The seas but joins the nations they divide’ – a sermon for Seafarers Sunday
Service for Seafarers, 11.15am, Sunday 12 September 2021 | The Very Revd Dr Anthony Cane, Dean of Portsmouth
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 and weighing about forty tonnes. 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 clearly 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 2021, an age 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.
The poem, called ‘Windsor Forest’, is an optimistic prophecy of a new British age of domestic prosperity and commercial expansion abroad. The seas that divided in time of war will now join nations together through free trade and travel. But this positivity is qualified by a recognition that the achievements of civilization are often built upon bloody foundations. As well as the upbeat sections, there are also parts that contain a far bleaker vision of British history, chequered by periods of tyranny and depredation.
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, or if you are on an aircraft carrier rather than a cruise ship (a highlight of my year has been the opportunity to bless one of those). And in terms of how optimistic or pessimistic you are feeling about our ‘great globe’ at the moment, it’s hard not be influenced by yesterday’s twentieth anniversary of 9/11, and the western withdrawal from Afghanistan just ahead of that landmark.
Rowan Williams, at the time yet to become Archbishop of Canterbury, was in New York and perilously close to the Twin Towers when they came down. Last week I re-read his reflections on the experience, published less than a year later. They stand the test of time, not least for his perceptive remarks about the difficulty of intervening in Afghanistan. But what really hit home to me was his challenge to his readers: ‘after [9/11], what are we prepared to learn?’ And then another question, ‘can anything grow through this terrible moment?’ Back then, he hoped the answer would be yes.
I wonder if you feel we as a society and international community have learnt anything constructive from the years following 9/11? In our first reading today, God asks a whole series of questions, all designed to confront Job with the limitations of his knowledge. The philosopher John Gray would approve, as one of the lessons he takes from recent years is the danger of human beings reaching confident conclusions about how they’re going to make the world a better place – and then using every means at their disposal, including force, to achieve their goal. Gray, an atheist, blames Christianity for encouraging the belief that you can change the world for the better, which I suppose means blaming Jesus Christ himself: the one who, as we heard in our second reading, made his home by the water – his first followers, of course, being nearly all fishermen – and then proclaimed the need to repent and change in the light of the coming Kingdom of God.
I can see Gray’s point about human overconfidence and self-deception. Rowan Williams, in Writing in the Dust, counsels against acting simply to make ourselves feel better, or for the purposes of revenge. But ultimately, Gray’s position is a counsel of despair. Yes, there are many examples of suffering and death caused by human beings acting with arrogance and wrongheadedness. But that is far from the whole story. History, including the life of Jesus Christ himself, shows us that the world can be changed for the better through human action.
Yesterday in the Cathedral we heard examples of this, at a Life After Covid conference. There were positive stories from, amongst others, a local secondary head teacher, a critical care consultant from the Queen Alexandra Hospital, and the head of a homelessness charity. The last eighteen months have shown us what can be achieved through collective action, and through individual acts of generosity, including teachers donating their own computers to pupils whose families did not have the IT necessary for the pupils to access learning during lockdown.
But in the midst of the inspiring stories there were some hard reflections too. ‘External shocks magnify existing inequalities’ was one pithily expressed conclusion. Or to put this another way, in language suitable for Seafarers Sunday, ‘During the pandemic, we may all have been in the same storm, but we’re not all been in the same kind of boat.’
I was particularly struck by a reflection from the new Chief Executive of Citizens Advice. She referred to 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and the current pandemic, in making the point that there will be further external shocks in the future – we just don’t know what they are yet, with the possible exception of the already apparent effects of climate change – and so we need to build and grow the resilience of our society. And a key aspect of growing resilience is action on inequality, and doing more in terms of mutual support. One way amongst many of doing that is through supporting the Seafarers Charity in its vital work with of helping those in the maritime community, from the Royal Navy to Fishing Fleets.
‘The seas but join the nations they divide.’ Alexander Pope wrote that in optimistic mode, and the seafaring past and present of this great waterfront city gives us so much to be proud of, and optimistic about. 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. It is fine to have many different kinds of boat, as long as all of them are sufficient for the storm.
AMEN