good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this monday morning a morning of pouring rain uh a pleasant enough morning there's no wind and although it's cool for july it's pleasant enough in the atmosphere and somehow the rain curtains you with uh its its own patterning on the umbrella but as you can imagine this is rather a somber nation this morning but we can't miss meadow monday we've come to our garden i say our as a sense of the garden congregation being involved in all of the planting of this from their earth and the fruitfulness of the earth and i'm surrounded by the most beautiful flowers all wild flowers growing up in this meadow and we're much enjoying the color but fletcher was pointing out the various colors and connecting them with yesterday's sporting event and thinking of the red white and and blue for for england um and also for the uh green for italy the gold for the champions and the the purple flowers as a sense of disappointment but sporting events always have a winner and a loser so it's for us to feel disappointed but also to congratulate those in italy that team which which won yesterday in my mind has three bearded faces uh of memory and all of today are all are connected with that that day of sporting in endeavor and in tension but one of them is of course uh matteo and betterini the the the loser of the final the men's final at wimbledon uh an italian and the the cameras tend to focus on people's faces because everyone is is thinking how does someone feel in that way so he's one of the faces another is richard branson who reached not only for the skies but for space yesterday achieving one of his ambitions to to go up and and look down on the beautiful earth from the curvature and even to sense weightlessness and then to to return to earth their endeavor succeeded and the third is of course the english football manager gareth southgate who you couldn't have invented a more desperate situation for him because of course in a a very very successful football career that moment in 1996 when he himself missed the penalty shootout was almost recreated and yet what he knew he needed to do at that moment of extreme disappointment was to comfort his young lions as the the papers are calling them and no one is a better comforter than someone who has been through exactly the same situation themselves so it needn't surprise us that on the front of the papers today is a photograph of that comforting and consolation and the intention to go on um and uh once taken back on all these kinds of occasions to kipling's couplet in his poem if if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same and we think of that this morning and we give thanks for all that happened yesterday despite the disappointment this is rather a silent nation today so let's look at our prayers wherever you are in the world and the rain is is is going off a bit so maybe i shan't need the umbrella all the time i'm with you but for the moment i'll keep the ink dry on and and read from under the umbrella oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise reveal among us the light of your presence that we may behold your power and glory blessed are you sovereign god of all to you be praise and glory forever in your tender compassion the dawn from on high is breaking upon us to dispel the lingering shadows of night as we look for your coming among us this day open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will that the world may rejoice and give you praise blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind and as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our son on this 12th morning of the month is psalm 62 on god alone my soul in stillness waits from him comes my salvation he alone is my rock and my salvation my stronghold so that i shall never be shaken how long will all of you assail me to destroy me as you would a tottering wall or a leaning fence they plot only to thrust me down from my place of honour lies are their chief delight they bless with their mouth but in their heart they curse wait on god alone in stillness oh my soul for in him is my hope he alone is my rock and my salvation my stronghold so that i shall not be shaken in god is my strength and my glory god is my strong rock in him is my refuge put your trust in him always my people pour out your hearts before him for god is our refuge the peoples are but a breath the whole human race a deceit on the scales they are all together lighter than air put no trust in oppression in robbery take no empty pride though wealth increase set not your heart upon it god spoke once and twice have i heard the same that power belongs to god steadfast love belongs to you oh lord for you repay everyone according to their deeds so we're turning to the gospel of saint matthew and taking up from where we left off on saturday morning and that means that we are at the beginning of chapter 23. a question was asked of me by one of you um by email about two weeks ago about this very passage so i hope that uh that question may be given a bit of an answer this morning we're in a very special massey and matthew passage and as we we think of that matthew passage we try to get our hearts and minds not only into the little group that jesus had been speaking to but also the community that matthew himself is writing his evangel his gospel his good news for and we have to think of that they themselves are jewish probably greek speaking christians and one of the things about this passage is that i think it gives a a clue to the whole of matthew's gospel i don't know that i might be able even to take the umbrella down for a bit i'm sure we had to put it up again because the clouds are very dark here we are chapter 23 verse 1 then jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples the scribes and the pharisees sit on moses seat so do and observe whatever they tell you but not the works they do for they preach but do not practice they tie up heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on people's shoulders but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger they do all their deeds to be seen by others for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others but you are not to be called rabbi for you have one teacher and you are all brothers and sisters and call no man your father on earth for you have one father who is in heaven neither be called teachers for you have one teacher the christ the greatest among you shall be your servant whoever exalts themselves will be humbled and whoever humbles themself will be exalted well let's think about that because the question was about the last few verses and i have to remind you of another little bit of the gospel where um to john the baptist people are clearly saying well we have no problem whatsoever because abraham is our father and john replies god is able to make children of abraham out of these very stones so don't rely on that let's think of that because here's matthew giving us this passage and we shall go on to it even more tomorrow in such a way that he's speaking to his own people and underlining certain things and the one thing that he wants to underline and you can hear jesus saying that very truly and very definitely in st mark's gospel and throughout all the the gospels is that last sentence that we had read the greatest among you shall be your servant whoever exalts themselves will be humbled and whoever humbles themself will be exalted so to trust in earthly genealogies and rules and ancestors is not in the plan of god in terms of when we say our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name we're speaking to the true creator it's in this context not in the context of saying nobody can be called your father of course they can and jesus himself would have said that and the the the old testament law is is very much uh um honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the lord god gives you and all of that that that jesus when the tradition is set aside castigates them for some of you are setting aside your duties to father and mother and saying what i have is given to god all of these things are taken in that kind of context but what we have here is an extraordinary thing because matthew is choosing to conflate to to meld together to link not any link but to mix up scribes and pharisees and the doctors of the law the scribes in other gospels are very distinctive in mark you won't find him mixing them up pharisees sadducees doctors of the law scribes if you want in the old king james version they were experts they were scholars in the law this little passage gives me the the real feeling that by the time matthew is is writing this the whole worship of the temple has ceased and jerusalem has been destroyed one can't be certain because it might be that the gospel of matthew built up from bit by bit but this certainly goes to a time when sadducees are not mentioned and they were the high priestly family in jesus time they were the authorities we met them in the the passages that we've we've read recently but they've gone and at the same time the pharisees seem to have taken over which they did the minute jerusalem was destroyed and the dispersion of of the jewish people began to happen the pharisaic party took that over and almost subsumed the official doctors of the law and became not just a school of particular thinking but also the doctors of the law themselves taking as jesus said at a ridiculous level sometimes i'm sure they weren't all like this but matthew is pointing out that the ones who are most obviously like this taking ridiculous little points of law and insisting on it and then sharing that in the streets in a particular way and again we have to imagine this so the the sense of of long fringes and tassels and and the phylacteries which were little boxes worn on the forage and strapped onto the wrist so that when the hands were crossed in prayer the law of god in sentences written sentences were strapped here the mind and hear touching the heart and jesus is is saying as he says again and again humility and and service and compassion and all those other qualities are part of the law he insists don't think i've come to destroy the law and the prophets i've come not to destroy them but to fulfill them but at this point things were becoming so defensive about the traditions of the law and that grew when the temple had disappeared and was just a heap of ruins and people had to find their own places for continuing to assert themselves in particular ways i see all that in this passage jesus starts in chapter 20 3. jesus said to the crowds the scribes and the pharisees sit on moses seat now that might be a metaphorical kind of thing or it might be and in ancient synagogues when they're being excavated there was a seat there which seemed to be a seat where teaching took place from and that might be the important seat with within the synagogue not necessarily the one taking that particular act of devotion but someone who was seen as both a doctor of the law and was at that time probably a pharisee because they were the predominant party all of those things are there so when we see the titles that are there jesus is actually saying don't trust on anything like that trust on the fruits looking at the looking at the flowers that that has have been beautifully brought out by the creator's hand just on the fruits that are there and the sentence by their fruits you will know them not by their their grand gestures we have so much of that in the sermon on the mount and so by your by their fruits you shall know them not by their titles or by what they were or by what they're doing and certainly not on the insistence of every jot and tittle of the law but the essence of it without ceasing to know the words of that law these are important passages and we shall go on with them tomorrow but this conflation of doctors of the law remember jesus sitting amongst the doctors of the law in luke's hospital that was in the temple they were the official authorized doctors of the law at that time and the high priestly sadducees were all of that at that time also those days have gone and in the breakup of the jewish nation when jerusalem was destroyed and it reminds us of jesus saying to the city of jerusalem with that noise of the hens behind me oh jerusalem jerusalem how often have i longed to gather you like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings but you would not and the prophecy of what violence would happen is that we shall come to that in matthew's gospel as well all this has a special message and flavour yet nevertheless there is massive teaching in it for us because one looks to those who are great for service to the community service to the nation fruitfulness in the way in which they they um accomplish their own particular vocation in in in church or state or or whatever and we come back again to the important sentence the greatest among you shall be your servant whoever exalts themselves will be humbled and whoever humbles themself will be exalted these are divine precepts and that's why above all else we don't look back and say well we're perfectly fine because our genealogy our ancestors are whatever in earthly terms are this we look constantly to the creator and the one whom he has sent to live out the qualities of the kingdom of heaven even amongst us here on earth so let's think for a bit about this particular day it's a day in um 1536 when the scholar erasmus died and erasmus lived at a a particularly important time he was a huge scholar deeply respected and they came from the netherlands and had the emperor charles v as one of his patrons but um he came to to england on several occasions and would have had conversations with people like thomas moore and john collett and all those who at that time were scholars in their own right in the renaissance and using their scholarship to open with clarity the scriptures and the teaching as we've been trying to do this morning with one another and erasmus above all others would have known there are no definite answers one just has to keep searching and day by day a different color will appear in the various verses but always there's the possibility of fruitfulness and flowering if you wait with patience erasmus was keen to reform the church from within and he used his huge scholarship to delve into the scriptures and to translate the new testament and the in into the best latin and the best greek that he could find from the sources and uh when he was translating uh the the new testament in greek into latin he had he said in the amusing time and when someone said why aren't you satisfied with the vulgate and he said well if saint paul is writing to the romans he ought at least to speak to them in good latin and so he was translating in fine latin but all the time in his commentaries on scripture and his his reflections on human life he was keeping what he called in latin a via media a a middle way so scholars of extremes from right and from left from the protestant reformation to the extreme uh catholic supporters all of those things were begging him to nail his colors to the mast and join them but he kept himself within the fold of the church that he had always served and would always resist that now let's say that people like thomas moore who tried to do the same had to face a life and death choice and moore was executed others faced the fires at the stake and erasmus never came to that but he did leave so much of his his work for us to ponder and i treasure the fact that he came here and uh at beckett's tomb which had become so covered in gold and jewels and everything else it was hard to see whether where the shrine was and then he was taken downstairs and went into the chapel of our lady undercroft where we say so many of our services and the mass is celebrated daily at the moment in the crypt at eight o'clock each morning and uh there he wrote in his diary beneath i found a chapel of the virgin fairer far and when i go in there those words fair afar always strike me from erasmus on this particular day but we give thanks for his clarity and he's delving with the sources he had at that time into the new testament in the original language and then making sure that any translation of that into latin at that time uh or into later on the the vernaculars needed to be absolutely correct according to the way in which it was understood then and so that has continued now this also is a day when we think of um julius caesar who possibly was born on the 12th of july in the year 100 bc and we know died on the ides of march the 15th of march 44 bc what i wanted to say about caesar is that for all his endeavors and all his intentions and military skills set out in his gallic wars which we had to plow through at school um and all those those um uh histories of of of julius caesar he was never the emperor he was assassinated before that could even happen he he had been made after the triumvirate of himself and and crassus and pompey had in a way come to grief and and he and pompey had fallen out in a big time and he'd won he was made a perpetual dictator but not the emperor but i say that because of course um after he'd been assassinated the empire of rome began and his heir octavius became the emperor augustus and that title emperor is often used simply with caesar's name in the scriptures sometimes render unto caesar the things that are caesar's julius caesar long dead but caesar becomes a name for the emperor and other nations have taken that on the german word for emperor kaiser or the russian word for emperor tsar comes from that caesar and at the same time that imperial power which rome exercised across the mediterranean region took his inspiration for that and yet he died at the knife of friends and the last word he said we know and we get this from shakespeare in latin et tu brute in fact the words he said were in greek saying and you my child to his friend brutus as he receives a knife on that ides of march to treat the two impostors just the same but afterwards an end can become a new beginning and then on this day also i wanted to mention the italian painter amadeo modigliani who uh was born on this day in 1884 and died in 1920 aged only 35 from tubercular meningitis in extreme poverty his his portraits now are so much valued but at the time he had absolutely no money at all and would give away a portrait for a meal in a restaurant as his health declined and the young man died not knowing what fame he would have if you could meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same well let's go back to yesterday and see how that sense of defeat was shown in the face of matteo betterini at wimbledon and what looking at it what what picked him up and made him smile again was the way in which the winner djokovic who he and and and betterini were told our great friends began to chipping him on so that that that betterini could could say this is only a beginning and that the crowds cheered and in that way of course it was lost there's terrible loss when uh all one's hopes and building up results in in the at the final post in failure but let's go back to southgate because that comforting of his team and that himself embracing responsibility all of that became his vocation at that moment to revisit his own demons as he saw the picture unfolding it's almost impossible to think that that scene of 1996 was recreated in such a way that the lens was drawing in and drawing in as the evening went on until that moment when he heard that the boot hit the ball on that final kick and knew that that that penalty shootout that last kick was the end and and that must have just rung through his soul in memory and he embraced it and became the comforter there wasn't thinking what a ridiculous thing this is that a penalty shootout can end everything instead he turned to his team took responsibility and comforted them and how often do we read in the epistles about the way in which the best comforter is one who has been through all things themselves and then um bravely goes on we'll see so much of that in christian history so there are things to give thanks for yesterday the rain has stopped now and the flowers are all around me but of course there is a sense of great disappointment and that's obviously so in any kind of sporting event if one competes it can go either way and very often it doesn't reflect any more than the fact that on that day that's how it was and so we give thanks for all that southgate and his young lions gave this nation and also the intention like betterini that this was only a beginning and that this young team will go on let's uh let's say our prayers on on this monday morning the sky is actually brightening a bit now i can even see patches of blue sky so we've conjured the sun let's look to see whom we are praying for on this particular day this monday morning and it's the 12th of july so we're praying for the diocese of kwarnavakka in the anglican church in mexico and all the people there and we're praying in this diocese for justin our archbishop and for rose bishop of dover and for tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parish of chatham and upper hards with stelling chatham just along the riverbank a nice walk from from here and uh one that that we enjoy on fine days the priestess louise vince and everyone involved there the pastoral assistant angela hirst so let's say our prayers as we think of those places and please bring your own intentions and your concerns you will have many and i've been speaking all about uh english concerns this morning and so please please bring your own concerns on this day and bring them into our prayers here's the college a beautiful connect for this week merciful god you have prepared for those who love you such good things as pass our understanding pour into our hearts such love towards you that we loving you above all things may obtain your promises which exceed all that we can desire through jesus christ our lord amen the prayer our savior taught us in whichever language you like to use our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen moment of silence for your own thoughts and reflections and prayers on this morning ah um oh uh the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and of his son jesus christ our lord and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen i think we feel like thanking you for being involved in this wonderful project which has brought forth lovely flowers and will continue to do so with all this green as the rain has just refreshed it and the sun's now come out