Lessons From The Boys In The Boat (II of III)

Opening Remarks

It's a common image, but even so, how strange to run across it not once but twice in 24 hrs, and in one instance alluding specifically to the idea I already had percolating for this second reflection on boating.

Chicago Tribune Editorial, 1/10/2016. Last Words:
"Our future will be decided by how well we can row together."

Amen. But Let's be even more specific? Yes. We can.

I nearly fell out of my seat when on Saturday afternoon I cracked open the January 9th The Economist and saw this:

My old eyes, however need a larger font, so if only for me...:

WHEN he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was cox of a Trinity College rowing eight. Perhaps coincidentally, rowing metaphors flowed in September when he announced that he had invited all 37 global Anglican primates to Canterbury for a conference starting on January 11th, in what some see as a last-ditch attempt to save the Anglican Communion. One aide suggested that bishops should not spend so much time “trying to placate people and keep them in the boat, without ever getting the oars out and starting to row”. Frustrated that bickering is keeping Anglicans from their primary mission, the archbishop will need all his powers as a cox to head off a collision, or even the sinking of the global Anglican boat.

So on that note, let us continue our stories.

Stories about the Church.

What Happens In The Boat (If We Stay In The Boat)

I ended my first reflection with two questions:

First, why do we get into the boat?

Second, what will we do when life in the boat gets painful?

To be sure, those who hop on for a pleasure cruise will be getting off at the next port. But for those who remain on board, there arise new questions.

The media quotes already noted make my next two questions unsurprising.

First, where do we want to go, now that we're in the boat?

Second, how will we interact with the others in our boat?

As for the first question, I will state explicitly what I didn't spell out in my first reflection. Those who get into the boat so as to "go to heaven" have rather missed the point. And how!

A better plan would have been to enter the boat to be with Jesus.

Here's why. Both reasons for entering the boat are intensely personal. But the second reason offers more than a hint of a relational reason.

That matters. And how! Here's why. Jesus is our coxswain.

About That Book

For the rest of my explanation I return to The Boys In The Boat, which explains in Earthly terms what makes a gold-medal Olympic rowing team. As you read the below excerpt, humor me and try to imagine that George Pocock is Jesus, that you are Joe, and that the boat is Jesus' Church.

It wouldn't hurt, dear friends, to also remember this: Jesus' Church? It's your church, too. Jesus only has one boat.

------------

One exceptionally stormy afternoon in early March, when the boys were lounging morosely about the shell house, George Pocock tapped Joe on the shoulder and asked him to come up into the loft. He had a few thoughts he wanted to share with him...

Pocock began by saying he’d been watching Joe row for a while now, that he was a fine oarsman... But that wasn’t what he wanted to talk about.

He told Joe that there were times when he seemed to think he was the only fellow in the boat, as if it was up to him to row the boat across the finish line all by himself. When a man rowed like that, he said, he was bound to attack the water rather than to work with it, and worse, he was bound not to let his crew help him row.

He suggested that Joe think of a well-rowed race as a symphony, and himself as just one player in the orchestra. If one fellow in an orchestra was playing out of tune, or playing at a different tempo, the whole piece would naturally be ruined. That’s the way it was with rowing. What mattered more than how hard a man rowed was how well everything he did in the boat harmonized with what the other fellows were doing. And a man couldn’t harmonize with his crewmates unless he opened his heart to them. He had to care about his crew. It wasn’t just the rowing but his crewmates that he had to give himself up to, even if it meant getting his feelings hurt.

Pocock paused and looked up at Joe. “If you don’t like some fellow in the boat, Joe, you have to learn to like him. It has to matter to you whether he wins the race, not just whether you do.”

...And he concluded with a remark that Joe would never forget. “Joe, when you really start trusting those other boys, you will feel a power at work within you that is far beyond anything you’ve ever imagined. Sometimes, you will feel as if you have rowed right off the planet and are rowing among the stars.”

------------

I noted earlier that rowing is not a sport for sissies. It's not an individual sport, either. These same truths, my friends, apply to life in Church, too. In our American individuality, we speak of faith as a personal thing, which it is. We decide as individuals to clambor aboard. After that, however, it becomes a community effort.

How well, dear friends, are we rowing with the others on Jesus' boat?

To be continued...