Commemoration of the sinking of The Mary Rose: Parable of the Good Samaritan

Sunday, 13 July - Sermon by Canon Jo

A sense of place or connection or familiarity – these are all powerful factors in how we experience and respond to stories and events.

I have never been to the Holy Land but I know, from the experience of others, how visiting the places we read about in the Bible brings particular details about the stories and history into sharp focus. And above all with the Gospel stories about Jesus’ life, to have been to the places still named by what took place 2000 years ago, makes a lasting impression. The Sea of Galilee, the mount of Transfiguration, the Church ‘Dominus flevit’ where the Lord wept as he foresaw the future desolation of Jerusalem from the hillside opposite the Holy City.

And small details also: our Gospel parable today, known as the parable of the Good Samaritan, begins: ‘A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.’ The simple phrase conjures the landscape vividly: the road leaving Jerusalem goes down to Jericho, it drops rapidly away; you go down out of the city literally, surrounded by red rockfaces on either side. In picturing the scene, this wording brings Jesus’ story immediately to life: the man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho - down into a place of risk, unwary into the ambush of robbers.

For us here in Portsmouth, the history of the Mary Rose is a story that is vividly brought to life by our surroundings. Our landscape here, or seascape rather, with Southsea Castle which Henry VIII built 1544, only a year before he would watch the sinking of his favourite warship from its battlements; the view out over the Solent where that Battle of the Solent took place – the French fleet of some 200 ships waiting off the Isle of Wight and the smaller English contingent advancing from Portsmouth harbour as the wind finally picked up; and today the offshore buoy just beyond the Solent fort which visibly marks the site where the Mary Rose suddenly heeled over and sank in a surprisingly short time.

For us, today, the Mary Rose is part of our local history and heritage, the Mary Rose Museum preserving the Portsmouth-built ship close to her Portsmouth dockyard origins. There is the hull that we can walk through ourselves, 480 years later, and the particularity of the remarkable finds that are conserved and displayed there remind us all of the individual lives and stories that were part of the greater story of that day which lives on still.

One lesson that we may take from today’s Commemoration, on this day when we have heard the Gospel of the Good Samaritan, is about the sudden and unexpected fate of that traveller caught unawares as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Like the sudden and unexpected fate of the ship’s company, as the Mary Rose tragically went down, we can never know what accident or fortune may await us. We plan for the future, we expect that modern life and science and medicine may protect us from mishap and from random chance. But still the unthinkable may happen, and for some people faith can help make sense of the tragedies of life. As our second reading says: we can ‘be prepared to endure everything with patience’. There can be a bigger perspective, an eternal perspective which we are part of. Faith opens for us a larger story – one in which our individual stories find their meaning. Jesus not only told stories and parables, but he invites us to step into a larger story beyond anything we can imagine or express. Faith doesn’t protect us from accident or tragedy but it gives us a way of responding and a resource to draw from.

A second lesson we may take from today is lesson of the Good Samaritan himself: the responsibility to notice the needs of others and to help. The Gospel reading begins teaching about love of God and love of neighbour, based on the Old Testament passage we heard in our first reading. Jesus’ parable explores how the most unlikely people might be neighbours to whom we can offer help. The Samaritan was from a despised religious and racial group; in the time of the Mary Rose, this might have been interpreted as one of the hated French enemy. Yet it was the Samaritan who noticed and helped the dying man. He came near, he was moved with compassion. He was not under the religious laws governing the priest and the Levite who had passed by before him. With extravagant generosity and grace, he undid the violence of the robbers and the neglect of the priest and Levite, and restored the man to health and life.

Sadly, when the Mary Rose sank, there was little chance for help and rescue. An eyewitness wrote: ‘all hands on board to the number of about 500 were drowned, with the exception of five-and-twenty or thirty servants, sailors and the like who escaped.’ So some small boats would have gone to the aid of those who could swim from the foundering ship, those few not trapped by the anti-boarding netting that held so many. But there was little others could do, as they watched from Southsea castle, or the seafront or from other ships in the Solent.

We too may think there is little we can do to relieve situations of extreme need or distress. But we can help – and even a small contribution or act of compassion can make a difference.

I like the story – you might have heard it - of a boy walking along a seashore where hundreds of starfish had been stranded after a storm, returning a number of them back in to the shallows of the sea. ‘Why bother?’ asked a friend, ‘there are so many that what you are doing doesn’t make a difference.’ The boy’s answer was to carry yet another starfish back into the sea, and to say simply, ‘It’s made a difference to that one.’

We can’t solve every issue or help in every situation, but we mustn’t isolate ourselves so much that we don’t ever try. In the end, Jesus tells the lawyer whose question prompted the parable, ‘Go and do likewise’.

In a society becoming increasingly enclosed and self-centred, it is a challenge to be generous and willing to respond, like the Samaritan: to see need and not to shy away but draw near; to show compassion and not be afraid to get involved and offer help where possible.

There are so many ways that people are isolated today, and many groups trying to support that rely on the goodwill of volunteers – just as we do at this Cathedral Church; just as the Mary Rose does with the history and legacy that can only be handed on with the help of volunteers and benefactors.

One third and final lesson, then, to take away from the Gospel story today, shows where there are resources for us to draw on. The story of the Samaritan who rescues the dying traveller helps us understand how Jesus himself draws close to us in our need and saves us. Christ sees us and comes to our rescue, even in our greatest distress and desperation, lifting us up, binding out wounds, helping us to find healing and hope. For us, Christ can be the Good Samaritan who understands how the trials of life can bring us low, and yet reaches out to guide us and restore us and bring us to eternal safety. It is through God’s compassion and generosity shown to us in Christ, that we receive the resources to show compassion and generosity to others.

The parable of the Good Samaritan ends with Jesus saying: ‘Go and do likewise’. These words invite all of us into an open-ended adventure and offer each of us a never-ending calling.