the resurrected Christ, we are challenged to find new ways of understanding the world we live in, our relationships with the people around us, and even who we ourselves might be. Resurrection faith is not about holding fast to traditions that never die - including the certainty of ‘old time religion’ - but about strapping ourselves in for a white-knuckle ride through change, dying to much of what we thought would last forever, and waking up to new realities that we never dreamed possible. Discovering that the God of change – the God of resurrection – is always there ahead of us, creating us moment by moment as the future unfurls ahead of us.

Well, maybe we Christians have just got too used to it, coming along to church every year at around this time to find that the season of Easter is upon us. Perhaps we know the Easter story so well that it no longer challenges our sense of what’s reasonable as much as it should. Because, let’s face it, the one thing that resurrection is not, is reasonable!

 Just imagine that very first Easter. Imagine being there. Imagine finding that what experience and common sense, not to mention medical science, all tell you is impossible - has just become the most fundamental reality of your life. Imagine being jolted awake by the realisation that the God of history, the God of scripture, the God of synagogue and timeless liturgy is none other than the God of surprises, the topsy-turvy God who casually blows away all your preconceptions of what’s right and proper and what’s not – the God of resurrection who doesn’t play by the rules.

Because if I’m right – if resurrection faith is fundamentally about creativity and change and new perceptions – if we take seriously the experience of the divine willy-willy of resurrection that transforms everything in human experience that leads to death - into forgiveness and new life – well, what are we going to do differently?

I think part of the answer is about trust, about knowing for sure that even when we don’t know where we’re going, the God who creates the world we live in, and time itself, is going to meet us before we get there. And that’s a pretty good answer for people - like us - who find ourselves living in a world where truth is traded daily for a lie, and where powerful nations and arrogant leaders play dice with people’s lives.

 Part of the answer may also be about understanding resurrection as a process that is begun but not finished in Jesus of Nazareth, because it needs to be completed in us. When we open ourselves to what God wants to show us, when we dare to live Jesus’ own practice of radical hospitality, then Jesus is resurrected in us – the risen life of Jesus is experienced in the Christ space of new possibilities that God creates between us.

But I also think it’s about recognising that resurrection life never stands still.  Keep moving.  Because you and I are also pilgrims and apostles on the road that leads away from the earth-shattering epicentre of Easter Day. And no matter where you are on your journey of life, remember that the God who created you in love and brought you this far has still got something new to show you. Just up ahead. Expect to be surprised. Expect Christ to come to life all over again, in you.