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.

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

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!”

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

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...

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

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.

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

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.

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...

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

Opening Remarks

I'm not a historian, but sports do not appear to have figured significantly in the day-to-day life of the Jesus-era Jew. Jesus concerned himself with misbehaving Pharisees and people who paid them too much homage, but there isn't too much mention of sporting figures in the New Testament, a few comments from Paul notwithstanding.

So what did people concern themselves with? Well, given the culture and the harder life, I'm guessing people were paying closer attention to farming, other vocations, and money.

Why do I mention that? Because pretty much all of Jesus' parables have something to do with farming, other vocations, and money.

That doesn't mean these topics deserve reverence. But it does mean that Jesus figured he could get people's attention by means of stories that involved... yeah. Farming, other vocations, and money.

Sports are now the dominant religion in America. Sporting shrines burst with money, fanfare, priestly outfits, and frenzied worshipers.

I hate that.

But I just finished The Boys In The Boat and (hopefully with no less confusion than Jesus exhibited with regards the significance of farming, other vocations, and money) I see stories to tell here.

Stories about the church.

It Begins In A Boat

Actually, thanks to a great sermon given by Skye Jethani, I'm keenly aware that the story of God on Earth begins in a garden and ends in a city. That good point having been granted, boats still figure significantly from time to time in that story, and I'm not thinking primarily of Noah when I say that.

No, actually I am thinking of Jesus and his twelve disciples in a single boat in a terrible storm. A boat on the verge of sinking. With no land in sight.

As a child, I heard of a legend surrounding the mystical, secret formula for Coca-Cola. It was said that there were only two men who knew the formula, and that they never flew together on the same airplane.

That's sounds like the stuff of urban legend, but apparently it is not. Furthermore, it's a fact (driven by the same reasoning) that Orville and Wilbur Wright never flew together on their first airplanes either. Why?

It's obvious. Precious knowledge must not be put at risk of extinction.

And yet. There they were. Not just the twelve founding fathers of the church, as if that weren't risky enough. Jesus himself was in the boat, too.

Pretty stupid. Not good business sense. Unless Jesus is God.

Yes, the church was in that boat on that stormy night, and they were a mess. (So what is new, right??)

But God was in that boat, too, and though he didn't seem to concern himself a great deal with the rowing, it was still thanks to God (and God alone) that the boat and its precious cargo did arrive at destination safe and sound.

About That Book

Having just finished The Boys In The Boat I see parallels begging to be drawn. Parables waiting to be told.

Friends, imagine for a moment that Jesus is a coxswain, that we are rowers, and that the church is a boat. Got that picture? There being 1+ billion Christians today, it's a silly image, I grant. But it was reality once... on a dark and stormy night in a Galilean sea. But I digress.

OK, so we're rowers. What does it take to be a good rower?

So glad you asked. It takes a lot. Source here, but read on:

The result of all this muscular effort, on both the larger scale and the smaller, is that your body burns calories and consumes oxygen at a rate that is unmatched in almost any other human endeavor. Physiologists, in fact, have calculated that rowing a two-thousand-meter race—the Olympic standard—takes the same physiological toll as playing two basketball games back-to-back. And it exacts that toll in about six minutes.
A well-conditioned oarsman or oarswoman competing at the highest levels must be able to take in and consume as much as eight liters of oxygen per minute; an average male is capable of taking in roughly four to five liters at most. Pound for pound, Olympic oarsmen may take in and process as much oxygen as a thoroughbred racehorse.

Not a sport, needless to say, for sissies.

As the book begins, set in 1932, our hero Joe heads to the boathouse. Joe is impoverished and uncultured, which gives him a huge advantage over the rich and cultured young men he competed with for a spot on the boat. Why?

Each evening, Joe Rantz noted with mounting satisfaction, there were fewer boys making the climb. And he noted something else. The first to drop out had been the boys with impeccably creased trousers and freshly polished oxfords. At a time when images of successful oarsmen appeared on the covers of Life and the Saturday Evening Post, varsity crew had seemed to many of them to be a way to build up their social status, to become big men on campus. But they had not reckoned on the sport’s extreme physical and psychological demands. As Joe made his way down to the shell house every afternoon, he saw more and more familiar boys—boys who had abandoned their boats—lounging on the grass in front of Suzzallo Library, casting him quick glances as he passed. The hurting was taking its toll, and that was just fine with Joe. Hurting was nothing new to him.

Two simple question for us as Christians.

First, why do we get into the boat?

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

The answer to the second question is intimately tied to the answer to the first, and for obvious reasons. Our motivation for entering the boat had better be a really, really good one. A powerful one. Because if it isn't, we'll be hopping right out of that boat at some point.

Spend enough time in the church and you wouldn't have to be told this.

Pain will come.

To be continued...

What the Words Messiah and Church Have In Common

Answer #1

Both words show up in the below passage!

Matthew 16
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"

They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"

Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."

Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be loosed in heaven."

Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Answer #2

Both words have been utterly and tragically misused and abused.

Jesus avoided the term Messiah like the plague. Practically everything that God had in mind for his Messiah was exactly not what the religious leaders and people of Jesus' day had in mind. And the Messiah they were waiting for was pretty much exactly not what God had in mind. Even the twelve disciples were utterly confused in their understanding. This is precisely why, after complimenting Peter for guessing correctly, Jesus proceeded to prohibit him from saying such things publicly.

The Messiah whose coming the Old Testament prophets foresaw was so wonderful that they found themselves literally grasping for words to convey the wonder of what they saw. By the time Jesus arrived, however, the word Messiah had been co-opted into a festering project of hatred and violence.

The Messiah, it was commonly believed, would overthrow the world order and restore Israel to the top of the heap. The Messiah, it was thought, would do some serious bloody and violent housecleaning. The Messiah, it was thought, hated Gentiles.

No wonder Jesus didn't want to be publicly associated with the word.

This, I submit, is the problem we face today with the word church. If Jesus were to conduct a follow-up interview with his disciples today, how might it go?

I imagine the following:

When Jesus came to the region of the Americas, he asked his disciples, "What do people here say the Church is?"

They replied, "Some say it's a place where sexual predators, money-grubbers and power-mongers find easy prey."

"Ouch." Jesus winced. "How do you feel about that?"

They answered, "We grieve that a people called to holiness, simple living and mutual submission should fail so greatly as to make such caricatures not only possible but in many cases well-justified."

"What else do you hear?" Jesus inquired.

They replied, "Others say the is church a minority group of people who want to write laws that will force all of society to live by their own standards of behavior."

"Do you agree?" Jesus asked.

They replied, "We don't think laws change people. It's your job to change hearts and transform lives."

"What else do people here say the Church is?" Jesus asked.

They replied, "Still others say that it is a bunch of people who hide from life and hate gays and other people they consider sinners."

"How do you feel about that?" Jesus asked.

They replied, "You spent most of your time with the people that religious leaders hated the most. We think we should do the same."

"What do people who go to church around here think the Church is?" Jesus asked.

They replied, "Many of them think it is a place where people gather socially on Sundays to listen to a sermon, sing a few inspiring songs, and get a lift that will carry them through the week. If it's a big church, they like to buy coffee at the Starbucks in the foyer."

"But what about you?" Jesus asked. "What do you say the Church is?"

They replied, "We are your people. We expect to suffer because we follow you. We encourage one another to bear up under suffering, support the cause of the orphans and widows, and take unpopular stands for those who cannot speak for themselves. We walk the way of the cross as you did, revealing to the entire world the secrets of God: that life is found in you, and nowhere else."

Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, my little ones, for this was not revealed to you by a sermon you heard on TV or in a mega-church. God himself revealed this to you, and I tell you that you are my church. The gates of death will not overcome you. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be loosed in heaven."

Yes, despite the way these terms have been dragged through the mud, both the Messiah and his Church will indeed prevail over the kingdom of Satan. But we have to be careful about how we refer to these two partners in victory.

As for Jesus, he was, as Peter said, "the Messiah, the Son of the living God." But because of the baggage that came with these legitimate titles, Jesus had to use code-words to refer to himself, the Son of Man being only one such example.

We face a similar dilemma today. We are indeed Christ's Church, but the original meaning of the word is now hidden beneath numerous layers of muck. For this reason we, like Jesus, must be cautious when using the term in public. In my imaginary dialog between Jesus and his disciples living today, I wonder if he might not have ended it on a similar note....

Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that they were the church.