foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning and welcome on this 1st of january 2021 so the very first thing to say is a happy new year to all of you it seemed the obvious place to come this morning to climb the medieval south tower of the deanery and stand here with a view over the at present silent city of canterbury from here i can see the two universities the university of kent in canterbury on the hillside on that side and christchurch university canterbury on this side as i put out my hand to the east where if the cloud breaks but it doesn't look as if it's going to it's a thin cloud cover on this very cold morning um the sun will rise uh in a while over that area i can see the pepper pot towers of centaurgustins the monastery with the long history which was dissolved at the reformation but before that was a a large monastery very near to this monastery of christchurch on this side and the smoke from the chimneys of people around and at the same time behind me you can see the tower of the cathedral bell harry tower a great signal of canterbury's presence as the mother church of the anglican world but also a holy place of pilgrimage to so many so much has had to cease in physical activity in 2020 and we look back on that year with mixed feelings we've discovered some things that we took for granted which we suddenly found precious because we were missing them and also new skills in getting in touch with each other with each other and new graces of different kinds of hospitality of encouragement in also many different ways we've seen courage in those fighting the pandemic courage in all parts of the world and we've seen leaders in all countries having to make very very difficult decisions often without the right evidence to go on which might change next day and they'd had to make other decisions and there was a sense sometimes of do they know what they're doing but of course they have to wait for the right kind of evidence to come before them we think of all those who are leaders on this day on this opening of a new year 2021 and may god bless us all in that year as we say our prayers and have our reflection later in our little service of morning prayer this is the feast day of the naming and circumcision of jesus and we remember as we shall in our reflection the two uh parents mary and joseph the blessed virgin coming with her infant son on the eighth day the octave of christmas day the day of his birth and on this day for the first time she offers him to the rights and ceremonies of the old law in which they have been brought up and in which they will bring up their son and we first see in our lesson the pondering of mary in her heart about all of this but let's begin our prayers and we can think about all these other things when we've read our lesson oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise you laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands blessed are you suffering god creator of heaven and earth to you be praise and glory forever as your living word eternal in heaven assume the frailty of our mortal flesh may the light of your love be born in us to fill our hearts with joy as we sing 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 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 are men we've grown used to those words but on this morning i might say them again with just one word change as it comes in the lines the year has passed and the new year lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind and as we rejoice in the gift of this new year so may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever our men are resounding our men to that prayer first morning of the month so naturally enough psalm 1 blessed are they who have not walked in the council of the wicked nor lingered in the way of sinners nor sat in the assembly of the scornful their delight is in the law of the lord and they meditate on his law day and night like a tree planted by streams of water bearing fruit in due season with leaves that do not wither whatever they do it shall prosper it as for the wicked it is not so with them they are like chaff which the wind blows away therefore the wicked shall not be able to stand in the judgment nor the sinner in the congregation of the righteous for the lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked shall perish on this day we turn in the scriptures to the second chapter of the gospel of saint luke and i'm beginning to read at verse 15 when the angels went away from them into heaven the shepherds said to one another let us go over to bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the lord has made known to us and they went with haste and found mary and joseph and the baby lying in a manger and when they saw it they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them but mary treasured up all these things pondering them in her heart and the shepherds returned glorifying and praising god for all they had heard and seen as it had been told them that the end of eight days when he was circumcised he was called jesus the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb we see that two acts of obedience on the part of mary and joseph and also an act of sacrifice on the part of mary i have no doubt in her heart as eight days after the birth an octave as the church has always called it the eighth day always special one thinks a bit or i do on the piano with my hand just about able to stretch those eight notes eight days after according to the law of moses and that is the faith in which mary and joseph lived and would bring up their child they went to have him circumcised this is the first act of offering that the infant son would be enfolded into the community of israel by this act sin luke in chapter 2 sketches three scenes where the blessed virgin gives her son to another and ponders in her heart what is all this meaning here's the first one and if you read that it seems that the shepherds are responding maybe to a question from mary or joseph what brings you here and they tell what they have been told and mary was said this is the first time luke uses these sentences ponders in her heart what all these things might mean and here eight days later mary and joseph present their son for circumcision according to the law and that is an act of obedience on their part an obedience which jesus would follow up at his baptism let all things be done like this for now but for now also jesus has been enfolded into the community of his own people the second scene which we shall come to later in the year on february the second is the scene of the presentation in the temple where once again mary and joseph find their son taken from their arms by old simeon who then prophesies that he will be a light to lighten the gentiles suddenly the mission of their son the vocation of their son is expanding across the world from his own people but also the prophecy to mary and the sword shall pierce your own heart also and the secret thoughts of many be laid bare and the third time in the same chapter is the time when they go to the temple to find their 12 12 year old son whom they've lost and our lady says to the little boy age 12 my son your father and i have sought you sorrowing and jesus in the old words said that why did you sorry whiskey not that i must be about my father's business did you not know that i must be about my and one can put in the word heavenly father's business three acts of obedience but also three acts of self offering of the most precious gift that mary has and that gift is given first to his own people and then to the world it's a new beginning as today is a new beginning if one looks at the dates which are important they all tend to be dates where someone has made a decision a resolution if you like and sometimes it's a whole nation making a resolution but that resolution is something about a new beginning and beginnings are good times this day in 1660 samuel peeps began writing a diary and kept that up for nine years maybe many of you i certainly do write just some thoughts each day to keep on track and find the things i've failed in the things i've realized the things i've pondered and have no answer to and all of those things and that's something which began for peeps on this day and he kept up with that for quite a while and on this day also many political events in 1901 in australia new south wales queensland victoria south australia tasmania and western australia became the federation of the commonwealth of australia for the first time in 1912 the long imperial history of china ended with the establishment of the chinese republic and in 1898 the city of new york annexing land around from surrounding counties became the city of greater new york with the four boroughs manhattan brooklyn queens the bronx and later in the month staten island to make the present five a new beginning and in 1801 the union of great britain and ireland created a united kingdom and now of course the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland with something of a new political beginning today also in 1947 in canada those who were british subjects by the canadian citizenship act became subjects of canada in a new political arrangement to give a new life and a new beginning for our friends in canada all of those things and january the first of course um which as i said yesterday has not always been the beginning of the year at the beginning of the year happened in march for many many years but what did happen on january the first was in 45 bc the julian calendar took effect as the official civil calendar for the roman empire and that did begin on january the 1st so let all those things be the sense of this day being a new beginning and also something lovely happened on this day in 1773 the him amazing grace was sung for the first time to accompany a sermon preached by john newton and that him has become a lovely hymn we sing it often and i find that when i'm taking pilgrimages around and come to the shrine of thomas beckett at the end it's one of the few verses and there are about three or four of those one can do that people know by heart and sing beautifully in the darkness by candlelight and the echoing of the cathedral no doubt when pilgrimage opens up again i'm confident it will this year that will also begin again the sense of the song of amazing grace for without grace none of our resolutions are affected and it was grace that gave the blessed virgin mary the courage to offer her son and ponder what it meant as his vocation grew and grew to be the christ the lamb of god john the baptist proclaimed him who takes away the sins of the world all those things on this particular day it's also and i give thanks for this in 1879 the novelist gm foster was born he like jane austen had a little clutch of novels which we tend to know and which filmmakers and television makers love to portray where angels fear to tread the longest journey a room with a view howard's end a passage to india and late on their written early on morris and recently of course i read on the on youtube and you can still find it there his amazingly prophetic story the machine stops written in 1914 i still wonder at how he had the imagination to almost see aspects of our world all that time ago when they didn't exist and i also had the privilege of meeting him when i was probably about let me just think 19 and loved the conversations i had with him he was so perceptive but above all else interested in me his questions were not expecting me to be interested in him that i was but he was the one who was showing interest and that's a great gift a mutual gift when another is talking to you to be interested in them it's something that we can do for one another at this particular time well i wanted just to mention today also someone who died on the 29th of december it was the day we were keeping our thomas beckett day so there was no time really to to think about him a great anglican theologian massively influential for me austin farah his name was he was the warden of kibble who died on the 29th of december in 1968 and so many of his sermons have been published in books and and each of them is is really a meditation well worth reading he was a great biblical scholar and i give enormous thanks for him but i give thanks most of all for his little book lord i believe suggestions for turning the creed into prayer is called it's a very slim volume and i uh bought it unthinkingly almost in in in a bookshop uh in the 1960s early 1960s and found in there the way in which he helped one think through the apostles creed and also at the end of the book but there's no time to go into this he helped me see how useful the gift of the rosary was to keep my fingers active and taking me day by day through all the scenes of the gospel so that i am anchored in the pictures of the gospel and i'm not going to stray he says it's wonderful how jewelers wire and and simple beads can simply keep your mind and your fingers busy while your heart meditates and ponders on those scenes given well enough of that because it's not what i want to say what i want to say is that in that book there is the most marvelous little story about how he goes down to his allotment with some useful hours of couple of hours quickly to spend on a summer afternoon and think i'm here i am i've not had time down here i must do lots and lots of work and here's my new fruit net and all the rest of it and then suddenly he sees a thrush and you must know that the thrush is my absolute favorite bird in england and they well and they actually sing at wintertime as you can hear um they they stop singing in july and then take up again early december and our our companions through these winter months with the most beautiful song imaginable but song thrashes and missile thrushes and we have both in the garden here and austin farah tells of how he looks at the fruit nuts and suddenly sees there's a thrush caught in the net and he's has been there in got inside somehow and has begun to steal the fruit but nevertheless his leg has been caught in in pharah's new fruit net and farron says i've got two hours when i need to do useful work or i can help this thrash and he turns to help the thrush and finds the problem is is really grave because the tangling is immense and to cut a long story short though you might read the story yourself he takes out his his knife and cuts his beautiful new fruit net but still there's much work to do and eventually the frail thrush is in his hands and he it flies away his two hours of useful work have been wasted in one sense but he's done something utterly beautiful that he knew he must do at the cost of his fruit net but for the life of the thrush and of course you can imagine the kind of meditation which takes place after that but i've never forgotten it and every time i hear of thrush sing i think of that story but i also think of a poem by thomas hardy and i think he actually wrote this as the uh 19th century ended on new year's eve at that time when he was out for a walk and a whole new century stood before him and everything around him as this morning i can't see a human soul at the moment the city is still utterly asleep with the smoke of fires going through this the chimney and uh here's the poem it's called the darkling thrush imagine hardy out for a winter walk on a freezing day with no flowers or anything alive the darkling thrush i leant upon a coppice gate when frost was spector grey and winter's dregs made desolate the weakening eye of day the tangled bind stems scored the sky like strings of broken liars and all mankind that haunted nye had sought their household fires the land's sharp features seem to be the century's corpse outlet his crypt the cloudy canopy the wind his death lament the ancient pulse of german birth was shrunken hard and dry and every spirit upon earth seemed fervourless as i at once a voice arose among the bleak twigs overhead in a full-hearted even song of joy in limited an aged thrush frail gaunt and small in blast be ruffled plume had chosen thus to fling his soul upon the growing gloom so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound was written on terrestrial things afar or nigh around that i could think that trembled through his happy good night hour some blessed hope whereof he knew and i was unaware it's a poem i never tire of hearing because of course it speaks of the blessed hope which creation gives us of new life but also to me it speaks of the blessed hope our ladies and joseph give us on this day as they present their son to be named in obedience to the angel you will call his name jesus he will save his people from their sins thank god for this day thank god for this year and may it be a year of grace to us all let's say our prayers first the prayer for this particular day almighty god whose blessed son was circumcised in obedience to the law for our sake and given the name that is above every name give us grace faithfully to bear his name to worship him in the freedom of the spirit and to proclaim him as the savior of the world who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever amen and the collect for this time of christmas almighty god who wonderfully created us in your own image and yet more wonderfully restored us through your son jesus christ granted as he came to share in our humanity so we may share the life of his divinity who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever amen so as we think of the life of all those around us and those whom we would want to pray for today in the communion we're praying for the diocese of abba in nigeria in our own diocese as we remember archbishop justin and bishop rose of dover and bishop chairman lambert we're praying for the whole life of faith the whole response to christ in every christian community of whatever denomination on this day and you will have friends in the same way across the world so we say that our father in whatever language we 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 are men moment of silence now as we make our own intentions or if you want to call them resolutions and pray for grace to fulfill them [Music] christ who as his coming at christmas time gathered into one the things of earth and the things of heaven fill you those whom you love and those whom you would pray for with the spirit of peace and good will and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you today and always amen [Music] r see [Music] is me is [Music] see me is [Music] right [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] and [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] wow [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you