(A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story)
Wham.
Brother Matt’s elbow meets your sweaty temple just as the guitar drops off and the boat full of tourists break into an a cappella chorus of “How Great Is Our God.” So lost in the reverie of his “God moment” (you were told by the tour guides to expect many of these), Brother Matt doesn’t seem to notice the blow. He just extends his arms over his head in worship and continues to sing out of tune, his body odor reaching your nostrils just as the converted fishing vessel lurches forward and you catch another spray of cold water from the Sea of Galilee.
There are far too many people on this boat.
You consider scooting an inch to your right, but that would land you directly into the lap of Brother Mark’s wife, an exceedingly devout woman whose name you can never remember but whose Bible, prayer journal, sun hat, and disposable camera leave little room for company. She, too, is looking at the northern horizon, where a black cloud looms, the blue-green water below it speckled with whitecaps.
Brother Andy, the self-appointed worship leader, transitions to the opening chord progression for “Oceans,” to much applause. Though the Sea of Galilee is technically a freshwater lake, the song resonates emotionally, and “God moments” ensue. You scan the deck for a barf bag or a life vest, or both. The captain, a skinny Israeli who speaks little English, seems unconcerned by the darkening sky. He’s kicked off the engine and lit a cigarette, smiling like a young man who’s convinced a group of Southern Baptists from Alabama to rent a tour boat by the hour. The mountainous shoreline might as well be a million miles away.
You regret the falafels you ate for lunch. You regret wearing jeans instead of shorts. You regret never taking swimming lessons as a kid. You regret everything, really—this trip, your ordination, the last decade of ministry. A pilgrimage to the Holy Land was supposed to straighten you out—everyone said it would, but you’ve never felt more disconnected from God, more like a tourist to your own faith. A dozen selfies from as many holy sites can’t change the frightening reality you’ve been hiding from your church: You are a pastor who isn’t sure he believes in God anymore. You are a pastor who hiked up the Mount of Olives, strolled through the garden of Gethsemane, waded through the Jordan River, and felt . . . nothing.
“Hey, Pete. Pastor Pete! Why aren’t you singing?”
Matt is peering into your face, and you catch your beleaguered reflection in his sunglasses.
“Oh, I’m just tired,” you shout over the wind. “Maybe a little queasy.”
Matt slaps you on the back and laughs.
“It’s all good, brother! It’s all good.”
He always says that. About everything. It will probably go on his tombstone.
You remember with relief the dimenhydrinate you stashed in your back pocket on the way out of the hotel room that morning. Your trembling fingers manage to find the bottle and unscrew the childproof lid. You swallow two pills without water, then add a third for good measure. Sure, the nausea treatment makes you a little loopy, but it saved your life during that awful van ride with the youth on their ski retreat a few years ago. You put your head in your hands, close your eyes, and imagine the stillness of your hotel room, the cool of your pillow. In just a few hours, you can rest. In just a few hours you will at last be left alone. Thank God you paid extra to avoid a roommate.
When you open your eyes, you can’t believe how dark it is. Dusk is descending swiftly on account of the coming storm. The water, mountains, and horizon blend into a hazy, foreboding gray. Andy’s music sheets blow overboard, and for once, the group falls silent. Matt pushes his sunglasses to the top of his head.
“We probably oughta think about headin’ back,” he observes, to no one in particular.
A crack of thunder finally gets the captain’s attention. He tosses his cigarette off the port bow, revs up the engine, and turns the boat toward Tiberias. You head out against the wind, leaping over the waves.
Whether from the effects of the dimenhydrinate or the adverse weather conditions, you cannot know, but everything moves as if in slow motion from that point on, the shoreline appearing as far away after what seems like an hour as when the tour boat first turned back. Heavy raindrops assail the open deck. Lightning strikes somewhere on shore. You surrender to the hypnotic, throbbing drone of engine and waves. At some point, Mark’s wife—her name is Reba, or Rhoda maybe—drops her things, staggers to the gunwale, and releases the contents of her lunch into the churning water below. As the sky grows darker, the faces around you grow paler.
There are far too many people on this boat.
Suddenly, you spot something strange amid the whitecaps off the starboard—a figure, about a hundred feet away, steady in the tumult. You squint, shielding your eyes from the rain with your hand. A statue of some kind? A buoy?
The captain cuts the engine. Perhaps he has seen it too. The boat bobs violently about, wind and rain obscuring your view. You stumble to the bow to get a better look.
It can’t be. Or can it?
A man! Standing in, or rather on, the water!
Ghostlike, he wears a loose white robe that ripples in the wind. From here he looks Israeli, with long dark hair and a beard. The figure takes a few more steps forward, stops, and then calmly waves an arm to signal the boat. He must be eighty feet away . . .
Now seventy-five . . .
Now seventy.
Is it he or the boat that is moving?
Your mind rushes through the possibilities—shallow water, holographic projection, some kind of practical joke the Galileans like to play on Southern Baptists. You’re wearing your contacts, and the prescription’s up to date. You turn to the other passengers, whose shorts and T-shirts are now soaked. They, too, are looking starboard, stunned.
The man keeps walking closer and closer, wind behind him, right arm outstretched. He must be fewer than forty feet away.
You can hardly believe it when the words rise to your throat and out of your mouth:
“Is that . . . you, Lord?”
Immediately the question gets caught in the wind, and you’re glad. What could you be thinking? You don’t even believe this stuff anymore.
And yet somehow, amid the roar of the storm, the figure answers back, clear as if it were a cloudless spring morning.
“Don’t be afraid.”
You feel it stirring the way it stirred in you as a boy when you walked the train tracks over the river gorge: that overwhelming, irrational, exhilarating impulse to screw it all and jump. Your grip on the gunwale loosens. Your right foot finds the rail. You glance at the dark water below, then back up at the man in white.
If you jump, go to Adventure A.
If you stay in the boat, go to Adventure B.
Adventure A
Splash!
The water shocks with cold. For a moment, you think you’ve gone under, but once you steady yourself, you see you are standing, submerged only to your knees. The waves beat relentlessly against your body, threatening to knock you over. Upon what you stand you cannot know—a rock? a sandbar? the sea itself? Your legs are numb, jeans heavy and wet; you cannot feel your feet. You search through the rain for the man in white and catch a blur of him up ahead.
“Come to me!” he shouts.
The first step toward him is the hardest, like descending unfamiliar stairs in the dark. You push your leg against the current and into the abyss, reaching and reaching and reaching, before finally finding your footing. Then you take the next step and the next and the next. With each one, your spirit grows calmer, your heart lighter. To your surprise, you begin to laugh. Around you the storm rages on, but you feel like a kid at a water park; you feel like you did when you were young and it was easy. At last you’ve escaped all the pressure, all the doubt, all those dumb, expectant faces on the boat. At last you are free.
You search again for the man in white and are surprised he seems just as far away as when you jumped out of the boat, maybe thirty feet. Only now you can make out his face, and it’s not what you expect. Instead of serenity and encouragement, his expression is one of . . . puzzlement, surprise. Jesus looks concerned.
And that’s when you remember.
It strikes you with the same force as when you realize you’ve left your luggage on the plane or when you wake up the morning after someone has died and remember they are gone:
You can’t swim.
Immediately comes the sensation of sleep-falling, only it won’t stop. You just keep falling and falling and falling, water rushing through your nose and mouth, arms and legs flailing. Every time you resurface, you get knocked back by a wave. Every time you get knocked back by a wave, your limbs grow heavier and it’s harder to fight. Your chest begins to burn, the light around you narrowing. You long for the surface but can’t remember if it’s up or down, an inch or a hundred miles away. Surprise gives way to panic, panic to surrender.
What a stupid way to die.
Then, after what seems like a lifetime, a tug on the neck of your shirt, an arm around your chest. Up you go until finally you break the surface, where you gasp violently for air. You can’t seem to get enough. Heart throbbing, chest aching, every orifice burns as your body is dragged to shore. The minute your knees hit the sand, you collapse into the shallow water and vomit, while above you, a large, panting beast of a man, soaked in his Jesus Saves T-shirt, pats your back reassuringly and says, “It’s all good, brother. It’s all good.”
It will take a while to put the pieces together, and even then some details remain fuzzy. No one from the group saw you jump; they were so distracted by the wind and waves and by the Israeli deckhand waving the boat in from the pier, wearing a white poncho and shouting directions at the captain. The storm had taken out all the lights. Matt spotted you just before your head went under, and without even thinking about it, threw his 270-pound, former-linebacker body over the rails and into the sea. He had you to the shore before the first tourist disembarked the boat.
Even after you hear the story a dozen times, you cannot believe this is the sum of it, that something more didn’t happen that night. And yet your only proof is the fact that the surrender you felt when walking toward Jesus—or that deckhand, or whomever—hasn’t gone away. You feel a little foolish, certainly, but you feel unburdened somehow, free.
“I think I owe you my life,” you tell Matt the next morning at breakfast.
“You don’t owe me a thing,” he replies, jovial as ever. “I know you would have done the same thing for me.”
And somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, you believe.
Adventure B
Splash!
You hear it just seconds after you put everything together—the darkened shoreline, the wave-assailed pier, the Israeli deckhand wearing a white poncho signaling at the boat from the jetty.
But Brother Matt has already jumped overboard, his imposing, 270-pound frame now bobbing precariously in the waves. He attempts to swim toward the pier, but his stroke is awkward, overwrought. His head slips under the water, then back up again.
“Help!” he shouts, his voice small in the tempest.
You look back at your comrades in the boat, who sit paralyzed with shock and fear. The captain is navigating the vessel to dock, the deckhand scrambling for a rope. Matt goes under the water again, and you know there’s no time to spare. Pushing back thoughts of those thwarted swim lessons, you leap over the gunwale and into the sea.
The impact shocks your body with cold. For a moment, you think you’ve gone under, but once you steady yourself, you realize, to your amazement, you’re standing. The water is only as high as your calves! Upon what you stand you cannot know—a rock? a sandbar? the sea itself? The pier is at least thirty feet away. Your legs are numb, jeans heavy and wet; you cannot feel your feet.
You scour the tumult for Matt and see his sunglasses floating up ahead.
The first step is the hardest, like descending unfamiliar stairs in the dark. You push your leg against the current and into the abyss, reaching and reaching, before finally finding your footing. Then you take the next step and the next and the next. With each one, your spirit grows calmer, your purpose clearer. The storm rages around you, but the fear washes off of you with the rain. You almost laugh.
Then a hand grasps your ankle. You kneel down to grab hold of Matt’s arm and suddenly find yourself neck-deep in the water, assailed by Matt’s frantic thrashing and the relentless pounding of waves. He resurfaces for a moment, gasping for air.
“Matt! It’s okay!” you shout, treading water like a lifeguard who’s done it a million times. “It’s all good, brother. Be calm.”
Matt relaxes long enough for you to swim behind him and slide your arms under his. You grab his shoulders, tilt his body back so he can breathe, and make your way to the shore. It’s as though you’ve acquired muscle memory for an activity you’ve never done before.
You have no idea how long you swim before you are met by Mark, Andy, and Phil, who help pull Matt to shore.
“I thought it was Jesus,” Matt cries between coughs once you reach the beach.
“Me too, brother,” you assure him.
As the story gets told over and over again in the intervening days, on tour buses and at restaurants, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock, no one says anything about walking on water, and you don’t mention it. Perhaps it was the dimenhydrinate, or some kind of adrenaline-infused temporary superpower. Perhaps you imagined it altogether. Who knows? All you know for certain is that the freedom you felt while standing amid all that chaos, all that wind and water and rain, has mysteriously remained. You haven’t got your faith figured out—not by a long shot—but you’ve made peace with that. You jumped when it mattered.
Of course that doesn’t keep you from sticking to your beach towel while the rest of the crew dashes to the water to float on their backs in the Dead Sea. You’ve had enough God moments for a while.