April 19, 2026 · Rev. Derek van Gulden · Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Luke 24:13-35
Rev. Derek van Gulden tells a story from Kenya: a muddy ten-kilometer procession, a barefoot girl in a torn school uniform who appeared on the road, and the blessing that sent a doubting seminarian back to school. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, sometimes we only recognize who walked with us afterwards.
Transcript
People of God, would you join me in a moment of prayer? Gracious and holy God, this morning I ask you to move the words of my mouth by the meditation of all our hearts. And help me this day not to be the instrument of my own oppression, but to be an instrument of peace in every breath and every step and every moment of every day. Amen.
So today I thought I'd do something a little different that I haven't done in a while. Tell you a story. I'm going to be up front and tell you you've heard this story before, but I experienced something with the Bible study group, the meditation we meditation on Scripture on Wednesday that brought that whole story back to me and actually put more light in it, and I found the picture of the two people that were took part in this. I was so delighted when I looked for this morning, I realized that we had packed it and taken it to our new place. So forgive me for that. And if you hear me repeating things, it's okay because I won't do it again.
So we're going to go back to Kenya. I know sometimes people go Kenya. Oh, more stories from Kenya. It happens to be where this took place. And it takes place on a really rainy and really sunny Sunday morning where one of my friends I had become friends with Oscar, who was an Anglican priest in the Anglican Church of Kenya. Wonderful man. He had been a contractor and then it is mid thirties. Felt a call and he took those experiences as a contractor and has a priest. And he taught people how to build their own places. That's a side note.
So we gathered at his church, a bunch of us, there were about ten of us Europeans, Americans who they nickname call us mzungus, which actually means lazy European. But they figure we fit right in there with it. But we've been there. I've been there three months working on an orphan project with them. And it just so happened that that day, it was the Sunday that all the churches that Oscar took care of and was their priest came together. They did it once a month. He had five churches, and once a month they all came together. They combined their choirs. And as they do in Africa, they love to process. I'm not talking down the aisle or around the church. This is about eight miles. We possessed from somebody's house by the time we got there. I was at least five inches taller because Kenyan mud sticks to you. And, you know, as you're walking, all of a sudden you're getting higher and higher and it's hard to scrape off.
Anyway, we got there, and the guest preacher that day was not an ordained minister priest. She was from Philadelphia. She was a special ed teacher who oversaw a special ed program throughout the grade schools in Philadelphia, and she happened to be married to a Kenyan priest. She came to spend time with him and their son. But she also became because the bishop had called and asked her to come, because he wanted to offer her a job. She didn't know that yet.
The orphan project that I and one of my classmates and two medical students from Harvard Medical School worked on that whole summer, covered five parishes at that time, and each parish had anywhere from three to five. One of them even had ten churches one Sunday, one Saturday every month on a rotating basis. The, there would be a medical group that would go to each parish, and kids who were orphans had been signed up. And that day they would get education. They'd have classes in science and English and Swahili because they speak three languages there. At least they had in religion. They had it in music and they had it in How to Care for Yourself. And so we would go to these things. The clinic would come and it was free health care for the orphans, and also free health care for the families that took them in. Brilliant idea.
And Tracy kept asking me why? What? The bishop wants me to do something. I said, I think he wants you to preach. I'm not a preacher. My husband is. Well, he wants you to get up and at least say a few words. And she did. And afterwards the bishop preached. And in that service took only about two hours. Pretty short.
But then it started to rain. I mean, rain where you can't see anything in front of you. So we all stayed in the church. That took about two hours. The choir would sing, people would sing. Different pastors would share stories. And by the time everyone exhausted, the rain stopped. and the bishop stood up and he asked Tracy to join him, and he asked her to come to Kenya to live with her family and run the orphan program because they needed one person to oversee it. And he she was the only one he knew of that had the skills. She was speechless. She didn't even know this would happen. She's one of the people that started it. But now it had reached a place that was affecting so many people. And he said, well, you can think about it. And so as we do there, you process back to where you're processed from. And this time we had to go fifteen, no, ten kilometers. And we walked with kids in front waving palm fronds, all the choirs from the different parishes or from the parishes of Oscar in front of everybody. Then guests, and then those of us who had been there that summer doing work, and behind us, the priests and the bishop.
And it still rained off and on and has we were meditating on the Scripture Wednesday. When I started to meditate, I immediately went to that place, that road, that road that was taking us somewhere. I hadn't told anybody. But no, I hadn't told anybody that I had made a decision about three weeks before that I wasn't going back to seminary because I still was having trouble believing in a God who would allow such things to happen to kids. When I was there in Kenya, my generation was almost completely gone from the Aids pandemic and so many orphans. I've told you before, Oscar said he has orphans growing faster than the corn. So I. I was touched by the bishop's sermon. He talked about call. He was talking to Tracy, really.
And Tracy and I were walking together and it was still muddy. So you were either really high or you slipped and fell. Everybody was a mess. And about halfway there on this road that we were walking, just talking, sometimes silent. This young girl came walking up from the other way, drenched. Her school uniform was what she was wearing. It was torn. It was dirty. It was old. She looked like she hadn't eaten in weeks and on her feet while she was barefoot. But you could see chain marks as if she'd been chained around her feet to something, and she had open wounds there. And she came to Tracy. No one else. And she put her arm around Tracy and said in her native language, I am here to walk with you. And Tracy's kind of perplexed, I am. And I said, well, this is great. You made a new friend. I have no idea who she is. And she wouldn't let go of Tracy. So we continued to walk. She was the only one that didn't slip.
And we finally got after ten kilometres to the house where those of us who were considered guests were going to have a meal, a buffet, and the kids all stayed outside. They knew they weren't going inside with their palm fronds. There were youth still playing drums. There was the choir still singing. And we were invited in one by one. And Tracy and I were in the back because the bishop and the pastors were already inside. And this young person took a step aside and said, I will wait here for you. And Tracy said, no. Come walk with us. And everybody said, well, of course. Now, we didn't know as everybody who was there was trying to figure out where she came from in Kenya. You either know by their native language, their tribal language, or because so many of them only have one pair of clothes to wear. And it's a school uniform because you can't go to school without it. And they're trying to figure out what school that was, but it was none in the area that they knew about.
And so when we were invited in, we walked around this table and had all this food on it. And at the far end, in the back, Tracy and I were sat on a couch with this young girl between us. And before anything, one of the mamas of the church prepared a plate of food for her and brought it to her. And you could tell by her eyes that she hadn't eaten in a long time. But before she did anything, she held it in her hands. She prayed. And I remember she put her hand on the chicken, and then she put it down on the floor, because there were a bunch of stray cats, about five of them, and she let them eat. After they had finished, she sat back. The mama brought her a plate and she ate. We all had a chance to go around the table and feast on some amazing food. Well, Kenyan diet where I was is pretty small, but very good.
And afterwards we sat down. There were some prayers. They were singing. And when. And this young girl had fallen asleep with her head on Tracey's lap and her feet on mine. They found her a blanket. She was out like a light. So we thought, and as is tradition, there, when you leave after something like this, you go and you greet the person, the mama whose house it is. You greet the pastor who is Oscar and the bishop who was there, and it goes in a line. Well, the mama who had brought the food said, you two just stay. She needs to sleep. I don't think she's going to get up. Just stay there with her. And we did. And we were the only ones in the room, except for. Those three still waited.
And the girl woke up. She smiled at us and she's like, go! And so Tracy gets up and she gives Tracy a hug and Tracy starts to move and she turns to me and I stand up and she's still sitting down. And she stood up and she put her hands on my head. Now I had to bend over because she was fairly short and I didn't understand what she said. But Oscar had come close and he translated and he said, I pulled this out of my diary. She said, Baba, you have much work to do for me. Forget that silly notion in your head. Go. Your journey begins today. And then she blessed me, sat down and was asleep again.
Now, Oscar didn't tell me what she said until I got up to where the Bishop was, and the Bishop asked, and he told him and said, Brother Derek, that either means you're staying here or you're going back to seminary and you're going to finish, and then you're going to come back, whether it's for a visit or what not. And later that night, Oscar came to the Little College of Theology where we were staying, and he came and sat with me, and Tracy and Tracy had been with her husband, and her husband translated everything for her. And he asked Tracy, so have you made a decision? She said, yes, I'm going to tell the bishop in the morning. I gladly accept that position. Which means she has to emigrate to Kenya. She was able to do it. Keeping dual citizenship. And he looked at me and he said, so, Brother Derek. Are you going back to seminary? I said, I don't think I have a choice. I just have to find a way to pay for it. And he said, don't worry, it will happen.
This is the second time in my life during my discernment and parts that somebody had always a woman put her hand on my head and prayed for me and called me father. Baba is how they refer to God or Father. In this case it was father. It was not God. They were clear to tell me that. And I made a few phone calls from Kenya to the seminary, and when I got back, I was offered the one job that would allow me to stay. I became the. I forget what it is. The resident coordinator over a bunch of seminary students and students from Longy School of Music, which means I got room and board for free, which meant I could finish. It also brought a lot of other headaches with it, but that's another story.
This Bible study. The core group of Donna and Andrina and Jim and myself have gone to some very deep places. But this week, after we signed off, I couldn't get out of my head picturing that story, The Road to Emmaus that wasn't a disciple. Or it may have been a disciple who came to us, but Oscar said. And the bishop. Do you know who that girl was? I said no, and nobody knows. They hadn't figured it out yet.
Well, in our view, God touches us all in different ways. Think about it. That road to Emmaus that those two disciples were on one of the most beautiful pieces in Scripture. There are so many, but for me is when they recognize him, not from the stories he told and the stuff from all the Bible stories he shared with them and opened up to them. But in that moment that they sat down at a table to eat and he broke the bread. And in that moment their eyes were opened and they knew exactly who he was, and he was gone. That young girl disappeared. They found out later on that the uniform she was wearing came from a village that was probably about fifty kilometers away. That's all they found out and never saw her again.
This is my story today and I'm sticking with it. May we be blessed by the words that Jack shared with us through Scripture. And they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. One small piece. If you look at the sermon title, are we all thought that or one of us in our Bible study group? Wow. Oh, what a moment. And another said, but it takes a lot of work. Amen.