One of our family’s favorite films is the original Muppet Movie. It has a key song about moving down the road, being footloose and fancy free.

The Emmaus road on the day of the encounter between Jesus and two disciples in our text was not a place for being footloose and fancy free. It was a road filled with people trying to make sense of the great tragedy that they witnessed in Jesus’ death. The word was everywhere. Not unlike what it must have felt several days after Pearl Harbor, after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, or the fears and trepidations that came after the economic crash of 2008, it was a pensive time, perhaps even a time of desperation.

These disciples, these followers of Jesus, were walking away from Jerusalem, hopes dashed, what ifs seemingly oblite…