Comment by Harborough churches: Remembering those who risk it all at sea

Rev Stephen Haward.Rev Stephen Haward.
Rev Stephen Haward.
Every week, the Harborough churches write for the Harborough Mail. This week, it is the turn of Rev Stephen Haward, minister of Market Harborough Congregational Church.

Viewpoint by Rev Stephen Haward, minister of Market Harborough Congregational Church

‘No other tool is made with so much honesty as a boat’, said John Steinbeck.

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He also famously told of the way people walking past boats in a department store gave them three sharp knocks. Each person was finding out if the hulls were sound, ‘and did not even know he was doing it’.

It seems there is something about being afloat that speaks deeply to most of us.

This being the case, perhaps we can identify with that brave company of people who stepped onto the deck of the Mayflower exactly 400 years ago this month. Hounded out of England by persecution, and after several false starts, they set sail for the New World on September 16, 1620.

For all my life this has been a piece of spiritual history, of intense interest to heritage-minded Americans and within our congregational tradition. For we were the ones who waved these sisters and brothers goodbye – but decided, despite everything, to stick it out this side of the Atlantic.

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However, in recent years this theme of desperate people committing themselves to the sea in a bid for freedom and a future has gone from being a history lesson to a news story.

Even as you read this, someone is risking their life in a 12-foot boat to try to cross the English Channel, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. And yes, it may be true that boats are honestly made, but those who take these vulnerable migrants’ money are certainly not honest. Like the original ‘pilgrims’ these travellers are exploited at every turn, and like them also not all will survive.

It is easy to speak of ‘mass migration’ and indeed, millions have fled already from war, oppression and poverty in countries that in some cases Britain helped to de-stabilise.

But to know the names and hear the stories of those long-ago pilgrims on the Mayflower helps so much to humanise them. They were not one mass of people, all indistinguishable in their seventeenth-century clothing and quaint Bible-based turns of phrase.

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There was John Howland, who fell overboard in a gale but caught hold of a rope by his fingertips and was dragged back on board. His descendants include the actor Humphrey Bogart!

The teenager Priscilla Mullins lost her father, mother and brother that first winter, but married and brought up a large family of her own. Each person’s story is precious to God. So let’s keep our humanity by respecting the humanity of today’s exiles and seekers of safety.

And a last thought. If in these COVID days you feel you are all at sea, afloat but not safe, and wondering what waves of misfortune will come breaking next across your bows, faith does make a difference. It does.

‘With Christ in the vessel, I smile at the storm’.

Rev Stephen Haward is minister of Market Harborough Congregational Church

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