Delivered on Sunday 25 March 2007 in St George's Chapel

Romans 7.21 - 8.4

Alexander McCall Smith is well known for his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels but he has also written a delightful trilogy with the central character Professor Dr von Igelfeld. The very first of these stories is printed under the title Portuguese Irregular Verbs and in it we meet von Igelfeld and his two academic friends Professor Prinzel and Professor Unterholzer. The three friends have been staying at a hotel and quite fancy a game of tennis, even though none of them have ever played before. They reckon, however, that tennis must be like anything else; you must be able to learn all about it from a book. McCall writes:

Prinzel was despatched to speak to the manager of the hotel to find out whether tennis equipment, and a book of the rules of tennis, could be borrowed. The manager was somewhat surprised at the request for the book, but in an old hotel most things can be found and he eventually came up with an ancient dog-eared handbook from the games cupboard. This was The Rules of Lawn Tennis by Captain Geoffrey Pembleton BA (Cantab.), ... published in 1923, before the tie-breaker was invented.

Armed with Pembleton's treatise, described by von Igelfeld as 'this great work of Cambridge scholarship', the three professors strode confidently onto the court. Captain Pembleton had thoughtfully included several chapters describing tennis technique, and here all the major strokes were illustrated with little dotted diagrams showing the movement of the arms and the disposition of the body.

It took no more than ten minutes for von Igelfeld and Prinzel to feel sufficiently confidently to begin a game. Unterholzer sat on a chair at the end of the net, and declared himself the umpire. The first service, naturally, was taken by von Igelfeld, who raised his racquet in the air as recommended by Captain Pembleton, and hit the ball in the direction of Prinzel.

The tennis service is not a simple matter, and unfortunately von Igelfeld did not manage to get any of his serves over the net. Everything was a double fault.

[It was now Prinzel's turn to serve.] He had positioned his feet in exactly the way advised by Captain Pembleton but now quickly consulted the book to refresh his memory. Then, throwing the tennis ball high into the air, he brought his racquet down with convincing force and drove the ball into the net. ...

And so it continued, as the number of games mounted up. Neither player ever succeeded in winning a game other than by the default of the server. ... Von Igelfeld eventually suggested that the Rules of Tennis be consulted to see who should win under such circumstances.

Unfortunately there appeared to be no answer. ... 'This is quite ridiculous,' snorted von Igelfeld. 'A game must have a winner - everybody knows that - and yet this ... this stupid book makes no provision for moderate players like ourselves!' ...

'I'm not interested in playing such a flawed game,' said Unterholzer, with a dismissive gesture towards The Rules of Lawn Tennis. So much for Cambridge!'

They trooped off the tennis court, not noticing the faces draw back rapidly from the windows. Rarely had the Hotel Carl-Gustav provided such entertainment for its guests.

The friends warm from their sport decided to go for swim. A bit like tennis, however, they had never actually been swimming - they had only read about it. McCall Smith concludes:

Inside the Hotel Carl-Gustav, the watching guests waited, breathless in their anticipation.

It seems to me that von Igelfeld and friends had a well known problem. They found if difficult to translate ideas into actions. They had read the tennis manual and in their mind they knew exactly what they ought to do, but when it came to executing the shot the body let them down. They wanted to play a text book shot but instead fluffed the ball straight into the net. I want to suggest that their situation is like the one described by St Paul is his letter to the Romans. Of course, he is not talking about tennis but about the business of living. He says 'when I want to do right, only wrong is within my reach'. When I want to play a text book shot all I manage is a mishit. 'To sum up', he says, 'left to myself I serve God's law with my mind, but with my unspiritual nature I serve the law of sin.' Paul wants to serve God's law; he wants to live out the law as described in the first five books of the Old Testament; he wants to play by the book. The trouble is, like von Igelfeld, he has difficulty translating the ideas into actions. He knows what the law says and he knows that the law is good but his flesh, his body, prevents him from putting into practice what his mind agrees to. And that he would say is not just his problem, but our problem. We too have a problem moving from knowing what is right, to doing what is right. We have a problem, you might say, living out a text book shot.

We need at this point a little clarification. Von Igelfeld and his friends knew that in consulting Captain Pembleton's book on tennis, they were reading about the rules and techniques that relate to the game of tennis. What was Paul hoping to achieve by reading the law? On this point Paul is clear: the law teaches us how to be obedient to God, and the book is a good book, the problem is only our inability to make practical use of it. We can learn how to be obedient but we constantly fail to show obedience.

He goes on to explain that the power of the law was nullified because of our weakness. But - and this is a big but - in sending his Son in the likeness of our sinful nature God has made it possible for us to live by the Spirit. The whole of chapter eight is an outworking of what it means to live by the Spirit, and although we only hear a snippet in this morning's reading, we hear enough to get the gist. And it's basically this: if we live according to our old nature we will live according to the principles of sin and death. If we try, however, to live according to our new nature, to live in Christ Jesus, then the Spirit sets us free from sin and death and empowers us towards obedience.

You will note that I say towards obedience. Each morning at the service of communion we commend to God the prayers left to us by those who have visited on the previous day. This week I had a rather wonderful request. Part of it was 'that this place gets finished'. At first this seemed rather amusing - with all the scaffolding and tents and machinery it does look a little like a building site. But as the day wore on I realised the significance of what was being requested. This place, and much more so, we as individuals, are on a journey - we moving towards obedience. That perhaps is a purpose of the great faith and particularly of Christianity; in the practice of faith we are schooled in obedience. We are not yet the genuine article; we shall never, on this earth, be the genuine article. But there will come a time, on the last day, when we will be finished, moulded to God's will, and then we will live out, what we only dream of now achieving, the text book shots of obedience.

[1] Alexander McCall Smith, Portuguese Irregular Verbs (Polygon:Edinburgh, 2003)

[2] Romans 7.21

[3] Romans 7.25