Thursday: Messing About in Boats

"Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING--absolutely nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Thus does the Water Rat begin Mole's initiation in chapter one of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. It occurs to me today that Jesus spent a significant amount of time messing about in boats. The results indicate there was nothing half so much worth his doing. Jesus used boats as a pulpit and a pillow. They carried him to appointments with demoniacs and dead daughters. He filled them with fish and emptied them of fishermen. For much of his ministry He messed, as the Water Rat puts it, in and around boats.

This is on my mind because yesterday we boarded an old tub at the port of Tiberius and chugged across a sliver of the Sea of Galilee to Gennesaret in order to view the "Jesus Boat." A brace of amateur archaeologists unearthed the boat in 1986 when a drought left it exposed just beneath the mud. It dates to the first century and probably gives us a good idea of the craft that Peter piloted along with Jesus' other seafaring pals.

I formed a couple of quick impressions in the brief time I had to peruse the preserved craft. One: small. The whole contraption runs about the length of the outboard fishing skiff my grandfather used to own. Two: old. Oh, I don't mean "old" as in ancient. Of course the thing has a couple of millennia on the odometer. I mean "old" as in it was a heap even in its day. Archaeologists have identified twelve different kinds of wood in the hull. Our guide compared it to the practice of a shade tree mechanic: When his old beater breaks down he'd rather not sink a lot of cash into a new part. Instead, he hits the nearest junkyard or perhaps cannibalizes an even more decrepit wreck sitting on blocks in his shed. In the same way, the owner of this boat strip-mined lumber from whatever source he could. A working man living without financial margins, he kept his pirough sea-worthy for as long as was humanly possible. In the end, there was nothing to salvage: He sailed her into the muddy bank, tossed the keys and title on the deck and walked away.

And THAT was the sort of thing that provided Jesus with a platform for miracles and a pulpit for marvels.

I thought about my car, a quarter-century old Toyota Corolla of indeterminate color and inelegant pedigree. It isn't quite as long or wide as the Jesus Boat. Dog hair flecks the threadbare upholstery. A neighbor told me he always knows when I head for work or return home by the choked grumble of my engine. It is small. It is old. Is it also an opportunity for the mighty works of Christ?

And, of course, if this is true of that disreputable beater I drive, it is also true of the disreputable driver. A tiny life, a fool's motley of patchwork parts, unshrunk scraps that have pulled great gaps where unwashed wisdom met threadbare experience. Throughout my days I have tinkered with the finicky mental mechanism, duct-taped the physical dilapidation, rerouted the spiritual wiring and generally tried to get 'er to crank over for one more commute. One of these days the thing will flat refuse to run and the cankering rust won't hold up to bolts or solder. I'll just shove the whole concern into the high weeds and walk away.

And in that moment all that will matter is whether, in all my perfervid living, I ever let Jesus in. All that will last will be anything the Master might have done when I put my little, banged-up life at His disposal. When I gave a homeless friend a place to crash, I let Jesus sleep in my boat and ride out a violent storm. When I spoke kind words to one who had wronged me, I let Jesus preach from the pulpit of my days. When I gave a friend a ride, I helped Jesus get where He was going.

Jesus didn't need a boat. He proved that when, in one of his most memorable miracles, he skipped the ship and decided to walk. On that occasion it was he who saved the vessel, not the other way around. But Jesus used the boat, because (at least I'd like to think) he knew it would one day moulder in the muck, used up and then thrust out, and He wanted it to have done something that outlasted all that.

And Jesus doesn't need my life. After all, it was He who saved me, not the other way around. But Jesus is willing to use my life. And when this aging flesh has sprung too many leaks to keep death outside any longer, when I have to give up sailing even the little inland lake of my limited existence, when all I have left to expect is room enough to hide the wreckage, that will make all the difference.