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

Opening Remarks

The author of The Boys In The Boat met protagonist Joe Rantz before he died and was able to interview him extensively, the result being this fabulous book I've been referring back to. After first meeting Joe, he explains in the book's prologue, he expressed an interest in writing a book about Joe's rowing days. Joe said he'd like that, adding these admonishing words: "But not just about me. It has to be about the boat."

I approach this final reflection in a similar spirit. In the final analysis, it cannot be about Joe's boat. It has to be about Jesus' Church.

What Successful Rowing Looks Like

In my second reflection, I asked how we intended to interact with other people in Jesus' boat. Here I will re-state that question in more blunt terms: What does a healthy church look like? And I'll also spell out in blunt terms what the answer is, at least in part. It looks like an effective rowing team.

Needless to say, The Boys In The Boat didn't get written because a bunch of guys "didn't quite make it" and sunk back into obscurity. The book was written not least because a bunch of backwater guys won gold in the 1932 Olympics in Berlin. Obviously they achieved this feat because they were outstanding athletes. Obviously they also worked well together.

Needless to say, we'd hope the same for Jesus' church. Outstanding souls. Great Christians. Working together as a team. Winning Gold for Jesus.

No.

Meaning, No, I wouldn't say it quite that way. It sounds wrong. Let me explain it this way. It was awesome to see hard-working, anonymous men reach the pinnacle of their sport. Even better to see them overcome blatant cheating and rigging by the Nazi-regime lackeys who set things up so that Germany would win the race. That was all stunning stuff.

But that's not the part that brought tears to my eyes.

Here's what I read to my children shortly after finishing the book. To keep it shorter, here are the few basics you need to know, coming in. First, the coxswain (Bobby Moch) is at the back of the boat, looking forward. Don Hume is the first rower, next to Bobby Moch. Bobby calls the pace. Don sets it with his oars. Joe Rantz is number Two, behind Hume, and he and the other rowers keep the pace that Don sets.

And here's the kicker. Don Hume catches a cold during the trip (by ocean liner) to Germany. Over the next few weeks, his health continues to deteriorate. Don does row in the first race that gets USA into the finals, but with a fever. As soon as they had crossed the finish line, he "pitched forward and collapsed across his oar."

In the days that followed that race, Don's health declined even further.

What do we do? Well in church, the answer is, sadly, all too obvious. Replace this weak link. So what did coach Ulbrichson do? The same.

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The next morning a cold, steady rain was falling... and a blustery wind was whipping down the racecourse. At [the place where the USA team was housed], the jubilation had evaporated. Don Hume was still in bed, his fever spiking once again, and Al Ulbrickson had decided he could not row. Don Coy would have to step into the shell again at the stroke position. Ulbrickson broke the news to Hume, then to the others as they got up that morning.
At the breakfast table, the boys ate scrambled eggs and steak, sitting silently, their eyes seeing nothing and no one. This was the day they had worked for all year—three years for most of them—and it was inconceivable to them that they would not all be together in the boat in the last race. They began to talk it over, and the more they talked the more certain they were—it just wasn’t right. Hume had to be there with them, come what may. They weren’t just nine guys in a boat; they were a crew. They got up en masse and went to Ulbrickson. Stub McMillin was the team captain now, so he cleared his throat and stepped forward as their spokesman. Hume was absolutely vital to the rhythm of the boat, he told his coach. Nobody else could respond as quickly and smoothly to the moment-by-moment adjustments that a crew had to make during a competitive race. Bobby Moch piped up. Nobody else but Hume could look him in the eye and know what he was thinking even as he was thinking it, he said. He just had to have Hume sitting in front of him. Then Joe stepped forward: “If you put him in the boat, Coach, we will pull him across the line. Just strap him in. He can just go along for the ride.”
Ulbrickson told them to go upstairs and get their gear and get on the German army bus waiting outside to take them down to Grünau for the race. The boys began to troop upstairs. After a long few moments, Ulbrickson shouted up the stairwell after them, “And bring Hume along with you!”

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When I read Joe's words aloud to my children, I nearly burst into tears, and my eyes are watering now. Why?

My church has been through hard times recently. Our boat has been taking water. We've had a few sickly rowers.

A lot of healthy families went in search of a new boat. And to be perfectly fair, I know where they're coming from. We left two church in rapid succession a decade ago, so I know what it's like to bail on a bad situation. And sometimes it's important that you do. Some churches are freaking sick, and the last two that we left certainly fell into that bucket.

[sound advice: if coxswain Jesus has left the boat, abandon ship!]

The struggles we were seeing in our church seemed to us to be more like a Don Hume flu. We did not feel that Jesus had left the boat, and my wife and I were anyway tired of changing boats. Our family stayed.

Meanwhile, back in the boat...

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In the stern of the Husky Clipper, Bobby Moch couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He hunched forward and bellowed for Hume to take the stroke rate up. “Higher!” he shouted into Hume’s face. “Higher!” Nothing happened. “Higher, Don! Higher!” he screamed, pleading now. Hume’s head rocked back and forth with the rhythm of the boat, as if he were about to nod off. He seemed to be staring at something on the floor of the boat. Moch couldn’t even make eye contact with him. The boys kept rowing at thirty-five, losing their battle with the wind, and nearly every other boat on the water. Bobby Moch tried to fight off panic.

At the eleven-hundred-meter mark, Germany retook the lead from Italy. Another enormous roar went up from the crowd, just down the lake now. Then the roaring resolved itself into chanting—“Deutsch-land! Deutsch-land! Deutsch-land!”—in time with the stroke of the German boat. On his balcony Hitler peered out from under the visor of his hat and rocked back and forth in time with the chant. Al Ulbrickson could finally see the German and Italian boats now, forging up the near side of the lake, clearly in the lead, but he ignored them and locked his gray eyes onto the American boat, over on the far side of the water, trying to read Bobby Moch’s mind. This was starting to look like Poughkeepsie all over again. Ulbrickson didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. In Seattle a hush fell over Harry Rantz’s living room. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on in Berlin, but the announcement of the split times was alarming.

In the boat, Joe had no idea how things stood, except that he was vaguely aware that he hadn’t seen any boats falling away behind him—nothing but the flotilla of motor launches trailing the field, carrying officials and Riefenstahl’s cameramen. He had been rowing hard against the wind all the way, and his arms and legs were starting to feel as if they were encased in cement. There had been no real opportunity to conserve energy. It was too early for the sprint, but he was starting to wonder what would happen when Moch called for it. How much would he have left? How much would any of them have left? All he could do was trust Moch’s judgment.

Two seats in front of him, Bobby Moch was still desperately trying to figure out what to do. Hume still wasn’t responding, and as they approached the twelve-hundred-meter mark, the situation was becoming critical. The only option Moch had left, the only thing he could think of, was to hand the stroke off to Joe. It would be a dangerous move—unheard of really—more likely than not to confuse everyone with an oar in his hand, to throw the rhythm of the boat into utter chaos. But Moch had lost his ability to regulate the pace of his boat, and that spelled certain doom. If he could get Joe to set the rhythm, maybe Hume would sense the change and pick it up. At any rate, he had to do something, and he had to do it now.

As Moch leaned forward to tell Joe to set the stroke and raise the rate, Don Hume’s head snapped up, his eyes popped open, he clamped his mouth shut, and he looked Bobby Moch straight in the eyes. Moch, startled, locked eyes with him and yelled, “Pick ’er up! Pick ’er up!” Hume picked up the pace. Moch yelled again, “One length to make up—six hundred meters!” The boys leaned into their oars. The stroke rate jumped to thirty-six, then thirty-seven. By the time the field charged past the fifteen-hundred-meter mark, the Husky Clipper had eased from fifth to third place. On the shell house balcony, down the course, Al Ulbrickson’s hopes silently soared when he saw the boat move, but the move seemed to peter out with the boys still well short of the lead.

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It may seem strange to stop here, without including the finale... when the boys won it all. But we must remember, my friends, that this reflection is not really about that boat.

It has to be about the Church.

We have a new pastor now, and he's great. (We did not bail on our last one, so you know! He retired several years ago.) For our church, it feels a bit like Don Hume reviving. (I am thankful to report that Jesus is our coxswain, still!)

That's where it's at with our church as of today. And if our family had not stayed in the boat, we'd not have known the joy alongside the pain that inevitably comes when people stick together in a boat for long enough.

Why do we get on the boat? To be with Jesus.

What should we be doing on that boat? Rowing as a team to his beat.

What is one measure of success? That we carry each other's burdens.

Even when it seems that we're stuck on a sinking boat.

Exodus 32:9-12
“I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”

But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.

Moses is the kind of crewmate I want rowing next to me. God, grant us the grace to be the same for our brothers and sisters in Christ. In His Church.