Handing Over the Tiller

Flat water, no wind to speak of, an hour before the light goes, and the only sound is the engine doing what it has done for nineteen years.

Ted is sixty-seven and this is his boat, and it has been his boat since he was twenty-eight, and before that it was somebody else's and he crewed on it and hated him.

His grandson is nineteen and getting his ticket, and has been out with Ted since he was eleven, and can do everything on that boat except the one thing.

They are coming back in. There is a turn to make round the point, which is not a difficult turn. It is the turn Ted could make asleep and probably has. On flat water, in good light, with nothing else on the water and no reason at all not to.

He says: bring her round.

And the boy comes and stands beside him, and puts his hand on the tiller above Ted's hand, which is how they have done it for eight years.

And Ted takes his hand off.

Except he does not, quite. He takes it off and it goes back. He takes it off again and it hovers about four inches away and then it goes back. And the third time he actually lifts it away and puts it on his knee and holds it there with the other one, which is a thing he has never in his life had to do.

Three attempts. On flat water. To take a hand off a tiller with a boy on it who has done this a hundred times under supervision and is better at the throttle than his grandfather ever was.

The boy says nothing. He does not laugh and he does not make it easy and he does not look over. He just waits, with his hand on the tiller, until the old man's hand is on his knee, and then he brings her round.

And Ted sits there in the stern of his own boat with his hands in his lap and understands two things at once. That his grandson knew this was going to happen, and has known for a while. And that there is one part of his life that has never had another hand on it, ever, not once, and it is not the boat.

You have that tiller. Yours is not on a boat and I am not going to guess what it is. But you know there is one thing that no other hand has been near, and you know what your hand does when anybody reaches for it.

He says the hard sentence to a man He has just restored

John 21 is the beach chapter. Peter has denied Him three times and gone back to fishing, and there is a fire on the sand and breakfast on it, and a conversation happens that everybody remembers: three times, lovest thou me, three times, feed my sheep.

Only after all of that does Jesus say this.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.John 21:18

John tells us plainly in the next verse what that meant: this spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God. So I am not going to soften it or pretend it is a general principle about flexibility. It was about how Peter would die, and Peter knew it by the time he was old.

But look at the order in that chapter, because the order is the pastoral thing and it is not an accident.

Restoration first. Three questions and three answers, in front of the same number of people as the denials, on a beach, with food in his hand. Then work: feed my sheep. And only then, after the man has been put back on his feet and given something to do, the description of what following is going to cost.

You are told the cost after you are restored, and never as the price of being restored. That is the written word and not my read of your evening, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a conversation on a beach and lays it in the stern of a boat on flat water.

When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself

Now the phrase in the middle, because it is the most accurate description of a certain kind of man in the whole Bible.

When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest.

Dressed yourself. Went where you wanted. That is not a criticism. That is what a competent man does for forty years, and it is a good thing, and the whole of that ability is what has kept a boat off rocks and a family fed and a business upright and it is not being taken away from you as a punishment.

But another shall gird thee. That is the sentence about the tiller.

And then, in the very next verse, the last two words Jesus says to him: follow me.

That is where it lands. Not on the cost. On the following. He describes the hardest thing and then immediately gives the instruction that makes it bearable, which is not brace yourself, it is come with me.

This is yours, and the sentence ends on follow me, and it is already settled. John 21 puts follow me directly after the hard word, and the same Spirit who fell on Peter at Pentecost is the one making it a present fact in an old man with his hands in his lap.

Now let me guard it, because this passage is one people have used badly.

I am not telling you what it costs. Peter was told about his own end and you are not being told about yours, and anybody who reads that verse and then makes a prediction over your life has taken a liberty nobody gave them.

And I have not guessed what your tiller is. There is no list here.

And you have not forfeited anything by forty years of one hand on it. Peter was in his sixties or older when this was spoken over him, and Jesus does not spend one syllable of that chapter on how long the restoring took.