Luke 24:13-35 Easter 3
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ
April 19, 2026
He Lives to Give Us Hope To have no hope is a sad, devastating thing, isn’t it? You’ve felt it, maybe. Maybe more than a time or two. That college course, that professor…it’s not that it’s just not looking good—there is no hope of salvaging this class. You’ve had to stand by for so long for someone to hire you. Application after application and you’re right there, teetering on the edge of hopelessness. You wait and you wait and you wait, but that special someone doesn’t seem to be coming your way. You’re starting to truly believe it will never happen. You’ve talked and talked but they just don’t listen. Nothing ever changes. Why bother trying anymore? There are so many of these kinds of things we could mention, but I’ll offer just one more. Have you ever felt hopeless after someone you cared about died? Not just helpless. I mean hopeless. You had invested so much love and time in your spouse, been so excited to have that child, never had a closer friend, and then…they are gone. Devastating. The weight of hopelessness is this heavy, dark blanket dropped down over you. We’re not the first people to experience the sadness that comes from lost hope. This has been the way all along since the Garden of Eden. Sin causes it, and you can catch some people in the Bible expressing lost hope. I think of Elijah, the prophet who truly believed that he was the last one serving the Lord—and he wanted to die. Or Sarah, who was well beyond the age of having children and didn’t believe God’s promise to give her with a son. It was so hopeless that even the thought of it was laughable to her. Then there are these Easter-afternoon men. You heard it in their voices as they walked away from Jerusalem, right? This was not a happy walk. Can you picture them— Cleopas and his friend? Eyes mostly on the dirt in front of them with the occasional glance at each other at particularly difficult thoughts or unanswerable questions. Talking, trying to figure out what went wrong, remembering things Jesus said, wondering what they missed—all while replaying the sight of Jesus’ bloodied face and body nailed to a cross, hanging above the soldiers and spectators. How could that have happened? He was supposed to save them—and the rest of God’s people. Hope had disappeared. They said it: But we were hoping that he was going to redeem Israel. Not only that, but besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. “We were hoping.” Not anymore. What they thought he was and what he would do was now impossible. The situation was officially hopeless. Three-days-dead pretty much sealed the deal. No reason to stick around Jerusalem. But the beautiful truth of Easter is that Jesus comes to people who are lost and in despair…and he gives them hope.