‘In The Same Boat’ The Call to Moral Leadership

Readings: Job 38, 1, 4-11; Acts 27:27-44

On a Sunday in May 2024, I was in a car park in Calais with a group of refugees largely from Eritrea and South Sudan. It was Orthodox Easter: We danced to music from a car stereo, shared Eritrean food, prayed. The prayers were led by a young man, in his early 20s, called Amanuel – the Eritrean for Emmanuel – ‘God with us’, language for Jesus we associate with jolly Christmas carols. I was visiting the work of a project that the United Society Partners in the Gospel, the Anglican mission agency I lead, had set up with the dioceses of Canterbury and Europe. The refugee situation in Europe is, of course very complex, but as our young Anglican Refugee Support Lead puts it to me last week: ‘we have to be OK with complex; we have to be OK with nuance’. Our job as church is to be the human face – to provide care and compassion; shelter and security if possible, fresh water, food, clothes – and a wide range of other forms of support, including supporting families who had been bereaved.

Inevitably, conversation was hesitant and guarded, on both sides. Having fled violence and brutality, those we were with had already travelled over 5,000 miles: People on a journey they had hopes, as English speakers, to cover a few more miles across the channel – that they might arrive somewhere they could learn to call – in time – home. A place we could leave for at the end of the day via the Eurotunnel with the minimum of inconvenience.

A year on, last week, I was in Canterbury cathedral for Refugee week and in the Crypt, where, our Refugee Support Lead had created simple memorial boards to remember all those who had drowned, or died on French soil, partly as a result of increased security measures1. The boards recorded their names – and ages: 21, 23, 32, 17, 14, 7, 6 and most pitifully, one hour – in most cases the full name, but in some just Muhamed, Sara, and in a handful of cases, there was no name. I looked anxiously, and was naturally relieved not to find an Amanuel on the Boards, but my feelings of relief were trivial in the face of the 498 people known to have died since 1999; with 2024 being the worst year with 89 deaths.

Today’s reading gives us the closing extract from a classic ancient Mediterranean Sea adventure or misadventure. I love the technical and human detail of this managed shipwreck with its four-anchor technique and the unusual anchoring from the stern. It is October, right at the very end of the season which the ancients regarded as safe for travel – no-one sailed from November to February. The ship is an Alexandrian grain ship, part of the state sponsored trade supplying grain for Rome. But it also doubled up as a prison ship with Paul and others under military guard to be delivered to Rome. Classic maritime activities.

Things have been going badly wrong and we join the story as panic is setting in – people are turning to their own self-interest – the sailors try to do a bunk in a boat confident in their skills to survive – but they are brought back into line by the soldiers, ignorant landlubbers, who stupidly exacerbate the situation by cutting the boat loose. A little later, fearful they will be blamed if the prisoners escape, they make to execute them. Throughout, however, Paul, who has gained the confidence of the senior officer; is determined that all will survive and come safely to shore. But that requires strong moral leadership in a context in which all have different investments, anxieties and needs – and, frankly, a great deal to lose. The captain his cargo of wheat which will have consequences; the soldiers a severe punishment for losing their prisoners, the sailors their lives and probably pay. Paul appeals to the common good, to the reality – literal and moral – that they are all ‘in the same boat’. And through quick and effective decision-making and a fortifying, spirit-lifting shared meal in which they eat together as companions – literally, those who break bread together – they are united and strengthened for what lies ahead.

It is a commonplace to say that as human beings we are all ‘on a journey’. But it is, of course, true. The maritime experience, being ‘in the same boat’, however, heightens our awareness of this reality and can deepen our sensibility. At sea, the stakes are higher, the risks greater, the dangers ever-present. The sea has a way of making things more obvious, things we take too easily for granted on shore: the importance of engaged, responsible leadership; of everyone knowing their role and doing it; of collaboration. Indeed, the maritime environment fosters a collective senseof how to live together in a space, sometimes, literally, how we stand or move in relation to one another. As a result, the laws of the sea are different. In particular, the obligation to aid people in distress; that rescuing souls ‘in peril on the sea’ is a fundamental human duty.

We live in a world, today, which presents us with real challenges, which are inherently complex and difficult to address: the climate crisis, the unprecedented movement of people driven by conflict, but also environmental pressures, the shifts in geostrategic power, the dilemmas around national and indeed maritime security in a world with new geographical realities. And it is a world increasingly difficult to navigate in an age of populist politics and polarising forms of media – with disinformation, deepfakes, deception. Yet it is a world which calls out for the exercise of moral leadership at all levels – bold, humble, and collaborative. Leadership that speaks not the easy attractive word but rather the complexity of real lives and situations seeking solutions, building consensus and cherishing the common good.

Being ‘in the same boat’ means having a deeper awareness of each other; coming to understand we sail the same turbulent waters in this world, facing the same challenges albeit from different angles, and having an obligation to reach out to others in distress: There is something profound about a maritime outlook that has much to teach us and equip us in all the many dimensions of our lives as human beings, in the city as well as on the sea,

It is not simply that the world would be a better place if we thought a bit more about others. The point is rather that if we recognise the investments, the anxieties, the needs of the other (whoever they be – the Filipino sailor, the Mayor, the cadet, the businesswoman, the alcoholic, the lonely widower, the Eritrean refugee), and if we take onboard that recognition and awareness so that it becomes part of our journey, our story, then through humility and empathy, we will step deeper into our own humanity and become the relational speakers, the creative agents, the cooperative persons, the bold leaders, that we can be. And that we have to be, if we are to live and to know ourselves as a part of something larger, something greater.

Of course, we always have the option to simply journey through life as the heroes of our own stories without looking to others or the wider horizon, but if we do so, we will become smaller, more timid, more brittle people – and we will fail to see in our sisters and brothers their deep precious worth as children of God, like us – Emmanuel, God with us, truly with us in the salt and the swell, in the waves and not simply the harbour. Amen.