It Is Nearly Evening

He asked them to tell him what happened.

What things?

It was the afternoon of the first day of the week, on the road from Jerusalem out to a village called Emmaus. Two people were walking home after the worst weekend of their lives, and a stranger had fallen in beside them. He had already asked what they were talking about. They had stopped in the road with sadness on their faces and asked if he was the only person in Jerusalem who didn't know.

So he asked again, two words. What things?

It was his own story. He let them tell it to him.

Neither of them was one of the Eleven. Luke names one, Cleopas, and never names the other. No title, no place at the front, nothing in the record but a name and a road home. And the first long conversation Luke gives the risen Jesus, start to finish, is with them. Not with the leaders in the locked room. With two people walking away from the city in the middle of the afternoon, with nothing left to do there.

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They told it all. A prophet from Nazareth, powerful in what he said and did. The chief priests and rulers had handed him over, and he'd been crucified. But we were hoping He was the One who would redeem Israel. Some women had gone to the tomb that morning and come back talking about angels. Some of the men had gone to look. But Him they did not see.

He heard them out. Then he went back through the Scriptures with them, starting with Moses, the whole way to the village. Luke gives the distance as about seven miles. That's a long afternoon's walk at the pace of people who are grieving.

They came to the edge of the village, and he kept walking.

He seemed to be going farther.

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Every question in this book was asked by someone else, to the person standing there. This is the one place where the asking turns around.

But they pleaded with Him, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over."

It's barely a question. It's a request at a door. Two tired people, who did not know who they were talking to, didn't want a stranger out on the road after dark. So they asked him in. So He went in to stay with them.

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It's worth looking back down the road at the questions that came before this one, because they came at every hour of the day.

The first was called across a garden in the breeze of the day. Where are you? The one asking already knew. He wanted the man to say.

One was asked at a spring along the road to Shur, to a servant who was running away. Where have you come from, and where are you going? She answered the first half and couldn't answer the second, and she gave a name to the One who saw her.

One came to a prophet at the mouth of a cave, after a day under a broom tree asking to die and forty days on the road. What are you doing here, Elijah? He'd been fed twice before anyone asked him anything.

One was asked in Bethlehem by a widow, about herself, to the women of the town she had left years before. Why call me Naomi? The story never called her anything else.

One was asked of a man sitting in the heat outside a city, waiting to see what would happen to it. Have you any right to be angry? The book ends on a question to him, and he never answers it.

One was asked on the far side of a wilderness, to a shepherd tending another man's flock. What is that in your hand? He was holding the answer the whole time.

One was asked in a vineyard at the eleventh hour, to people still standing around because nobody had hired them. Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing? When evening came, they were paid first.

One was asked by a king, to the servant who poured his wine. Why is your face sad? The servant prayed before he answered, and then he told the king exactly what he needed.

One was asked of a farmer in a story Jesus told, a man with full barns and plans for many years. Then who will own what you have accumulated?

One was asked beside a pool, to a man who had been lying there thirty-eight years. Do you want to get well? He answered with an explanation, and he walked anyway.

One was asked twice in one week on the road up to Jerusalem, to two brothers and then to a blind man outside Jericho. What do you want Me to do for you? The brothers asked for seats. The blind man asked to see.

One was asked in a synagogue that had just emptied. Do you want to leave too? Peter answered with a question of his own.

And one was asked on a beach after breakfast, three times, to the same man. Do you love Me? Each yes came back with people to feed.

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Thirteen questions, and then a request at a door. Early morning on a beach. Sunrise and a hot wind outside Nineveh. A night in a cave. The eleventh hour in a vineyard. The breeze of the day in a garden. And now, nearly evening, at the edge of a village.

Most of them were asked by God, or by Jesus. Two were asked in stories he told. One a widow asked about herself, and one a king asked his servant. Hardly any of them were asked to find something out. Nearly every time, the one asking already knew. The question was the open door. What was missing was the answer, in the person's own words.

Most of the answers were short. A staff. Let me see again. You know I love You. A few people never answered at all, and the record lets them stand there unanswered, still being asked.

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At the table that evening he took the bread and spoke a blessing and broke it and handed it to them.

Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus.

And he was gone from their sight.

Not on the road, while he was explaining. Not at the village edge, when they might have let him walk on. In a house, at an ordinary meal, after two people who had lost what they'd hoped for set a place for a stranger.

They had asked a stranger in because it was getting dark. That was all they did. They didn't know who he was, and they didn't ask him in to be blessed, or taught, or seen. They asked because the road was no place for anyone after sunset and their door was right there. The smallest thing in the whole story, a place set for one more, is the thing that opened their eyes.

Evening, in this story, isn't when things close. It's when he came in, and it's the hour they turned around.

And they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem. Seven miles, the way they'd just come, with the day already gone. They found the others together in the city and told them what had happened on the road, and how they had known him in the breaking of the bread.

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The book began with a garden at the end of a day, and two people standing behind the trees in leaves they'd sewn themselves. Before anyone left that garden, God made them clothes and put the clothes on them with his own hands.

It ends with two people at a table at the end of a day, in a village nobody can find on a map anymore, with bread broken in front of them.

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The last question in the Emmaus story isn't his.

It's one they asked each other, at that table, with the bread still in pieces and the place across from them empty.

Were not our hearts burning within us as He spoke with us on the road?

Nobody answered it. They got up and walked back into the dark to tell somebody.

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Your own road.

The plainest thing to do with these questions now is to live them, one at a time, starting this week.

Take the thirteen questions one a week, for thirteen weeks. Pick a day, the same day every week, and a time early enough that the day hasn't filled up yet. Read that week's question out loud. Then do its one small thing before the next week comes. That's the whole plan. One season, one question a week.

1. Where are you? Write down where you actually are this morning.
2. Where have you come from, and where are you going? Answer both on paper.
3. What are you doing here? Eat, sleep, then listen. Nothing else that week.
4. Why call me Naomi? Pick one person and stay.
5. Have you any right to be angry? Write two sentences: what happened, with names, and what it cost you.
6. What is that in your hand? Write the other side of the ledger: what you know how to do, who trusts you, and what you know now that you'd have paid for at thirty-five.
7. Why have you been standing here all day? Name the one thing you've ruled out because of your age, and take one step toward it this year.
8. Why is your face sad? Point what you already know how to build at the thing you can't stop thinking about.
9. Then who will own what you have accumulated? Write two numbers: what you need, and what would be enough.
10. Do you want to get well? Take one small step you've spent years explaining why you can't.
11. What do you want me to do for you? Answer it out loud, in one sentence.
12. Do you want to leave too? Write your one thing.
13. Do you love me? Feed one person, and hand one thing on while you can still watch.

Some weeks won't go the way you planned. A week will get missed, or a move will turn up something you didn't want to look at. Just pick up where you left off. If one question takes three weeks, let it take three. Most of the people in these pages took longer than a week with theirs.

Don't walk them alone if you can help it. There were two on the road to Emmaus, not one. Find one or two people to take the questions with you: someone you share a house with, a friend of many years, a neighbor, a few people who've walked out of a role around the same time you did. Meet every week or every other week, at a kitchen table or in a back booth at breakfast. Each person reads the question, says what they did with the move, and the others listen. No fixing and no advice unless someone asks for it. An hour at most. If a meeting turns awkward, eat something and come back next week.

And this week, before any of that, do what the two did at the edge of their village.

Open your table. Ask one person in.

Not a dinner party. One more plate at the meal you were already eating. Think of someone near the end of a long road: the neighbor who lost a spouse this year, the friend who just cleaned out an office, the person from the old job who stopped calling around the time you stopped calling too. Call them by Wednesday and say it plainly. "We're having soup Thursday around six. Come eat with us." If they say no, ask again next month, or ask someone else this week. If the evening is quiet and a little awkward, it still counts. Two tired people asked a stranger in because it was getting dark, and that table is where their eyes were opened.

It is nearly evening. In the last story in this book, that was the hour he came in.

So He went in to stay with them.