How Can Emmaus Foster Reconciliation? For the first time in my country, there is hope for life. For the first time in my life we could share—blacks and whites—around a table. I couldn't believe this would ever happen. —Layperson from South Africa On the Emmaus Walk, the walls that commonly separate people by class, status, race, and church gradually crumble. Participants become aware of their essential unity in Christ with all God's children. People are given an opportunity to let go of hurts, resentments, and fears that continue to divide them from their brothers and sisters. The focus on God's transforming grace makes real change possible. One layperson from Kansas wrote, I had been on a downhill battle with my spiritual life for the last four-plus years, thinking that I could handle all the things that had completely taken over my life. Then, on the Walk to Emmaus, I found out differently. During the communion service at the Walk, I felt God's love, grace, and mercy come over me, changing my life. When the service was over, I had lost all my hate, bitterness, and unforgiveness. People can see the difference in me, and I praise God that I can feel the difference God has made in me. The design of the Emmaus Walk intentionally downplays the social stature and occupational identities of the participants. In some cases, persons do not share certain personal background information until late in the weekend. This delayed sharing allows relationships to develop, free from people's typical prejudgments based on job and social position. A clergyperson from Illinois expressed this divine leveling of human differences when he wrote, The most deeply penetrating aspect of our life together was centered in celebration of the Lord's Supper. I was extremely moved on those occasions! As I sat in the splendor of an out­door sanctuary under a canopy of falling leaves between a retired postal worker and a cardiologist, I sensed the unseen Presence in our midst. On the Walk to Emmaus, every pilgrim is a son or daughter of God. Participants are invited to open their eyes and "see what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God" (1 John 3:1). No investment of effort and care is too much to adequately communicate the depth and height, breadth and length, of God's love for each and every one The team members who lead the Walk and the background helpers who support it come together from every station in life. They represent a mixture of persons of high and low estate in the world who are one in Christ. As members of an Emmaus team, they assume the identity and practice the role of Christian servants. Their humble service is to express and embody God's love in spirit and deed through their assigned tasks. They work together under the direction of team leaders and within the discipline of selfless love. Leaders minimize practices that create unnecessary distinctions between pilgrims and team. While celebrating and using the gifts of all, team members learn to express their servanthood in ways that give glory to Christ and not to themselves. Though the community that develops among pilgrims on the Walk lasts only three days, those three days are enough for many to experience a new dimension of living together in the realm of God's love. Participants emerge from the Emmaus Walk with a fresh vision of the church as a community of grace and reconciliation in the midst of a broken world. In South Africa, the Emmaus Walk's potential as a force for reconciliation is especially evident. Emmaus is aimed at overcoming barriers among the different races of people in the church. Participants set out on the Walk as members of the three racial groups called "white," "black," and "colored." In the course of the three days, they become members of the human race, united in the healing love of Christ. One laywoman, following her Walk, gave this witness: "For the first time in my life, I have eaten at the same table, slept in the same room and had extended conversations with someone of another race. It has been life-changing for me." Another said, "I have learned about God's love, God's time and about patience. And so I say to South Africa, 'We must have patience and go forward in love.'" In many other communities, the Emmaus Walk becomes a point of unity and cooperation among Christians of different denominations and traditions. Emmaus highlights the Christian community's essential unity in Christ, not the age-old differences over doctrine and ritual. In one area, for example, churches that had traditionally denied fellowship with other Christians began to open up and to participate in community worship services. In another community, church leaders credited Emmaus for the recent development of a local food bank and a variety of other human services. Emmaus events and follow-up groups had become points of convergence among Christians from a variety of churches who were otherwise isolated from one another. Emmaus had become an opportunity to transcend differences and to work together for what really mattered—the welfare of all God's people in the spirit of Jesus Christ.