Sermon Archive
Rowing in faith
Sermon preached by John Burdett at Matins on 5 January 2003
Isaiah 60 ; Luke 3.15-17, 1-22
One of the most exciting things I've ever done is to cox a racing eight in a bumps race. You sit there, cross-legged, near the back of a long, highly unstable craft, 60 feet long and 2 feet wide, in sole control, for a short time, of the destinies of the eight oarsmen facing you who are doing all the hard work. ?It's a considerable act of faith on the part of the oarsmen, who rely on the cox to keep them clear of disaster. When their faith proves unjustified and things go wrong, the results are always interesting, occasionally dangerous and often hilarious, especially for the people watching from the safety of the river bank.
The Thames in London between Putney and Mortlake is good and wide, and the boats in the university boat race can start side by side, even if they end up one behind the other after a short distance. The river in Cambridge is too narrow for that, so 20 or 30 boats are spaced one behind the other along the bank, with each cox holding a toggle at the end of a chain attached to one of a series of anchors spaced along the bank. When the starting gun is fired the cox drops the toggle and the crew starts rowing, the object being to catch up with the boat in front of you and bump it before the boat behind catches up with you and bumps you. The boats travel at about 15 mph, but when you're only inches above the water that seems extremely fast. Life's made more interesting for the cox by the fact that there are three sharp corners on the course. The cox is lucky because he's the only person who can really see what?s going on. The people on the bank merely see the boats rushing past, and the oarsmen can?t see where they're going, only where they've been.
One of the significant things about rowing is that it's the supreme example of a team sport. ?In all other sports, except perhaps the tug of war, a team is at best a group of individuals. ?A crew is different. ?I used to cox my college's 2nd boat, which, of course, consisted of oarsmen who weren't as good as the people in the first boat, but eventually we developed into a crew which went to the London Head of the River Race from Mortlake to Putney and came third of 230 boats and beat my college's first boat easily. The job of an oarsman consists not only of rowing as well as he can, but of adapting his rhythm and style of rowing to suit the rhythm and style of the crew as a whole. ?I'm sure you can see the analogy I'm getting at.
The Church is like a racing eight. ?It's no use at all tied to the bank, static. ?It's got be on the move the whole time. ?We, as Christians, are like individual oarsmen. ?We have to work out our own salvation, living our lives as well as we possibly can, but we have duties and responsibilities to our neighbours and to the Church as a whole. If one of the oarsmen stops rowing, the people in front of him and behind him bang into him. ?It?s the willingness of all Christian people not only to work hard but to work together that ensures that the Church travels in the way it ought to. For example, just as daily private prayer, worship and Bible reading are essential duties of every Christian, so are public prayer, worship and Bible reading Sunday by Sunday with our fellow Christians.
But we must do more than that. ?Jesus said 'Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends'. ?I wonder if we tend to over-dramatise that last saying. ?We?re most unlikely to be called literally to die for our friends, so we're liable to think it won't ever apply to us. ?But I think it does. ?What I think Jesus is telling us to do is to show our love for our friends by devoting our lives to their benefit - giving up our lives to them. ?That involves complete self-giving, complete abandonment of self-centredness, just as an oarsman needs to abandon his own rhythm and style of rowing.
But where's the Church going? ?Where are we going? ?Like the oarsmen, we?ve got little or no idea of what's in store for us, but this is where we put our faith in the cox, because we know that the Church will be guided by God's Holy Spirit and that we can rely on him to guide us round the awkward corners and up the long reach to the finishing post. ? More than that, the good news of the Incarnation is that in Jesus God was made man. ?God isn't just the cox, able to see what's coming and steer Church in the right direction. ?In Jesus he's one of the oarsmen, one of us. ?We're all in this together. ?It's as if an expert oarsman had joined the crew not only to share the work with us, but to show us how to row better - how to row perfectly. ?It was Iren?us - one of the first great Christian theologians - who said that Jesus was made what we are in order that he might perfect us to be what he is.
But, of course, all analogies break down if you push them too far, and this concept of Christians as oarsmen is no exception. ?Of course we must work together as Christians. ?Of course we must obey our Lord?s very special command to us, his friends, that we should love one another, but we aren't merely units of a social group, like the workers in an ants' nest or a beehive. ?We're individuals with differing talents and abilities. ?We're called by God to use those talents and abilities in his service, and we must have freedom to do that. ? But that's not freedom for me to do what I like. ?Not even just freedom to be what I'm meant to be, but freedom to become what God wants me to become. ?I said just now that the Church is no use tied to the bank, static. ?It's got to be always on the move. ?But that applies to each one of us, too. ?We must be constantly developing, constantly looking for new ways of serving God and our neighbour. ?Constantly, consciously growing day by day.
But in the middle of our concentration on day-to-day Christian living we ought to find time sometimes to look back and count our blessings. ?And what better time could there be for that than the end of one year and the beginning of another? ?To look back and thank God, as the General Thanksgiving puts it, for all his goodness and loving kindness to us and to all men, for our creation, preservation and all the blessings of this life.
This business of counting our blessings is important for several reasons. ?Firstly, it makes us aware of God?s continuing care for us, and of his love as we experience it through the love and kindness of those about us. And it?s good for our morale. ?Counting our blessings isn?t a question of looking back over a year of petty domestic problems or difficulties at our work, and then thanking God that things weren?t any worse. There are people who've been hit so hard by tragedy that that line of argument would be unhelpful to say the least. ?For the Christian, counting our blessings is the conscious recalling and recounting of the love of God whose own Son knows what suffering is better than any of us.
Then, thanksgiving is an essential element of prayer, especially of intercession. ?As St Paul tells us 'In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God'. ?Someone once said to me 'I don't pray much, but when I do all I can find to say is "Thank you"'. I'm sure she would have been the first to agree that there ought to be more to prayer than thanksgiving, but I think she had her priorities right.
But of all our blessings the greatest is God's love. God's love demonstrated in the life, death and resurrection of his Son. And, of course, it's the beginning of the earthly part of that redemptive process which we celebrate and thank God for at Christmas.
The Jews have always spent a lot of time looking back at their history. ?Throughout the Old Testament there are continual references back, especially to the Exodus and their release from slavery in Egypt. ?We can see that going on in the New Testament too - for example, in Stephen's speech at his trial before the Sanhedrin. ?All these people, as they looked back, saw God's guiding hand in their history. ?The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews did the same thing, but took his thinking a stage further, because he saw another essential ingredient in addition God's guiding hand, and that's man's faith.
The crew of a racing eight won't get anywhere without faith in the cox. ?You can't row properly with your head over your shoulder to see where you?re going. ?In the same way, we as Christians, we as the Church, won't get anywhere without faith in the guiding hand of God. ? We can be very thankful that we don?t know what's in store for us. As far as good times are concerned, have you ever noticed how things you've really looked forward to have a habit of being just slightly disappointing? ?So often they don't quite live up to our expectations. ?Pleasant surprises are that much more pleasant because they are surprises.
And if there are bad times ahead there's nothing to be gained by worrying about them. ?We mustn't be like the White Queen in 'Alice through the Looking Glass', who made such a fuss about pricking her finger before she pricked it just because she knew she was going to. ?As Jesus said 'Each day has troubles enough of its own'.
But we can't help feeling apprehensive, can we?, as we look forward to the new year with all its uncertainties - to the prospect of terrorism, war and mass starvation, not speak of our own personal worries. ?Of course we're apprehensive. ?But we're not the first people to be called upon to face the unknown. ?Do you remember what God said to Joshua before he crossed the Jordan? ? There was Joshua, the new, untried leader of his people, about to commit his entire nation to an operation which would be the climax of their escape from Egypt - their entry into the promised land. ?If the operation failed all the hardships they'd endured would have gone for nothing. ?He must been apprehensive if ever anyone was. ?And God said to him 'Be strong and courageous. Don?t be terrified; don't be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go'. ?And what better message could there be for us?
There's nothing to be gained by worry, everything to be gained by thanksgiving and faith. Thanksgiving for all the blessings we?ve received in past years. ?Faith that having brought us and cared for us and guided us so far God's not going abandon us now. ?Faith in his guiding hand to steer us into future.
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