Jesus had already told them to cross to the other shore.
One man was in the boat. Another stood in the water, holding it close while the others came aboard. The crowd was loosening reluctantly. People who had waited to speak were trying to ask their questions over one another.
I had spent the afternoon listening.
I was a scribe. Usually, when someone spoke about the scriptures, I knew where to question him. With Jesus, I kept finding that the question I had prepared was smaller than what he was saying.
Now he was leaving.
I pushed past a man who would not move.
“Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus looked at me.
Foxes had their holes, he said, and birds their nests, but the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head.
The man in the water shifted his grip on the boat.
I waited for the rest of the answer.
There was none.
One of his disciples stepped forward, asking to bury his father first. Jesus turned toward him, and I stood there still trying to understand what he had said to me.
***
Had he asked whether I could endure hunger, I would have said yes.
Had he warned me that we might sleep outside, I would have said yes to that too. I was not a strong man, but I could serve. I could learn to bear what others bore.
Instead, he had placed three things before me.
Foxes. Birds. The Son of Man.
Why should the last have less security than the first two?
I had spent my life studying the order of God’s promises. The Messiah would reveal their fulfilment. Yet here was a man speaking as though even the animals possessed something he could not count upon.
Was this a warning? A question? Had he refused me?
Someone climbed aboard. The boat dipped, and the man holding it had to pull it back.
I opened my mouth.
“Then—”
I had no sentence to put after it.
I wanted to ask how such a condition could belong to the Messiah. But asking that would reveal how little I understood, immediately after offering to follow wherever he went.
Jesus stepped into the boat.
The disciple who had asked to bury his father stepped aboard too.
There was still time. I could have stepped forward. I could have asked them to wait.
But I needed to settle what his answer meant.
The man in the water pushed. An oar struck the surface. I moved toward them just as the gap became too wide for a step.
For a moment, I considered wading after it.
Then someone behind me asked what Jesus had said, and I turned.
When I looked back, the boat was beyond us.
***
I returned to my room and opened a scroll.
I read the same passage several times without following it.
His answer irritated me. I had offered him everything he could reasonably ask. Why give me something to solve when there was no time to solve it?
Then another thought became harder to dismiss.
Perhaps I had offered everything except the right to understand before I moved.
I did not like that thought either.
For weeks, I imagined another encounter. This time I would be ready. I would tell him that I had considered his words and would follow without conditions.
Yet whenever I rehearsed that declaration, I began considering what its conditions might be.
I heard reports of his teaching. Some offended what I had been taught. Others made passages I had known since childhood suddenly seem unopened.
I wanted to go. I wanted to be certain that going was right.
Eventually, I grew tired of hearing myself demand certainty.
One morning, I put aside my work and began asking where he could be found. I was prepared, at last, to follow before I understood.
But the news that reached me was of his death.
For a long time, I sat with the things I had intended to take.
***
I lived far longer than I expected.
Long enough to hear people proclaim that Jesus lived. Long enough to hear others explain why those people must be wrong.
I studied, listened, argued, and sometimes prayed with a desperation.
Meanwhile, life kept giving me events for which my understanding had made no provision.
My son died before me.
I brought his goodness before God as though presenting evidence. He had cared for his mother. He had paid what he owed. He had helped neighbours who could offer him nothing.
I knew that I had no case to plead. Still, I pleaded it.
Afterward, I continued declaring that God was One. I could explain that confession carefully. I could defend it against objections.
But in my prayers, I kept describing the life God ought to have preserved.
***
When the Romans came, I was too old to flee quickly.
A younger relative found me beside an open chest, deciding which writings to carry.
“We must go.”
I told him that some of these could not be replaced.
He took hold of my arm.
“Neither can you.”
We left the chest.
For the first days, I kept asking where we were going. Each answer lasted until someone brought news of soldiers, a blocked road, or a village that would not receive us.
We turned again.
Now we are beyond the country I knew.
Yesterday, the man who had been sharing his bread told me he could spare no more. He looked ashamed. I tried to thank him for what he had already given, but I was too tired to say it properly.
Tonight, we have stopped beside a broken wall.
My relative has gone to find water. I watched him leave and wondered whether I would still be here when he returned.
There is little strength left in me.
And Jesus’ answer is here again.
***
For years, I had examined those words as a difficulty in the account of the Messiah.
Tonight, I recognise the difficulty in myself.
I had declared that there was One God, then measured his faithfulness against the order I expected him to maintain.
When my son died, I described what a just God should have done. When we fled, I could scarcely pray without telling him what he ought to have protected.
I had spent my life denying that there was another God.
Yet whenever this God did not preserve the world as I understood it, I imagined a better arrangement and waited for him to conform to it.
At the shore, I had wanted the Messiah to make sense within that arrangement before I entrusted myself to him.
The boat left while I was still trying to secure my footing.
I understand now why his answer gave me no footing of that kind.
The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
And how could he glorify and worship God more fully than by trusting him there?
That was what I could not add.
There is One God when I have a room, books, work, and people who recognise me.
There is the same One God when all of this is gone.
I can mourn my son. I can fear the soldiers. I can ask for shelter and water. None of this requires me to imagine another God who would deserve my worship because he arranged my life more agreeably.
***
My relative returns.
He kneels and holds the cup while I drink. Some water runs down my chin. He wipes it with the edge of his sleeve, without saying anything.
I thank God.
For a moment, I am back at the shore, watching the boat depart.
I have called that moment my failure for most of my life. Everything afterward became the life I lived because I had missed the one I should have lived.
But Jesus had left me his answer.
It had followed me into my studies, my arguments, my grief. I had put it aside repeatedly, and repeatedly found it waiting.
Perhaps the decades were a generous gift of time to learn what I could not accept in those few seconds.
Some men followed him aboard a boat. Others walked beside him and learned through days of work, hunger, welcome, and rejection.
My path had taken much longer.
It had enough hardship of its own. And God had given me enough time.
I had thought Jesus left me without a mission. Perhaps he entrusted me with one I could not yet recognise.
***
“Tomorrow,” my relative says, “we may find somewhere better.”
I hope he does. He is young enough to need many more tomorrows.
He draws his cloak over my feet and sits beside me.
I no longer need to settle where I will rest before I can thank God for being here.
The answer I could not give at the shore has taken almost my whole life.
I give it now.