Courage and Conviction - Pentecost sermon with Commemoration of HMS Hood

Sermon by the Revd Canon Dr Jo Spreadbury - Sunday 24 May 2026

Feast of Pentecost with Commemoration of HMS Hood sunk on 24th May 1941 with the loss of 1415 lives.

Today the Church marks Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. We have two quite different accounts of Pentecost in the New Testament. The first that we heard describes how, fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus and nine days after he had ascended into heaven, the disciples of Jesus experienced the sound of a violent wind and saw flames like tongues which enabled them to speak with unexpected boldness. Peter, the lead apostle, explains that this is the fulfilment of an ancient prophesy in which God promised: ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh… the young shall see visions and the old shall dream dreams…’ The coming of the Spirit brings new conviction to the disciples and prompted them to speak with a new confidence and courage.

In St John’s Gospel, we get a rather different description of how the Holy Spirit was given to the apostles. This took place on the evening of the first Easter Day, when the risen Jesus appeared through locked doors and spoke words of peace and reassurance to his terrified disciples. Then ‘He breathed on them and said to them “Receive the Holy Spirit… As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Though the timing and the details are very different both versions suggest that the coming of the Holy Spirit is about courage and conviction – the apostles would go in Jesus’ name to witness to the ends of the earth – but in the Gospel version, the Holy Spirit is also, significantly, about the gift of peace. The apostles receive peace through Jesus’ presence, peace through the assurance of his victory over death – and peace from a new sense of purpose and promise. The tragedy of the cross is overturned by the resurrection; the departure of the risen Jesus into heaven is met by the coming of the Holy Spirit.

These themes may help us as we reflect today on the 85th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Hood on this day in 1941. This was a local tragedy and it was deeply felt.

Battlecruiser HMS Hood was the pride of the British Navy, launched in 1918 - at the time the largest naval ship in the world. One new recruit, whose daughter is with us today, recalled how the Hood was an incredibly beautiful sight as he walked to join it in Portsmouth in the early 1933. Many of the ship’s company were from this area.

On 24th May HMS Hood had been off the coast of Greenland. Early in the morning she intercepted German naval forces led by the German battleship Bismarck. During the sea battle which followed, HMS Hood received an unlucky hit to its ammunition store and blew up. As the first details of the tragedy began to filter back, we know from the local newspapers here that the relatives of the crew waited anxiously. The headline of the Portsmouth News on Monday 26th May reads: ‘Naval Battle of Greenland. Portsmouth Awaits News.’ It turned out to be the biggest loss of life from a single vessel for the whole of the war: there were only 3 survivors.

235 of the ship’s company were from Portsmouth and Southsea, and 37 from the Isle of Wight. And 76 of those who died were still teenagers, Boy Seamen – only 16 or 17 years old. To this day the Naval Memorial on Southsea Common has small family tributes left regularly, below the long rows of names from 1941, to local sailors lost on the Hood. But those who served on board came from many countries as well – 5 of those who died were Polish, 11 were from India, and others came from Australia, Canada, South Africa and even Egypt.

The sense of camaraderie on board was to be followed by a united sense of grief. The American newspapers, reporting on the tragedy, commended the British Admiralty for their honesty in reporting the tragedy as individual families from different countries, races and backgrounds shared a common sense of loss.

And this reminds us of one of the themes of Pentecost. The coming of the Holy Spirit brings people together, both in grief and hope. That’s one of the reasons we remember tragedy as well as victory, and why finding a common purpose, transcending barriers of language and race and upbringing can rightly be said to be the work of the Holy Spirit. On this Pentecost Sunday we are challenged to recover a greater sense of unity – this is one of the important roles that Cadet groups and other uniformed organisations still have in our society, helping shape young lives for good.

We also honour the discipline and dedication of those in the armed forces who serve in the cause of peace – and the work being done by negotiators and mediators.

And the rest of us need to pray this Pentecost, more urgently than ever perhaps – for peace in our world, for the Holy Spirit to be poured out on women and men of all nations and creeds, that understanding and shared sympathy may replace cynicism and enmity – that the will for reconciliation may overcome the instinct for retaliation.

The Christian Gospel speaks of Jesus dying for our sins and rising for our justification. The sins of the world; the instinctive aggression, pride, rivalry and violence which lead to war and social breakdown are not inevitable. They can be exposed and rejected. The cross, the resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit demonstrate to us that God makes all things new, that he calls us to the peace and freedom that in our hearts we long for.

So today and through this season of Pentecost, I invite us all: try to become more open to the Holy Spirit of God. To be bold in pursuit of peace in our lives and our homes, even in small ways, and in small issues. One of the gifts of the Spirit that we can pray for, as the Collect prayer for today says, is to ‘have a right judgement in all things.’

This right judgement is something that we can pray for, with longing hearts, for our local and national leaders, for the Church everywhere, for every one of us in the challenges of our personal lives.

God does not abandon us in the storms of crisis and challenge. He calls us, as he called the first disciples, to sacrifice and service, to boldness and gentleness, to the peace which passes understanding. We remember those first apostles, many of whom would die as martyrs, and yet their witness brought us the faith and the hope for which Christ gave his life. And we remember with thankfulness those who gave their lives in war - and those who still sacrifice their ease and comfort for the sake of a better, fairer, more peaceful world.

And, in the words of the HMS Hood motto – Ventis secundis – with favourable winds: we will sail into the future with the favourable guidance and the blessing of the Spirit.

Preached at a service at Portsmouth Cathedral attended by the HMS Hood Association and Cadets from T.S. Hood (St Austell, Cornwall)