Prelude — Gnossienne Nos. 3 & 1
Erik Satie · piano
Satie invented the word “Gnossienne” and never explained it. The music itself refuses to help: no bar lines, no time signatures, no landmarks to orient the traveler. Instead, Satie scatters cryptic instructions across the score — Arm yourself with clairvoyance. Counsel yourself carefully. Alone, for a moment.
On a morning when we walk the Emmaus road with two disciples who don’t yet recognize their companion, this is the perfect music for setting out — the path unmarked, the destination unclear, the stranger already beside you.
Introit — An Easter Carol
Joseph Running · choir & organ
Running’s setting is dance-like and buoyant, each stanza lifting toward an alleluia refrain that arrives like sunlight through a doorway. The Easter proclamation echoes in our ears on the Road to Emmaus, and we follow the sound.
Hymn of Praise — Sing a Song of Celebration
HPP #202, vv. 1, 4, & 5
On the Road to Emmaus, the celebration comes at the end, when the bread is broken and the stranger’s face is finally seen. But here at the start of worship, we sing the destination before we’ve walked the road — because the Easter proclamation echoes in our hearts on the Road to Emmaus, and we celebrate the sound.
Anthem — Time (from Inception)
Hans Zimmer, arr. Wilder · organ & choir
Zimmer built “Time” on a deceptively simple foundation — a four-chord progression that begins in near-silence and builds. In the film, it is heard on the return home, when reality and dream finally separate and we see what was in front of us all along.
On the Emmaus road, the disciples said afterward, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the way?” This is the sound of that slow burn — the fire you don’t realize is building until it has already changed everything.
Hymn of Reflection — Come, My Way, My Truth, My Life
George Herbert (1633), tune: THE CALL (Ralph Vaughan Williams) · HPP #348, all
George Herbert titled this poem “The Call” — the words echo John 14:6, and Ralph Vaughan Williams gave them a melody of extraordinary simplicity and warmth. On the Emmaus road, the disciples walked with the Way, the Truth, and the Life for miles — and didn’t know it.
Sometimes the sacred is so close it becomes invisible. This hymn calls it by name.
Offertory — Will You Come and Follow Me
John L. Bell · choir & organ
Bell’s hymn — known as “The Summons” — is structured as questions, and none of them are easy: “Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same? Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?” As you bring your offering, consider that every step toward Emmaus was a step into the unknown.
Closing Hymn — Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim
Charles Wesley (1744) · HPP #75, vv. 1, 2, & 4
In the Emmaus story, the moment the disciples recognize Jesus, they don’t sit down to process it. They get up immediately and run back to Jerusalem to tell the others.
This hymn is that run.
Postlude — Piano Phase (excerpt)
Steve Reich · organ
Reich wrote Piano Phase as an experiment in perception: two performers play the same twelve-note pattern in unison, until the patterns shift out of alignment. What was identical becomes strange. New melodies emerge that neither part is consciously creating.
It is hard to imagine a more precise sonic metaphor for the Road to Emmaus: the familiar becoming unrecognizable, the unrecognizable gradually revealed as the most familiar presence in the world.