The Bible

 

Luke 24:30

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30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.

Commentary

 

On the Road to Emmaus

By Joe David

Lelio Orsi's painting, Camino de Emaús, is in the National Gallery in London, England.

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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #10828

Study this Passage

  
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10828. The Lord came into the world to save the human race, which if He had not done so would have perished in eternal death. He saved it by subduing the hells which were molesting every person coming into the world and going out of it, and at the same time by glorifying His Human; for having accomplished this He is able to keep the hells in subjection for evermore. The subjection of the hells and the glorification of His Human simultaneously was accomplished by means of temptations which His Human was allowed to undergo and by repeated victories in them, His passion on the Cross being the final temptation and the complete victory. The truth that the Lord subdued the hells is His own teaching in John,

Jesus said, Now My soul is troubled. Father, rescue Me from this hour. But on account of this I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name. A voice came from heaven, [saying,] I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. Then Jesus said, Now is the judgement of this world, now will the prince of this world be cast outdoors. John 12:27-28, 31.

In the same gospel,

Have confidence, I have overcome the world. John 16:33.

And in Isaiah,

Who is this who comes from Edom, marching in the vast numbers of His strength, mighty to save? My own arm brought salvation to Me. Therefore He became their Saviour. Isaiah 63:1-19; 59:16-21.

The truth that He glorified His Human, and the truth that the passion on the Cross was the final temptation and the complete victory, through which He was glorified, is again His own teaching in John,

After Judas went out Jesus said, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God will glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him at once. John 13:31-32.

In the same gospel,

Jesus said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You. Now, Father, glorify Me with the glory which I had with You before the world was. John 17:1, 5.

In the same gospel,

Now My soul is troubled. Father, glorify Your name. And a voice came from heaven, [saying,] I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. John 12:27-28.

And in Luke,

Ought not the Christ to have suffered this and to enter into His glory? Luke 24:26.

'Glorifying' means making Divine. From all this it is now clear that unless the Lord had come into the world and been made Man, and by this means had delivered from hell all those who believe in Him and love Him, no mortal being could have been saved. This is what should be understood by the statement that without the Lord there is no salvation.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.