On the Road to Emmaus
By Joe David
Each of the four gospels contains a story about Jesus appearing to His disciples after the Sunday morning when they had found the sepulcher empty. For example, see Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:14-19; Luke 24:13-33; John 20:19-31, and John 21.
In Luke, there’s a story of two disciples walking from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, a walk of about seven miles. Shortly after they leave the city they are approached by another traveler who has noticed their troubled faces and serious talk and asks them what is troubling them. Walking along together, they ask the stranger, “Haven’t you heard of the troubles in Jerusalem, how the prophet from Galilee, who we hoped would be the one to save Israel, was given up to be crucified? And strange to say, when some of the women went on the third day to anoint His body, they saw angels who told them that he was not there but was risen from the dead.”
On hearing this, the traveler chides them for not believing, and says “Don’t you see that Christ had to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?” The stranger then tells the two disciples many things concerning Jesus, from the books of Moses, and the prophets, in the Old Testament. The two disciples listen with awe, but do not recognize the stranger. At length they arrive at Emmaus. The stranger appears to want to go on when the two stop, but they beg him to stop also, because it’s getting late in the day, and they want to hear more. So they all sit down to share the evening meal, and when the stranger takes up the loaf of bread and breaks it and gives them pieces, their eyes are opened and they recognize Him, and He vanishes.
One can imagine the stunned awe that came over them both as they realized that this was Jesus. They knew He was crucified, and yet He had walked and talked to them for several hours. The women were right! The angels were right! He was alive!
The New Church believes that there are internal meanings to all the stories in the Word of the Lord, the sacred scriptures, and that this internal meaning, within the literal stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joshua, Samuel, David, and the rest, and all the sayings of the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi, and the four gospels… this meaning is what makes the Word holy.
So what can we see here in this story? Well, that internal meaning in “Moses and the prophets” is the story of Jesus’ life in the world, from His birth in Bethlehem through all His growing years until His “death” and then His rising. Because Jesus knew that, and had certainly read the Scriptures and understood them internally, He knew for a long time how His earthly life was going to close, and that it was necessary for it to close as had been “written”, in order to save the human race. So He told the two disciples that story as they walked toward Emmaus.
More about that walk... In the Word, any mention of walking is really referring to how we live our lives from day to day. In many stories of the Word, it is said that someone walked with God. It is said that we should walk in His ways and that we should walk the straight and narrow path.
Also in this story we are told that this was a journey of sixty stadia (in the original Greek). Sixty (or other multiples of "six") represents the lifelong work of rejecting the temptations that come from our inborn selfishness. Apocalypse Explained 648. So, this journey to Emmaus means our life’s journey - as a person that is trying to follow the Lord’s teachings and become an angel.
The destination was Emmaus. In the Word any city represents a doctrine, an organized set of truths that we have put in order so that we can live according to them -- our rules of life. See Arcana Coelestia 402. They are not necessarily good, as with Jerusalem or Bethlehem, but can also be evil doctrines, e.g. Sodom or Babylon. My dictionary tells me that the name Emmaus means “hot springs”. Another universal meaning in the Word is that water means truth in its beneficial uses, but can also mean truth twisted into falsity by those in hell, in an opposite sense. See, for example, Arcana Coelestia 790. Think of the wells that Abraham dug, or the waters that Jesus promised to the woman of Samaria as they talked by Jacob’s well, or the pure river of water flowing out from under the throne in the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation. In its converse sense, where water is destructive, think of the flood that destroyed all but Noah and his family, or the Red Sea that had to be parted so that the children of Israel could cross. The springs represented by Emmaus were holy truths bubbling up from the Word for us to use. And these are hot springs, and heat means love. So that's our destination, where truth and love together are flowing out for us to use, in a continual stream from the Lord.
This plain little anecdote about the disciples meeting the Lord on the road to Emmaus isn't just a story about Jesus's resurrection with a spiritual body. It is also a story of how we should be living our lives. We can be traveling toward heaven, listening to the Lord, walking in the way with him, and at the end He will break bread and have supper with us.
John 4
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Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John
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(although Jesus himself didn't baptize, but his disciples),
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he left Judea, and departed into Galilee.
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He needed to pass through Samaria.
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So he came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph.
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Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
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A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."
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For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
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The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
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Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
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The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where then have you that living water?
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Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, as did his children, and his livestock?"
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Jesus answered her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,
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but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."
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The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I don't get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw."
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Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here."
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The woman answered, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You said well, 'I have no husband,'
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for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly."
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The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
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Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship."
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Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour comes, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, will you worship the Father.
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You worship that which you don't know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews.
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But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshippers.
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God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
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The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah comes," (he who is called Christ). "When he has come, he will declare to us all things."
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Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who speaks to you."
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At this, his disciples came. They marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, "What are you looking for?" or, "Why do you speak with her?"
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So the woman left her water pot, and went away into the city, and said to the people,
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"Come, see a man who told me everything that I did. Can this be the Christ?"
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They went out of the city, and were coming to him.
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In the meanwhile, the disciples urged him, saying, "Rabbi, eat."
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But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you don't know about."
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The disciples therefore said one to another, "Has anyone brought him something to eat?"
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Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.
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Don't you say, 'There are yet four months until the harvest?' Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already.
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He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to eternal life; that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
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For in this the saying is true, 'One sows, and another reaps.'
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I sent you to reap that for which you haven't labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."
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From that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified, "He told me everything that I did."
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So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed there two days.
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Many more believed because of his word.
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They said to the woman, "Now we believe, not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world."
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After the two days he went out from there and went into Galilee.
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For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
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So when he came into Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem at the feast, for they also went to the feast.
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Jesus came therefore again to Cana of Galilee, where he made the water into wine. There was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum.
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When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to him, and begged him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.
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Jesus therefore said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders, you will in no way believe."
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The nobleman said to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
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Jesus said to him, "Go your way. Your son lives." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way.
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As he was now going down, his servants met him and reported, saying "Your child lives!"
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So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. They said therefore to him, "Yesterday at the seventh hour, the fever left him."
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So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, "Your son lives." He believed, as did his whole house.
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This is again the second sign that Jesus did, having come out of Judea into Galilee.
