Scripture: Nehemiah 3:1-12; Luke 24:13-35; Galatians 3:28 Series: Easter
Drawing on the roll call of wall-builders in Nehemiah 3 and the nameless disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, the sermon argues that God remembers both the famous and the ordinary, and that the Bible uniquely preserves ordinary names. Both texts depict ‘building’ — Nehemiah a wall, the Emmaus disciples the people of God by walking with Jesus. Believers are no longer strangers because they walk with the same risen Christ (Galatians 3:28); resurrection calls them to participate in the world’s salvation and welcome others. This is tied directly to Covenant UMC’s capital campaign: today’s members, like Nehemiah, refuse to be trapped by past decisions and instead build for the future of the church.
Illustrations: hebrew-hapax-legomena, oxford-english-dictionary, tiktok-context-clues, name-repeating-trick-jack, covenant-capital-campaign-debt
April 19, 2026
Nehemiah 3:1-12 Luke 24:13-35
What’s Next?
Then the high priest Eliashib set to work with his fellow priests and rebuilt the Sheep Gate. They consecrated it and set up its doors; they consecrated it as far as the Tower of the Hundred and as far as the Tower of Hananel. And the men of Jericho built next to him. And next to them Zaccur son of Imri built.
The sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate; they laid its beams and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars. Next to them Meremoth son of Uriah son of Hakkoz made repairs. Next to them Meshullam son of Berechiah son of Meshezabel made repairs. Next to them Zadok son of Baana made repairs. Next to them the Tekoites made repairs, but their nobles would not put their shoulders to the work of their Lord.
Joiada son of Paseah and Meshullam son of Besodeiah repaired the Old Gate; they laid its beams and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars. Next to them repairs were made by Melatiah the Gibeonite and Jadon the Meronothite—the men of Gibeon and of Mizpah—who were under the jurisdiction of the governor of the province Beyond the River. Next to them Uzziel son of Harhaiah, one of the goldsmiths, made repairs. Next to him Hananiah, one of the perfumers, made repairs, and they restored Jerusalem as far as the Broad Wall. Next to them Rephaiah son of Hur, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, made repairs. Next to them Jedaiah son of Harumaph made repairs opposite his house, and next to him Hattush son of Hashabneiah made repairs. Malchijah son of Harim and Hasshub son of Pahath-moab repaired another section and the Tower of the Ovens. Next to him Shallum son of Hallohesh, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, made repairs, he and his daughters. Nehemiah 3:1-12
Luke 24:13-35
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. 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?” 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, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 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. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Sermon Transcription — Builders and Names
The Bible is filled with a lot of ordinary names. Sure, there are kings and queens and prophets and emperors, but there are also a lot of shepherds, fishermen, and women who take care of the home. There are builders, not just leaders.
A lot of cultures erase these ordinary names from their history. The chronicles of history are the playgrounds of kings and future kings. The only people worth remembering are the ones you would put on a coin. The Bible is different. The great cloud of witnesses includes both the ordinary and the extraordinary.
In Nehemiah 3 — we are still building the wall, but we have a bunch of names, and these names matter. Their story matters. There’s little attestation to these names beyond this chapter. For some of these names, it might be the only place in history where the name is written down.
Because of the rarity of ancient Hebrew as a language, one of the curious things of studying Hebrew is that the Hebrew Bible is the only extant document of ancient Hebrew. Sometimes there’s a word that appears once in Nehemiah and doesn’t appear anywhere else in all of human history. Usually, if you’re reading a book today or an article or the subtitle of a TikTok, and you come across a word you don’t know, you can use context clues. You can look it up. In English, we have this great tradition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which tries to show the first time a word was ever used and the different ways it’s been used over the years. But in Hebrew, when a word is only used once, scholars kind of go with what the traditional meaning was that they were given as students. “Well, it’s translated in the Greek as this, and they knew more Hebrew than we do, so it’s probably close to this.” It works with the names as well.
Names are connected to experience and to memory. When I first got into ministry, people would tell me about how hard it is to remember people’s names, how they struggle with it. The names we remember are the ones that matter to us. They are the names that we think about. We don’t forget those names. We like to think of ourselves as people who are equally thoughtful to all the people in our lives, but that is not the case.
There are tricks you can do to remember names. One trick I think is very helpful is this: when you meet somebody, use their name a lot, really quickly. “Nice to meet you, Jack. It’s great to see you, Jack. What an interesting outfit you got there, Jack. So what do you do, Jack?” You just keep repeating it over and over again, and that tends to help. But again, for people I’m never going to see again, it’s not the most important thing in the world. It’s about what matters in my life.
The names written down in Nehemiah matter to God — the builders who built the wall.
Emmaus Transition
In the New Testament, we have passages like the one today, the road to Emmaus, where we don’t have names for the disciples. That doesn’t mean they don’t matter to God, but there’s something else going on here.
We have a different kind of building going on in the Gospel of Luke. Instead of building a wall, they’re building a church. They’re building the people of God by walking with Jesus.
What does it take to build the people of God?
What we see here is that the nameless disciples were moved by the story of Jesus to the point that they were sharing it with the people around them — the people who had not heard, or who did not act as if they had heard. As I preached about at Easter, Jesus appeared here as a stranger. He might have appeared different for each of those nameless disciples who walked with him, who walked next to him, who didn’t recognize him because he was a stranger. And yet their eyes were opened — sharing food together, sharing fellowship together, sharing life together, sharing community together. Building something for tomorrow.
We were all strangers once to each other. Sometimes we feel like strangers to people on the other side of the room from us at church because it’s rare for anyone to sit in a different section than the one they first sat in when they came.
And yet, if you don’t know the name of the person sitting on the other side of the sanctuary from you or if this is your first time with us today, we are not strangers here because we all walk with the same person. We are known and understood and remembered by walking with Jesus Christ. Whether our faith has been something important to us for a long time or it is a new experience, we are no longer strangers because of who God is in Jesus Christ. As Paul writes in Galatians 3:
There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
As we walk together, we build something greater than ourselves. As we walk together, sometimes we carry each other and sometimes we are carried. As we walk together sometimes we notice aspects of Jesus in each other and sometimes people move this aspects of Jesus in us. That is Grace. That is amazing grace. When God carried us so much up on Eagles wings that we no longer even look like the broken sad people we used to be.
Instead, when people look at us, they see our savior. That is the power of resurrection. It is not just that we are saved, but also that we are called to participate in the salvation of the world. To build up the kingdom of heaven. To welcome people to walk next to us on this journey. To invite people to walk next to us on this journey. We do this not because we are experts, but because Christ is risen.
The names in Nehemiah matter. The nameless Saints in Luke 24 matter. There are names that God knows of people yet to walk through these doors who are going to meet Jesus here and have their lives changed. We are building something beyond even now through God.
Now friends, in a little bit we’re going to hear from a few people about the capital campaign we’re running right now, to try and take down a good chunk of our debt. Part of that is going to be telling the story of why that debt exists to begin with. A lot of us who are here came to Covenant after all those decisions were made. Some of us were here through it all. It is all of our legacy here. There are names of those who built it, but there are also our names today — making a decision and a commitment to build for the future of this church and the future of the presence of God in our community. Not being limited by the decisions of yesterday.
Because sometimes this is a way to understand what was going on with Nehemiah. When Nehemiah was rebuilding the wall, when he was called by God to rebuild the wall, he was not being trapped by the decisions of the generations before him that led to exile and the destruction of that wall. He didn’t say, “Well, it’s not my problem.” He took on that responsibility and inspired others to do so — for a purpose.
When those disciples on the road to Emmaus saw the man on the road, they did not look at him and say, “Not my responsibility.” They welcomed him, shared stories with him, walked together with him — and then discovered it was Jesus, all along.
In this season of resurrection, Jesus will continue to come and show us who he is. Revive us, again and again. May we open ourselves up to him. May we open ourselves up to the movement of the Spirit. May we open ourselves up to be builders of today for the kingdom of God tomorrow.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.