Sermon Tone Analysis

Vers. 13–35.—The

meeting with the risen Jesus on the way to Emmaus.

Ver.

13.—And, behold, two of them.

This long piece, which relates in a singularly vivid and picturesque manner one of the earliest appearances of the Risen, is peculiar to St. Luke.

St. Mark (16:12, 13) mentions it, but as it were only in passing.

This Gospel, written probably after the Gospels of SS.

Matthew and Mark, holds a middle place between the earliest apostolic memoirs represented by the first two Gospels and the last memoir, that of St. John, which was probably put out in its present form by the apostle “whom Jesus loved” some time in the last fifteen years of the first century.

Writers of varied schools unite in expressions of admiration for this singularly beautiful “memory of the Lord.”

Godet styles it one of the most admirable pieces in St. Luke’s Gospel.

Renan, belonging to another, perhaps the most cheerless of all schools of religious thought, writes thus: “L’épisode des disciples d’Emmaus est un des récits les plus fins, les plus nuancés qu’il y ait dans aucune langue” (‘Les Evangiles,’ p. 282).

Dean Plumptre speaks of “the long and singularly interesting narrative peculiar to St. Luke.”

He says, “It must be looked upon as among the ‘gleaning of the grapes,’ which rewarded his researches even after the full vintage had apparently been gathered in by others” (i.e.

SS.

Matthew and Mark).

The “two of them,” although doubtless well known in the apostolic age, seem to have held no distinguished place in early Christian history (see note on ver.

18, where Cleopas is mentioned).

That same day.

The first day of the week—the first Easter Day.

The events of the early morning of the Resurrection have been already commented upon.

To a village called Emmaus.

This Emmaus, the narrative tells us, was about sixty furlongs—some six miles and a half—from the holy city.

It was situated east-south-east from Jerusalem.

The name is connected with the modern Arabic term Hammám (a bath), and indicates probably, like the Latin Aquæ, or the French Aix, and the English “Bath,” or “Wells,” the presence of medicinal springs; and this may possibly account for St. Luke the physician’s attention having in the first instance been drawn to the spot.

This Emmaus is now called Kulonieh.

A curious Talmudical reference, quoted by Godet, belongs to this place Emmaus, now Kulonieh: “At Maûza they go to gather the green boughs for the Feast of Tabernacles” (Talmud, ‘Succa,’ iv.

5).

Elsewhere it is said that “Maûza is Kulonieh.”

Ver.

15.—While they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.

One, if not the first, fulfilment of the comforting promise, “Where two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Compare also the words of Malachi, “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it” (3:16).

Ver.

16.—But their eyes were holden, that they should not know him.

So Mary Magdalene looked on and failed to recognize at first the Person of her adored Master (John 20:15).

So by the lake-shore, as he stood and spoke to the tired fishermen, they who had been so long with him knew him not.

Some mysterious change had been wrought in the Person of the Lord.

Between the Resurrection and the Ascension, men and women now looked on him without a gleam of recognition, now gazed on him knowing well that it was the Lord.

“It is vain,” writes Dr. Westcott, “to give any simply natural explanation of the failure of the disciples to recognize Christ.

After the Resurrection he was known as he pleased, and not necessarily at once.… Till they who gazed on him were placed in something of spiritual harmony with the Lord, they could not recognize him.”

The two on their walk to Emmaus, and Mary Magdalene in the garden, were preoccupied with their sorrow.

The fisher-disciples on the lake were preoccupied with their work, so that the vision of the Divine was obscured.

The risen Christ will surely fulfil his own words, “The pure in heart, they shall see God”—but only the pure in heart.

Ver.

17.—What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?

The older authorities make the question stop at “as ye walk,” and then add, “and they stood still, looking sad.”

This change is, of course, of no great importance, but it considerably adds to the vividness of the picture.

Ver.

18.—And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas.

This name is a Greek contraction of Cleopatros, and points to Alexandrian antecedents.

Dean Plumptre suggests that this may in part, perhaps, account for this Cleopas, not improbably a Jew of Alexandria, imparting to St. Luke what had not found its way into the current oral teaching of the Hebrew Church at Jerusalem, as embodied in the narratives of SS.

Matthew and Mark.

Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem?

better translated, dost thou alone sojourn in Jerusalem, and not know, etc.? That is to say, “Art thou the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know about the wonderful events which have just taken place in the holy city?”

Ver.

19.—And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a Prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.

To the Stranger’s question, “What things have so lately excited Jerusalem?”

they both probably burst out with “the Name,” then doubtless on all lips in the holy city, “Jesus of Nazareth,” the hated and adored Name.

And then they went on with a further explanation to One who seemed a stranger just arrived: they explained who this Jesus was supposed to have been.

“He was a Prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,” which Lange happily paraphrases “equally great in secret contemplative holiness and in public acts of beneficence.”

But then the “two” explained, “This he was; for he is no more.

Our chief priests and rulers have done him to death.

They have crucified him.”

Ver.

21.—But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.

And we who were his friends and followers, we thought we had found in him the Redeemer of Israel, King Messiah!

Think! the Redeemer crucified!

Although the Redeemer, in the sense they probably understood the word, was something very different to the sense we give to it, the idea was still something very lofty and sublime.

It included, no doubt, much of earthly glory and dominion for Israel, but in some definite sense the Gentile world, too, would share in the blessings of Messiah.

And to think of the shameful cross putting an end to all these hopes!

And beside all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done.

But yet terrible and despairing as was the story of Cleopas and his friend, their tone was not quite hopeless; for they went on, “And now we have come to the third day since they crucified him.”

No doubt they dwelt a short space on the expression, “third day,” telling the Stranger how their dead Master, when alive, had bade his friends watch for the third day from his death.

The third day, he had told them, would be the day of his triumphant return to them; and, strangely enough, on the early morning of this third day, something did happen which had stirred, excited, and perplexed them.

Certain women of their company, who had been early to the grave of the Master, meaning to embalm the corpse, found the sepulchre empty, and they came back reporting how they had seen a vision of angels there, who told them their Master lived.

What did it all mean?

Ver.

24.—And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.

Tholuck writes, “Does not their word sound as the language of those in whose heart the smoking flax yet glimmers, though nigh to extinction?”

Ver.

25.—Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

better translated, O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!

The Stranger now replies to the confused story of sorrow and baffled hopes just lit up with one faint ray of hope, with a calm reference to that holy book so well known to, so deeply treasured by every Jew.

“See,” he seems to say, “in the pages of our prophets all this, over which you now so bitterly mourn, is plainly predicted: yon must be blind and deaf not to have seen and heard this story of agony and patient suffering in those well-known, well-loved pages!

When those great prophets spoke of the coming of Messiah, how came it about that you missed seeing that they pointed to days of suffering and death to be endured by him before his time of sovereignty and triumph could be entered on?”

Ver.

26.—Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?

better translated, ought not the Christ, etc.? “St.

Luke dwells on the Resurrection as a spiritual necessity; St. Mark, as a great fact; St. Matthew, as a glorious and majestic manifestation, and St. John, in its effects on the members of the Church.…

If this suffering and death were a necessity (οὐχ ἔδει), if it was in accordance with the will of God that the Christ should suffer, and so enter into his glory, and if we can be enabled to see this necessity, and see also the noble issues which flow from it, then we can understand how the same necessity must in due measure be laid upon his brethren” (Westcott).

And so we obtain a key to some of the darkest problems of humanity.

Thus the Stranger led the “two” to see the true meaning of the “prophets,” whose burning words they had so often read and heard without grasping their real deep signification.

Thus he led them to see that the Christ must be a suffering before he could be a triumphing Messiah; that the crucifixion of Jesus, over which they wailed with so bitter a wailing, was in fact an essential part of the counsels of God.

Then he went on to show that, as his suffering is now fulfilled—for the Crucifixion and death were past—nothing remains of that which is written in the prophets, but the entering into his glory.

Ver.

27.—And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

The three divisions, the Pentateuch (Moses), the prophets, and all the Scriptures, cover the whole Old Testament received then in the same words as we possess them now.

The Lord’s proofs of what he asserted he drew from the whole series of writings, rapidly glancing over the long many-coloured roll called the Old Testament.

“Jesus had before him a grand field, from the Protevangelium, the first great Gospel of Genesis, down to Malachi.

In studying the Scriptures for himself, he had found himself in them everywhere (John 5:39, 40)” (Godet).

The things concerning himself.