Jesus sat on the beach digging his toes into the sand warmed by the sun. It had felt hot to the bottom of his bare feet as he walked. But beneath the surface, it was cool. He dug his feet deeper. Beside him sat Peter, next to Peter, John. The rest of us lounged about the beach. Thaddeaus and Matthew were standing in the surf, letting the waves crash around them and gazing toward the watery western horizon. No mountains in the distance here for this is the Great Sea, the ocean filled with leviathan and in depths beyond imagination. If one sailed until he disappeared into the horizon, where would he end up? Where is the island of Crete from here? Rome? Italy? Spain and beyond?

We were at the home of Simon the Tanner, in the city of Joppa. Simon’s house was built at a spot only a few feet from the sand of the beach. One could step from his threshold into the sand. It was a wonderful place to live. I thought about how pleasant it would be to go to sleep every night listening to the pounding waves, smelling the salt in the air. The only distractions were the odors of Simon’s trade. It is no accident that he lived near the sea where the breeze is constant.

Jesus looked pensively out at the water, sometimes closing his eyes against the wind which often bore with it tiny grains of sand, the smell of the salt water rich and powerful. It was one of those unusually warm and balmy days of late fall. Seagulls drifted overheard mere feet away from us. It seemed as if we could reach out and touch them. There, one of them was pure white. I watched as it hung suspended on the wind until its wings cut a graceful arc soaring inches over the pounding surf. What an exhilarating thing it must be to fly, to drift motionless on the wind. I wondered what it was like to feel ocean spray in your face while flying.

“Peter,” Jesus spoke, “I want you to return here often after I am gone. It is a place of peace. You will find refreshment here, a cleansing and deepening of soul.”

“Amongst Simon’s hides?” quipped Peter. Jesus smiled. They were quiet for a moment. Then Peter said, forcing himself to suppress his concern, “Besides, there is no place you can go that I will not follow.” The thought of coming here or going anywhere without Jesus was for Peter, unthinkable. This tall man, hair flecked with gray, raw-boned fishermen’s muscles in sharp definition holding together his athletic body, was after all a man consumed with deep spiritual passion for the man he now considered his master.

Jesus turned and gazed at the fisherman, “Yes there is, Peter.”

“Yes, there is, what?”

“A place I can go, a place I will go, that you cannot and will not follow.” Peter frowning, looked into the Lord’s face. He did not realize, none of us realized how privileged we were to be able to do that, to look into the face of Jesus the Christ. The Lord looked away, back at the sea. “At least not with me. Perhaps later.” Peter did not know how to respond to such enigmatic words from Jesus. It was enough to be here, now.

“Lord, I don’t think I understand . . .”

Before Peter could finish, Jesus had picked up a handful of sand and playfully through it all over Peter, “I said, you can’t follow me,” he laughed. With that, he stood, shrugged off his robe and trotted toward the surf, gathering himself into a flat out run. “Come on, fisherman,” he yelled back, “see if you can swim!” In the next instant, he had plunged beneath the waves.

Peter looked after him, astounded. How could he go from heavy ominous words to frolicking in the surf in a moment of time? It didn’t matter. Peter shed his own outer garment and ran after him, “I can show this carpenter a thing or two about swimming!” he cried. He knifed into the foaming water as though he had been born there.