New Testament

The Road to Emmaus

Ed Visser

by Pastor Ed Visser

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Luke 24:32

Emmaus to Jerusalem010The group I traveled to Israel with in 2004 (along with others tied to the En-Gedi Resource Center) was called Emmaus Educational Services. The name was chosen because the leaders wished for people to better come to know Jesus through their experience, even as Cleopas and his friend did when they encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). By visiting places where Jesus walked and taught, where he fished and healed, where he died, arose, and ascended, we grew to know him better — getting our feet wet and dusty where he did. We knew the Bible; but there’s something about getting to know the land of Israel that makes Scripture come alive.

But Cleopas and his friend, in a sense, had the opposite need. They knew the land and had experienced many of these events with Jesus. They needed to know Scripture in a new way: from the other side of Easter. So, just as we needed to go back to their side, by walking the dusty roads, they needed to be transported to our side, to see from a post-Easter perspective this Jesus they had been following. They needed to read a new reality back into the ancient scrolls of the Torah and Prophets.

As they walked the familiar Roman road from Jerusalem back home, they talked about the events of the past few days. They shared their hopes that Jesus might have been Messiah, their distress over his crucifixion, and their confusion over the morning reports of an empty tomb. Soon they were joined by another traveler who started by sharing his ignorance of these recent events, then upbraided them for not seeing fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in what had happened. On that seven-mile journey, he gave them a seminary course on promise & fulfillment that left them with heartburn! Only when they arrived at Emmaus did God open their eyes to see Jesus, and then he disappeared, after which they ran seven miles back to Jerusalem (uphill most of the way!).

Emmaus RoadThis has always been one of my favorite stories in the Bible. Perhaps that is part of the reason I am so passionate about trying to see Jesus in the Old Testament passages, patterns, and symbols. What I wouldn’t give to have been in Jesus’ class that day — and the following 39 days — as he taught his disciples how the Old Testament speaks of him. Thankfully the New Testament retains a lot of the lessons Jesus taught them, which is why it is so important to read the New Testament with “Jewish” and Old Testament eyes.

Walking the road to Emmaus on our last day in Israel — and continuing to walk that road every time I study the Bible and try to “see” Jesus in the Old Testament and get to know him better — makes me feel a little closer to Cleopas, almost as if I were that unnamed disciple (maybe that’s why he’s unnamed!), walking with Jesus and getting spiritual heartburn.

Amen and Amen!

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting even to everlasting. And let all the people say, “Amen.” Psalms 106:48

It is interesting to note that the most widely known word on all the earth, across the most languages, is the word Amen, a Hebrew word. Jews, Christians and Muslims all use this word in prayer, and it generally moves unchanged from language to language. Even in the Greek of the New Testament, the word was written literally as “amen” rather than a Greek translation being used.

The word amen is related to the Hebrew words emunah (faith, belief, trust) and emet (truth). It means something like, “This I affirm,” or “Let it be so.” It was used throughout the Old Testament as a response, as when blessings or curses were read as part of a covenant, and all the people said “Amen.” When psalms were sung, the people would respond, “Amen.” The leader didn’t say it — it was a way of the people to proclaim their agreement with the liturgy they heard (see the above verse). In Jewish prayer today, this is still done. After the leader recites the prayer, the audience follows with “Amen,” in effect saying, “I affirm this prayer also, let it be so for me too.”

Some scholars believe that there has been confusion in our understanding of Jesus’ use of amen. He often began speaking with an amen, which has been thought to be a way to emphasize his own words. In the King James, it is translated “verily” and modern translations remove it altogether, and substitute “I tell you the truth.”

Robert Lindsay, a scholar of the first century Jewish context of Jesus, believes that Jesus actually used amen as it was used by the rest of his society — as a response of affirmation of something else that precedes his words. For instance, when the centurion tells him that by just saying the word, Jesus can heal from afar, Jesus says, “Amen! I tell you, I have not seen such great faith in Israel.” (Matthew 8:10) The beginning amen is an exclamation of enthusiasm in reaction to hearing the man’s statement of faith. Jesus responded to the people and situations around him with a loud amen sometimes, and didn’t just underline his own teachings with that word.

“Amen” isn’t just the natural end of a prayer, it is a way of saying “I most certainly agree!” Whether we say it at the end of our own prayers, or use it to agree with the prayer of another, may all our prayers reflect this wholehearted agreement with the words we have prayed, and our response of faith to God’s answers.

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).