Marcus Loane on Luke 24 (the Road to Emmaus)

One of the loveliest things about Eastertide is to hear Luke 24 read in church - the account of the Risen Jesus appearing to the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, whose hearts "burned within them" as he explained the Scriptures, and who eventually recognised him "in the breaking of the bread."

Among my treasured books is Marcus Loane's "Life Through the Cross", published in 1966, the year the author became [Anglican] Archbishop of Sydney. Sir Marcus died in 2009 aged 97, having continued to minister to the glory of God throughout his long retirement. He did not set out to write an "original" commentary, or to break new ground in Biblical scholarship; his sole purpose in "Life Through the Cross" was to beckon the gaze of his readers to the Man of Sorrows who died for our salvation and rose to share his victory with us.

As always, Sir Marcus did it so movingly. A "literary hack" like me is reduced to wonder just by the rolling beauty of his turn of phrase. He was an artist who painted with the English language, a real wordsmith, precise and poetic at the same time. I loved hearing him preach. Indeed, I remember - as if it were yesterday - the sermon he gave at my Confirmation in 1964. An old-fashioned evangelical and evangelist, his dislike of Anglo-Catholicism failed to diminish his very real fellowship with and respect for those individual Anglo-Catholics he felt loved the Lord and preached the Gospel. He was, for example, a friend and admirer of Archbishop Philip Strong.

I share with you today, from "Life Through the Cross", Sir Marcus' reflection on Luke 24:

Luke proceeds with a brief reference to the speech that followed: "And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself."' Cleopas must have remembered the words in which the Lord began with a clarity which time could not diminish, but he could not quote in detail all that ensued. It is enough to know the drift of that conversation; the journey was sweetened by a fascinating exposition of all that the prophets had spoken. The Son of Man had been saturated with the knowledge and the teaching of the Scriptures; He was at home in its language and its spirit as no other had ever been. He could quote from the law and the prophets with an insight and an application which amazed His hearers, and the last words He had uttered before He bowed His head to die had been words of Scripture. He had felt no hesitation in His reference to the words of prophecy and in His claim that they were now fulfilled before men's eyes (Luke 4:21). But there is no record apart from this momentous occasion of a sustained exposition of all that the Scriptures taught with regard to Him Who was the Christ. It was for the two disciples on the road to Emmaus that He took the key of David and set out to unlock all the Messianic teaching in the Old Testament Revelation. He did for them what He was soon to do for their companions who were still in Jerusalem: "Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day" (Luke 24:45, 46).

"He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." There were many fingers of a prophetic character which all pointed forward to the Christ that should come. He was the seed destined to crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15; 1 John 3:8); He was the lamb God would provide as substitute and sacrifice (Genesis 22:8; John 1:29). He was the true Paschal victim whose blood would be shed for many (Exodus 12:13; Matthew 26:28); He was the great High Priest who would enter into the holy of holies once and for all (Leviticus 16:2; Hebrews 9:12). He was like the smitten rock from which there sprang a stream of living water (Numbers 20:11; John 7:38); He was like the brazen serpent that was lifted up for life and healing (Numbers 21:9; John 3:14). He was that star out of Jacob which shone as the herald of a new day (Numbers 24:17; Revelation 22:16); He was that great prophet whom God promised to raise up like unto Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15; Acts 3:22). The Psalms had told how He would come to do the will of God (Psalm 40:7, 8; Hebrews 10: 7), and how the nails would pierce His hands and feet (Psalm 22:16; Matthew 27:35). The Prophecy of Isaiah had made it clear that He would bear our griefs and carry our sorrows (Isaiah 53:4; Matthew 8:17), and that He would be led like a lamb to the place of slaughter (Isaiah 53:7; Acts 8:32). It was through Him that a fountain would be opened for sin and uncleanness (Zechariah 13:1; 1 John 1:7); it was in Him that the sun of righteousness would arise with healing in His wings (Malachi 4:2; Luke 1:78). He was prefigured in the symbolic character of things like the pillar of cloud by day and the column of fire by night, the blood of sprinkling and smoke of sacrifice, the seamless veil and mercy seat; He was foreshadowed in the personal history of men such as Joseph and David, Jonah and Jeremiah, Daniel and Mordecai. There were indeed countless signposts to show that Christ was in all the Scriptures and that He was no other than Jesus of Nazareth.

This fact was so significant that it formed part of the apostolic witness from the outset: "Let all the house of Israel know that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36). The Son of Man had been impregnable in His appeal to the testimony of the Scriptures; they were the rock on which He had taken His stand against all the storms of controversy. "Ye search the Scriptures," He said for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me: And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life" (John 5:39, 40). They sat in Moses' seat, yet they did not believe Him of Whom Moses wrote: "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me," He said; "for he wrote of me" (John 5:46). Men who knew the letter of the Law had no real insight into its truth, and could make no reply to His devastating criticism. Had they never read what Moses wrote? (Mark 12:26). Had they never read what David did? (Mark 2:25). Nothing is so final as the statement which He ascribed in parable to Abraham: "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them" (Luke 16:29). But there was a plausible argument which was meant to turn the edge of these words: men would be more likely to repent if one were to visit them from the dead. Then He declared in words of absolute finality: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead" (Luke 16:31). Thus a solemn appeal to the Scriptures bears out the claims of truth with the most far-reaching authority: "To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins" (Acts 10:43).

Thus a seeming stranger to the course of events in those days at Jerusalem passed from Moses to Malachi as He talked with them by the way and "opened . . . their understanding" (Luke 24:45) in the Scriptures. He showed them how the law and the prophets had all foretold that the Christ would suffer before He could conquer; then He showed them how all that they foretold had been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.

- Life Through The Cross, M.L. Loane, 1966, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pages 240-242

Our spiritual warfare

During times of personal struggle, church difficulties, or global conflict, it is all too easy for us to abandon basic Christian insights when trying to understand what is happening. The same goes when we are attempting to discern the response we should make. In our time many first world churches of a very wide range of traditions seem hell-bent on accommodating themselves to current secular world views on key issues, rather than gently and lovingly, but firmly, adhering to what God has revealed.  

It seems to me that one of the key passages of Scripture for us to constantly revisit in our day is Ephesians 6:10-13, in which S. Paul reminds us of the struggle with evil that is part and parcel of being a Christian:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. 

Commenting on this passage, the great evangelical Archbshop Marcus Loane (at whose hands I was confirmed 55 years ago when he was an Assistant Bishop in Sydney) wrote, 

There is a marked pause at the end of the long and salutary passage on home relationships; then Paul called on his scribe once more and the Letter was brought to a close with a call to arms. He knew that, just like the ancient Spartans, we were born for battle: therefore we must learn to ‘endure hardness’ as good soldiers of Christ (2 Timothy 2:3 Authorised Version). We have to live on ground where we will be under attack; it is like a camp in hostile country which must be held until the Captain returns in triumph. Attacks are launched against it by unseen adversaries, for the devil is in command of a vast host. He is always a most aggressive enemy, and that host is skilfully organised for war without quarter. No true soldier of Christ will be immune from its assaults, nor can he be neutral in that conflict. The battle field is overhung with clouds, and he will be forced to engage in hand-to-hand combat. But each member of that beleagured [sic] garrison can stand fast and prevail, because there are sources of strength available in Christ which can make them invincible.  Marcus L. Loane, Grace and the Gentiles (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1981), 110.

Now, I know that some of our liberal friends smile condescendingly at that kind of teaching, but no less a teacher than Dr Eric Mascall reminded us in his Boyle Lectures that 

. . . it is part of traditional Christian belief that, behind and beyond the physical universe, there is a realm of purely spiritual beings, in whose affairs we have become implicated. I need hardly recall you to the tremendous and superb imagery in which the last book in the Bible . . . depicts the warfare in the unseen world between the angels of light and the powers of darkness. E.M. Mascall The Christian Universe (Darton, Longman & Todd, London 1966), p. 110

Scripture, tradition and Christian experience combine in assuring us that the struggle against evil with which Christians on earth are concerned can be seen in its true proportions only against the background of a vaster and more mysterious conflict in the unseen world in which they, too are caught up. When we are faced with the claim that Christians in a secular age ought to live as completely secularised men we can only reply that such a programme does no justice either to the true nature of this world or of existence as a whole . . . It ignores also the resources which we have at our command. (ibid. p. 129)

May the Lord open the eyes of all Christian people, not just to the cosmic struggle in which we have become involved, but also, as Mascall says, to the resources God has given us with which to overcome. 

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High 

will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. 

I will say to the Lord, 

"My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust." 

For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler 

and from the deadly pestilence. 

He will cover you with his pinions, 

and under his wings you will find refuge; 

his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. 

You will not fear the terror of the night, 

nor the arrow that flies by day, 

nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, 

nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. 

A thousand may fall at your side, 

ten thousand at your right hand, 

but it will not come near you. 

You will only look with your eyes and see 

the recompense of the wicked. 

Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place 

- the Most High, who is my refuge- 

no evil shall be allowed to befall you, 

no plague come near your tent. 

For he will command his angels concerning you 

to guard you in all your ways. 

On their hands they will bear you up, 

lest you strike your foot against a stone. 

You will tread on the lion and the adder; 

the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.

"Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; 

I will protect him, because he knows my name. 

When he calls to me, I will answer him; 

I will be with him in trouble; 

I will rescue him and honour him. 

With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation."

(Psalm 91)

Marcus Loane on spiritual warfare

Don’t we hate it when (in the words of the hymn) “the strife is fierce, the warfare long” and we “feebly struggle”, not always hearing “the distant triumph song”?

One of the great things about the Prayer Book baptismal rite is that it leaves us in no doubt that in becoming Christians we enlist in an army in which we fight “against sin, the world and the devil.” Of course, as with Jesus, our weapon is love. But the battle is fierce, because the enemy is out to destroy what God is doing (just remember 1 Peter 5:8-9 from the old service of Compline!). I fear that underlying some of the changes people want the Church to embrace in our age is a sense of outrage that life should involve any kind of struggle at all . . . especially in the area of our deep seated desires. Well, we signed up for the struggle in our baptism. Sometimes the struggle is within; sometimes we are called on to stand for the gospel values of truth and justice in the public square; sometimes we are called to endure persecution, in a very real way “sharing the fellowship of [Jesus’] sufferings (Philippians 3:10). But we cannot airbrush out of ordinary Christian living the struggle of faith. 

It does help when we understand just who our adversary is.

Today we continue with the handful of quotes I have from Marcus Loane’s books. In Grace and the Gentiles (page 110) Sir Marcus deals with the spiritual warfare that everyone who follows Jesus experiences in one way or another:  

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.(Eph. 6:10-13 A.V.) 

“There is a marked pause at the end of the long and salutary passage on home relationships; then Paul called on his scribe once more and the Letter was brought to a close with a call to arms. He knew that, just like the ancient Spartans, we were born for battle: therefore we must learn to ‘endure hardness’ as good soldiers of Christ (2 Tim. 2:3 A.V.). We have to live on ground where we will be under attack; it is like a camp in hostile country which must be held until the Captain returns in triumph. Attacks are launched against it by unseen adversaries, for the devil is in command of a vast host. He is always a most aggressive enemy, and that host is skilfully organised for war without quarter. No true soldier of Christ will be immune from its assaults, nor can he be neutral in that conflict. The battle field is overhung with clouds, and he will be forced to engage in hand-to-hand combat. But each member of that beleaguered garrison can stand fast and prevail, because there are sources of strength available in Christ which can make them invincible.”

Marcus Loane on Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene

Sir Marcus Loane, (1911-2009) was the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney from 1966 to 1982 and Primate of Australia from 1978 to 1982. He spent nearly all his ministry in the Diocese of Sydney except for two years during World War II when he was an army chaplain in New Guinea. I have said before how a "literary hack" like me is reduced to wonder just by his turn of phrase. He was an artist who painted with the English language, a real wordsmith, precise and poetic at the same time. I loved hearing him preach. Indeed, I remember - as if it were yesterday - the sermon he gave at my Confirmation when he was still an assistant bishop. An old fashioned evangelical, his dislike of Anglo-Catholicism failed to diminish his real fellowship with and respect for those individual Anglo-Catholics he felt loved the Lord and preached the Gospel. The following is from his book Jesus Himself: The Story of the Resurrection: 

‘Jesus said to her, “Mary”’ (John 20:16) 

"But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’  Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned and said to him in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’ — and that he had said these things to her." (John 20:11-18) 

English literature does not often excel the chaste beauty of this passage in language and feeling. Sentence follows sentence with scarcely a connecting particle until it reaches the end. 

Peter and John had left the tomb and the other women had already gone their way. But Mary had followed the two men back to the garden where she lingered near the tomb. The shock of that death on the cross had plunged her into a grief that was close to despair. Her tears were the only outlet for a sorrow that lay too deep for words. ‘But ... as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb’ (John 20:11). Her eyes may have been dim with tears, but she soon saw that she was not alone. It was not the grave-clothes nor the head-cloth on that cold ledge which held her gaze: it was the two angels in white, one at the head and one at the foot of that ledge where the body had lain. They had appeared to the other women after Mary had run on her errand to Peter and John; neither Peter nor John had seen them, but Mary at once became aware of their presence. 

Mary looked at them in silent contemplation: it was they who broke the silence: ‘They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?’” (20:13). A gentle query. They did not tell her what they had told the other women, but they spoke with gentle understanding. ‘Woman’, they said: that was neither cold nor aloof, but a term of courtesy and dignity. But she felt no wonder at the sight of angel faces nor the sound of angel voices: she was far too obsessed with grief because she did not know what had become of his body. She could only respond with a troubled repetition of her words to Peter and John (cf. 20:2). ‘She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him’” (20:13). 

Those words had gone round and round in her mind until she could think of nothing else. There were only two slight variations, but they were not without significance. Now she spoke of my Lord rather than of the Lord, and she used the pronoun I rather than we: she was blind with sorrow; her loss was so personal that all thought of others was forgotten. 

That brief exchange came to an end, as a conversation which had nothing further to yield: ‘Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing’ (20:14). She had stooped down; then she straightened herself; now she turned around to the garden. What made her turn at that precise moment? The Greek text is emphatic. It was not the aimless movement of one whom the angels could not impress. Had she heard a muffled footfall? Had she even seen a fleeting shadow? Chrysostom imagined that some gesture on the part of the two angels caused her to turn around. It may have been so: nothing would have been more real or life-like. 

And turn she did: she turned right round; it brought her face to face with Jesus. Her eyes would look into his eyes: she saw him in his risen glory: but ‘she did not know that it was Jesus’ (20:14). One who had seen angels without alarm saw him as a stranger without concern; recognition failed her because she was in search of one who was alive, as if he were still dead. 

Mary had heard the first words to fall from the lips of the risen Saviour: ‘Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’” (20:15). He did not wait to see if she would unfold her grief to him: he simply spoke to her as the angels had done. But he spoke in a way that went far beyond a mere expression of sympathy. His first gentle query was identical with that of the angels, but the next words went much further. 

But how could a stranger have known the real nature of her secret longing? She offered no answer to his question because a new thought had taken hold of her mind. ‘Sir’, she said, ‘if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him’ (20:15). Perhaps he was the keeper of the garden; perhaps he knew what had happened. Perhaps he had himself moved the body elsewhere once the Sabbath was past. The pronoun she employed simply assumed that he knew what she meant. Hers was only the strength of a woman, but if she could find him, she would ‘take him away’ (20:15). 

The Lord Jesus had time to mark her tears and read her mind before he spoke again. ‘Jesus said to her, “Mary”’ (20:16); only one word, but that word would tell her all she needed to know. He spoke in the familiar dialect of Nazareth and Galilee to awaken her memory; and he called her Mariam, which was the equivalent of the Greek Maria (see 19:25). But there was more, for the very accent of his voice had survived the pains of mortality and death: that name, spoken with that accent, was a word of exceeding tenderness. He had addressed her before as Woman, a term of respect such as any man might use. But that was like the voice of a stranger and it awoke no special response. Mariam was like the voice of a shepherd who knows his sheep and calls each one by name. Not a glimmer of hope had shone in her soul only a moment or two before. But the tender longing and the vivid accent in that word would tell her as nothing else could do who it was that spoke: for who else could call her by her name in her own native patois as he did now? 

Mary had begun to turn away when his voice caught her and made her turn again: 

She turned and said to him in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means Teacher) (20:16). 

The word Woman had failed to evoke anything more than the word Sir in reply (20:15). But her own name, Mary, spoke to her heart and called forth her ardent cry, Rabboni. Like him she spoke in the familiar dialect of Magdala and Galilee as in the days of old: and the Evangelist was careful to give the Greek equivalent for her form of address. The strict meaning of that vernacular term Rabboni was the word Teacher or Master, but that homely form of address was more personal than the ordinary term Rabbi. It was the only time this word was used as a form of address to him after that first resurrection morning, no doubt because it lacked the full sense of lordship which was afterwards understood. But it was the cry of one who had been rescued from the edge of despair, and she poured out all the pent-up love in her heart in that cry of rapture.