The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote that, ‘Behind every person now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.’   Since 1968, when Clarke wrote those words, the earth’s population has doubled – and so the ratio is now about one to fifteen.   Nonetheless the point remains: our lives have been shaped by the multitudes who came before us, the majority about whom we know little or nothing.  Some, however, we remember and treasure in a whole variety of ways.   

Today we have already remembered ‘all who have lost their lives at sea’ (of unknown number) ‘and among them the members of the ship’s company of the Mary Rose’ (approaching five hundred).   The unfamiliar spelling in our readings today, and the reminder in the order of service that both Latin and English were used in worship in 1545, are indications of both change and continuity.   Portsmouth was a very different place 480 years ago, yet not wholly unfamiliar.   Listen to this imaginative evocation of what a visitor would have encountered: 

‘Within the walls, Portsmouth reminded me even more of the interior of a castle… Much of the enclosed area was given over to market gardens, the town itself being surprisingly small. The street facing us was the only one wholly built up with shops and cottages, the better ones with jutting upper storeys. I saw only one church, down towards the seafront, with a signal lantern on top of its square tower.’

This description, with its depiction of the cathedral church in which we are now gathered, is found in CJ Sansom’s novel Heartstone, published in 2010.   

Sansom is one of ten people connected with the Mary Rose Trust who have died during the past year, and who are named in today’s order of service.  Amongst them are Nick Rule, one of the divers on the Mary Rose, who was the son of Margaret Rule, the Archaeological Director for the original excavation.   Then there is Sir David Cooksey, former Chairman of the Trust and significant donor.   And yes, CJ Sansom, Chris Sansom, who through the research involved for Heartstone became deeply involved with the Trust, and a donor himself.    

Sansom had a great gift for imaginative immersion in the past, which helps to keep vividly alive our sense of all that happened nearly five centuries ago.    Here is one more extract from Heartstone:

‘My attention was focused on the four great warships, anchored at some distance from each other in the harbour… It was an extraordinary sight, one I realized few would ever witness. [They] were beautiful with their clean lines and perfect balance on the water…   Each had four enormous masts, the largest rising a hundred and fifty feet into the air, flags of England and the Tudor dynasty flying at the top… The second largest ship was the nearest… It had a long high aftercastle and an even higher forecastle. At the bottom of the bowsprit a large circular object was fixed, brightly coloured in concentric circles of red and white. “A rose” said my companion, “that is the Mary Rose. The King’s most favoured ship”…’  

Then unfolds a depiction of what happened next, a sinking that is brilliantly evoked not only in the novel, but by a visit to the magnificent and innovative Mary Rose Museum.  If you haven’t yet experienced the 4D Dive the Mary Rose, opened last year, I thoroughly recommend it.   It gives you a real sense of the excitement of discovering the wreck at the bottom of the Solent, and of the incredible challenges of raising the ship to the surface way back in 1982.

Almost two years after that raising, on the 19th July 1984, there was, in this Cathedral Church, a ‘Requiem for the Ship’s Company of the Mary Rose’, followed by ‘the interment of one of that company’ in the grave at which we have laid a wreath this morning.   The liturgy, faithful to the times in which that ship’s company perished, was in Latin and English, and the readings were the same as we have had today, readings still regularly used in requiems and funerals, albeit usually with more familiar spellings!

So it is that we hear Paul writing to the Thessalonians, a Christian community in ancient Macedon, now northern Greece.  He does not want them to be ‘ignoraunt as concernynge them which are fallen aslepe, that ye sorowe not as others do, which have no hope.’  And this is followed by verses from the eleventh Chapter of John’s Gospel, in which Jesus addresses Martha, the sister of Lazarus, who has died:  ‘Jesus sayde unto her: I am the resurreccyon and the lyfe., who so ever byleveth on me, ye though he were deade yet shall he lyve.’

In giving you the full context for Jesus’s famous words about being ‘the resurrection and the life’ the novelistic skills of a CJ Sansom would help.   For the short reading we heard today is just a small part of a kind of psychodrama involving a number of different characters: Mary and Martha, two rather different sisters, their brother Lazarus who has become ill and died – all three already known by Jesus.   There are also Jesus’s followers, who don’t want him to visit the bereaved sisters at the grave, because it involves returning to a place associated with threats of violence.

So this story is full of emotions and situations we can recognise, about being troubled, sad, lost and fearful; about mortality and death.   A story that encompasses the loss and fear involved in the scuttling of the Mary Rose and those who lost loved ones that day; a story that encompasses our present day feelings about those we have known and loved who have now died; a story that encompasses our own fears and doubts.   A rather different writer to CJ Sansom, the Peruvian poet Vallejo Mendoza, captures something of this when he writes: ‘I feel that God is travelling so much in me… With him we go along together.  It is getting dark… But I feel God… I consecrate you, God, because you love so much.’

This is what in see in the story of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.  The face of God, seen in Jesus Christ, the God who travels with us, entering into the places of our greatest fear, grief and fragility.   He brings with him simplicity, compassion, love and strength.   And he brings with him the promise of new life.  This ‘life’ that he speaks of in the reading, ‘zoe’ in the original language – Greek, not Latin this time – means the divine life, the life of God, in which we are all invited to share.  This divine life is what sustains us through all the fragilities of the present, and what sustains us in the future, even the other side of death itself.  

I don’t know why Arthur C. Clarke chose the word ‘ghosts’ to describe all those who lived before us on this planet.  Whatever the reason, the word implies that in some intangible sense our predecessors are still with us, even if the prospect of being haunted is not especially attractive.  The Christian tradition speaks rather of being ‘surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses’ (that’s from the letter to the Hebrews), and of the ‘communion of saints’.  The divine life Jesus spoke of, unites us with those who have died.   When, as today, we pray and worship together, we are joining with the whole company of heaven.   This is not about being haunted by those who have died, but encouraged and inspired and accompanied.

So as we give thanks today for Chris Sansom and Nick Rule and David Cooksey, let us give thanks for all who have shaped our lives for good.  As we give thanks for all those who died on the Mary Rose, let us remember with gratitude all who have given their lives to defend their country, including those remembered in other memorials in this cathedral church, from D-Day to the Falklands.  And let us give thanks that within the love and new life of God, we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, who keep us company in all our joys, challenges and sorrows.

Every sermon today is likely to reference tonight’s football final at some point, and I’m tempted to suggest that of those fifteen people for each living soul, an awful lot of them must be male English footballers who have never won anything.  But hopefully things are changing. The English manager Gareth Southgate has transformed the culture of his team in a variety of ways, one of which relates to the penalty shoot out.   If, heaven forbid, such a thing were to transpire tonight, each England player will not have to walk a solitary, nervous path to take their penalty.   They will each have a team mate with them as they go, and as they return.   In that situation of high tension and stress, however it turns out, they will not be alone.  

So it is with us.  Whatever life throws at us, hopefully we will have at least one person to lean on.   But even if not, we are accompanied by the communion of saints, the whole company of heaven, who want for us what God wants for us: a life of love and flourishing, now, and eternally.   We never walk alone!  AMEN.