Sermon preached on Sunday 4th June 2023

11am Eucharist

‘Trinity Sunday and D-Day                              Canon Jo Spreadbury

Sermon preached on Sunday 4th June 2023

 The hymn Eternal Father strong to save was the favourite hymn of Franklin D. Roosevelt, US President during the Second World War.  The hymn was sung in August 1941, at Winston’s Churchill’s request, for Roosevelt for the conference at sea which both attended where the Atlantic Charter was agreed. And it was sung again at Roosevelt’s funeral in New York in April 1945, after his death came just days before the end of the war in Europe.

 Today on this Sunday nearest to DDay, as we remember those who went from these shores in 1944, taking part in the great campaign Operation Overlord we will sing Eternal Father later on just after the Commemoration.

 The original words for the hymn were written in 1860 by William Whiting who lived in Winchester and was master of the Winchester College Choristers’ School at the time. He is known to have enjoyed visits to the sea along this part of the south coast as a young man.

But Whiting also knew the peril of the sea – when he was 35, a ship he was travelling on was caught up in a terrible storm. He survived and felt from then on that God had spared him. Another story is that a former pupil consulted him with terrible anxiety about having to sail across the Atlantic, and Whiting wrote the hymn to ‘anchor’ his faith.

(The tune to which we sing the hymn is called Melita – an ancient version of the name Malta: where St Paul was shipwrecked but rescued by God.)

Although we might know it today as the ‘Naval hymn’, the final verse is regularly sung by the British Army – it’s often used a conclusion to the prayers at Sandhurst:

            And ever let there rise to thee

            glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

Sometimes the words are adapted to include Army and Air Force specifically, and the inspiring sentiments of the hymn have also been reworked for the many different branches of Naval service, for submariners – for example:

            Bless those who serve beneath the deep,

            through lonely hours their vigil keep.  

Or those who serve in other seafaring roles such as lifeboat volunteers:

            Eternal Father Lord of hosts

            watch over those who guard our coasts.

And for those at sea who are remembering families and friends ashore:

            God who dost still the restless foam

            protect the ones we love at home.

There is even an American version which recognises the possibility of space travel, in a hymn book from the 1980s still used by most Episcopal Congregations:

            … and ever let there rise to thee,

            our hymns from space, air, land, and sea.

But on this Trinity Sunday what strikes me, of course, is the Trinitarian shape of the hymn: Eternal Father, O Saviour, O Sacred Spirit… all summed up in O Trinity of Love and power.

Each Person of the Trinity is invoked by the hymn, in Biblical symbolism, to help and defend those in peril from evil of every kind.

The power of the hymn, and its fervent pleading to God the Holy Trinity, is in the fact that in the Bible the sea stands for the elemental forces which are often seen as chaotic and disordered. The Hebrew word for this primeval chaos is TOHUWaBOHU (wonderfully onomatopoeic) translated as ‘waste and void’ or ‘without form and void’: this is the chaos out of which God brings order. And times of crisis - in the Old Testament and the New - are often depicted as a return to chaos. The psalms speak of the dread of the waters coming up to the neck, of closing over one’s head. So there is a long history for the sea representing chaos from which we pray God to protect us.

The Biblical references, which William Whiting drew on in Eternal Father run deep:

In Psalm 107, for those who go down to the sea in ships, it is God who ‘maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still’, binding the restless wave as the hymn puts it. After the story of Noah’s ark in Genesis, God swears that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood.

God has set appointed limits for the sea, as the book of Job says:

God sets ‘bars and doors’ for the oceans and says,

             “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, 

            and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?’

In the Gospels, Jesus the Saviour sleeps ‘calm amid the storm’ that frightens his disciples on the Sea of Galilee. Then when they wake him with the fearful cry ‘Master we are perishing’ he speaks the word to the wind and the waves, to bring about a great calm in the elements: his inner calm reflected in the calm of nature.

The disciples are said to be amazed at this power, for they knew only God has the ability to control the seas and the storms: Jesus is vividly acting in the way that only God can. And Jesus walking on the water is a dramatic depiction of God’s power over the elements: Jesus is not dragged down by the forces of evil and even gives Peter the courage to step out in faith and rise above the turmoil – until his faith wavers!

This link with the power of God over the waters goes right back, in verse 3 of the hymn, to the start of the Bible in the first lines of the book of Genesis: the Eternal Spirit hovers over the face of the waters in the beginning of creation, when all was a formless void – that TOHUWaBOHU, to bring order and beauty out of the chaos and emptiness. Instead of the ‘angry tumult’ as the hymn puts it, the Spirit of God brings light and life and peace.

As we remember D-Day and those who entrusted themselves God as they faced peril on the sea, setting off from our Portsmouth shores, we give thanks for the freedoms we still enjoy in our day due to their endeavours.

We pray for those in our own day who still long for light and life and peace in the war-torn parts of our world: asking God to assist those in Ukraine in their struggles to resist further invasion and regain sovereignty. We pray for the blessing of the Trinity to assist all peacekeepers and peacemakers trying to restore order out of chaos of war, and we pray for the abiding presence of the Trinity to be with them and with our loved ones.

On Trinity Sunday, as we remember God’s ancient power over evil and sin, how God is strong to save in all situations of distress, we are reminded to hold onto God’s strength when we find ourselves caught up in storm or chaos, when we feel ourselves in peril, in difficulty or temptation. Whiting’s hymn reminds us that each Person of the Trinity is strong to save us from disorder and disruption that the seas and the storms and the waves represent.

Even for us, the symbolism of the sea goes far beyond the literal: in our baptism we were saved from the waters of chaos, rescued in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The water of baptism which brings to birth in us the life of the Trinity will hold us safe even amid the waters of storm and stress – the Trinity of love and power has power for us to transform every occasion of darkness, distress and even death.  The Trinity of love will not let us go, but will abide with us – as Jesus reminded his disciples that his presence will remain with them even to the end of the age.

At the end of all things, we will come to share in the eternal life of the blessed Trinity in glory: the light and life and peace which is out deepest desire and our everlasting destiny.

Amen.