Stepping out of the boat – a sermon for Cowes Week
The Parish Church of Holy Trinity, Cowes
Cowes Week Regatta Service, Sunday 31 July 2022
Greetings from the Cathedral of the Sea, just across the Solent, where I’m proud to be Dean, and thank you so much for the invitation to preach at this Cowes Week Regatta Service. Since coming to Portsmouth in 2019, I’ve delighted in a whole series of maritime services and events, from the opportunity to bless a cruise liner, to a BBC radio broadcast on Sea Sunday earlier this month, to our annual Seafarers Service which ends with a procession down to the Solent and the casting of a wreath into the waters by the Lord Mayor. In the Cathedral building itself I am surrounded by reminders of those who have lost their lives at sea, from the D-Day window, to the grave of a sailor from the Mary Rose, to a memorial naming crew members of HMS Glamorgan who died in the Falklands. These memorials are not, however, as well drilled and symmetrical as those here in Holy Trinity, and I have been moved to see the Fastnet Memorial just outside.
So it is lovely to be here for the first time, to taste something of the atmosphere of Cowes Week, and to preach on that watery passage from Matthew’s Gospel. In seafaring services, the same passages tend to come up quite a lot, from Noah’s ark (not in today’s service, although the work on sea defences I walk past everyday are a signal that the danger of rising water levels is as vital an issue for us today as it was for Noah) to Psalm 107, about going to down to the sea in ships (which we have heard today, with its reassuring words about being brought from stormy waters into a quiet haven and resting place). I hope none of you have cause this week to ‘cry to the Lord in your trouble’, but nonetheless it’s a psalm worth keeping close to your heart on land and sea.
For the last seven years, I am reliably informed, the same passage from the Gospel of Mark has been read at this service, about Jesus fast asleep in a boat threatened by a storm, before being awakened by his frightened disciples and calming the water. Today, however, the changes have been rung, and we heard a different but related story, this time from Matthew’s Gospel. Here the wind is rising and the waves are battering the boat, but Jesus is not with the disciples, having sent them on ahead of him. We hear then of Jesus walking on water, before Peter attempts the same.
So Jesus sleeping in the boat, and Jesus and Peter out of the boat on the waves; it’s an intriguing contrast. I want to briefly explore what each of these incidents might have to say to our particular context and times. I recently read a book by Samantha Harvey, reflecting on her experience of struggling to sleep for a whole year, and it strikes me that insomnia has become one of the defining afflictions of our age. Because of our various worries and responsibilities, because of the relentless nature of digital communication (with the smartphone on the bedside table), because of the political, economic and environmental issues we face, the human race has never slept so badly.
Later in the Gospels, the night before he dies, it is Jesus who is awake while his disciples fall asleep. While those around him slept, he worked out what he needed to do, and in all that happened next, he demonstrated that death and chaos do not always prevail, that new life and peace are possible, that we can imagine a future in which we will be able to sleep more soundly, for all is well.
So when Jesus sleeps on the boat during a storm, it is a glimpse for our insomniac age of the kind of sleep we might be able to have when we realise that God has not forgotten us, and that by God’s grace the issues and problems we face will not overwhelm us. God remembers the people of today’s world, including the good citizens of Cowes, its seafarers, its civic and community leaders, its businesses and charitable organisations, as well as the thousands who visit as participants this week.
All of us have our struggles, and times when we cannot sleep because we are trying to work out what to do. In such times we can learn from the experience of Peter, as recounted in our reading today. One of the classic analyses of this passage was written on the eve of the second world war by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a German Lutheran pastor, passionately opposed to Hitler, and was head of a seminary of the anti-Nazi ‘Confessing Church’. At least he was until 1937, when the Gestapo closed the seminary and arrested twenty pastors and former students. And it was at this point that Bonhoeffer published The Cost of Discipleship, spelling out what it means to follow Christ in turbulent times.
Such was the context in which he wrote these words: ‘Peter had to leave the ship and risk his life on the sea, in order to learn both his own weakness and the almighty power of his Lord. If Peter had not taken the risk, he would never have learned the meaning of faith.’ In the Gospel reading, Peter walks, becomes frightened by the wind, begins to sink, cries out to Jesus, and is rescued. For Bonhoeffer this is not a story about a skeptic who doubts, as some have portrayed it, but rather the story of a faithful follower taking a daring step, and then being overwhelmed by the circumstances he encounters. But in the face of this understandable loss of nerve, Jesus offers a steadying hand.
In this story Peter becomes a mirror in which disciples, ancient and modern, are able to see themselves and take heart. They can find courage in Peter’s daring response to Jesus’s command, and from Jesus’s gracious help to secure his faltering faith. Stepping out of the boat, out of one’s comfort zone, is seen as a necessary part of being a follower of Jesus. For only so can the personal and global issues that keep us awake find any kind of healing and resolution.
In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer wrote about ‘cheap grace’ in which the comforting aspects of faith were embraced, and the costly aspects ignored. So for example, we might rejoice God’s offer of acceptance, mercy and forgiveness, but forget that Christ calls us to follow, and to go with him into situations of need and to act in the cause of peace and justice.
At Durlston Country Park, on the outskirts of Swanage in Dorset, you can find one of the largest stone spheres in the world, three metres in diameter. It is known as the ‘Great Globe’, and has been there since 1887. The brainchild of John Mowlem, a successful stone merchant and philanthropist, he intended not only to impress but also to educate. The globe, which for all its weathering still clearly shows the nations and oceans of the world, is backed by walls inscribed with a number of texts: some with scientific information (for example about the tides), some religious (celebrating God the creator and ruler of the universe), and yet others poetic and philosophical.
If Mowlem’s intent was to encourage reflection and enquiry, he succeeded with me. I was particularly struck by the following stand-alone text: ‘The seas but join the nations they divide.’ I found myself wondering what visitors were supposed to make of such a paradoxical statement. ‘The seas but join the nations they divide.’ Well, is the stress meant to be on the sea as something that unites, or separates? It being 2022, a time when even vicars have smartphones, I quickly discovered that the line comes from a poem by Alexander Pope. He wrote it in celebration as years of continental war were drawing to a close, with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.
I wonder, as we gather here today, where you place the emphasis in Pope’s line, ‘The seas but join the nations they divide’? As a keen observer of the shipping in the Solent, I’m aware that your perspective will be very different if you are aboard a Border Force coastal patrol vessel as opposed to a ferry, on an aircraft carrier rather than a cruise ship, or a regatta participant rather than a crew member on an RNLI lifeboat. And in terms of how optimistic or pessimistic you are about our ‘great globe’, it’s hard not be influenced by the ongoing war in Ukraine, the refugee crisis, and the increasing evidence of the consequences of climate change right now.
‘The seas but join the nations they divide.’ Alexander Pope wrote that in optimistic mode, and the seafaring past and present of this part of the world gives us so much to be proud of, and optimistic about, as we celebrate the sheer joy of sailing this week. John Mowlem, in building that ‘Great Globe’ at Swanage, understood what he was doing as a philanthropic and positive act. He wanted to show the visiting public a vision of the world as God’s creation, with the nations united via the seas and oceans of our planet. The stress in that line of poetry has to be on joining, not dividing, and that is not only true for international relations, but also within nations, within town and cities, within local communities.
For ultimately we need to face what is coming, the challenges of our age – both known and unknown – together. If we are to sleep better as a human race, more of us will need, like Peter, to dare to step out of the boat, and respond to Jesus’s invitation to follow him in both the joy and the cost of loving God and neighbour.
On this theme, I end with a prayer of Ignatius of Loyola: ‘Lord, teach me to be generous; Teach me to serve you as you deserve; To give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; To toil, and not to seek for rest; To labour, and not to ask for reward – except to know that I am doing your will.’ AMEN