good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this tuesday the 7th of september as we come to say our morning prayers it is once again a beautiful september morning with no breeze at all and a lovely cool morning air as the sun begins to come up above the trees a totally blue sky above me wherever you are in the world please feel welcome and we've come here i'm sitting in front of the medler tree but we've come here on to the great lawn which we decided you will remember to allow to grow up as as grass which seeded and lots of wild flowers and pyramid orchids and everything which grew in the grass because we wouldn't be having the thousands of feet which normally come to social occasions and charity occasions on the lawn next year we hope all that will begin again but we allowed it to grow and what has happened is that if you came into the garden you wouldn't need to be a detective to see exactly where we go regularly in the garden often with you at morning prayer how the tracks lead across the lawn in different directions we've tried to stay on the same track so that we don't damage anything which is tentatively growing amongst the grasses but this is a morning when our reflection is all about journeyings and we've therefore uh brought you'll see there's there's no teapot this morning there are traveling flasks and baskets to help us with our reflection and for the first time i brought the best mug because for the first time in the scriptures in genesis bethlehem is mentioned this morning so it's a morning rally of new beginnings and when we come to our prayers we'll say that one or two areas of our world obviously there are the the areas we've been praying for regularly where people are endangered and people are also putting themselves in danger in all sorts of ways to help them in situations of natural disaster and and war and human created disasters but there are also things which are happening which we would want to pray for and give thanks for the end of the paralympics in tokyo with fireworks lighting up the sky and we want to thank the people of japan and the citizens of tokyo for hosting that event in difficult times but also for all the competitors for giving us such an example in the paralympics but also an image of the world coming together in that event we're thinking of areas too of political tension we think of montenegro where the head of the serbian orthodox church needing to be installed there were montenegrin protests at that because montenegro declared itself independent from serbia in 2006. but there's still a third of the people in montenegro who are serbian and the orthodox church is right across both serbia and montenegro so those tensions have caused real trouble and we pray for those those peoples at this time we also pray for the people of brazil as they approach independence day with the political tensions there but there's a lovely news article this morning about a center in dubai and this fits in with the conference still going on about biodiversity in marseille and the care of our planet uh in dubai they are experimenting with growing future proof food and using using desert soils and also sea water saline water to cause plants to grow which can grow in that kind of soil and also prove beneficial for food because it's it's likely that water will become scarcer and scatter fresh water will become scarcer and scarcer and the wells in the journeying of jacob have become a very important thing as we well know and remember how our lee's quarter state uh nearby here is experimenting with the growth of ekyum and calendula grinding them together to produce omega-3 so they won't have to keep fishing the oceans for that we can produce it from friendly crops for our planet all those things are just moments of hope as we begin our prayers on this day o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise you lay the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands blessed are you sovereign 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 in bethlehem 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 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 morning psalm on this seventh of the months is psalm 36 sin whispers to the wicked in the depths of their heart there is no fear of god before their eyes they flatter themselves in their own eyes that their abominable sin will not be found out the words of their mouth are unrighteous and full of deceit they have ceased to act wisely and to do good they think out mischief upon their beds and have set themselves in no good way nor do they abhor that which is evil your love o lord reaches to the heavens and your faithfulness to the clouds your righteousness stands like the strong mountains your justice like the great deep you lord shall save both man and beast how precious is your loving mercy oh god all mortal flesh shall take refuge under the shadow of your wings they shall be satisfied with the abundance of your house they shall drink from the river of your delights for with you is the well of life and in your light shall we see light oh continue your loving kindness to those who know you and your righteousness to those who are true of heart let not the foot of pride come against me nor the hand of the ungodly thrust me away there are they fallen all who work wickedness they are cast down and shall not be able to stand it's a wonderful psalm on our morning of journeying with the straight paths coming right up through here and it's images of the well of life with you is the well of life the psalm says to the lord and in your light shall we see light and what this path does is go right up to the enormous sheltering tree over the white table where we often sit and that's that's an elanthus but it's also called the tree of heaven so that the path is going to that great tree spreading to remind us of the infinite dimensions but moments of refreshment with the well of life for with you is the well of life and in your light shall we see light a good sentence for the knapsack the grab bag let's go then to our lesson from the book of genesis and continue the story of jacob this brings us to a closure at the end and a new story still involving jacob begins tomorrow chapter 35 verse 1 and i'm reading the whole of this chapter god said to jacob arise go up to bethel and dwell there make an altar there to the god who appeared to you when you fled from your brother esau so jacob said to his household and to all who were with him put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments then let us arise and go up to bethel so that i may make that an altar to the god who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever i have gone so they gave to jacob all the foreign gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears and jacob hid them under the terribence tree that was near shechem and as they journeyed a terror from god fell upon the cities that were around them so that they did not pursue the sons of jacob and jacob came to lars that is bessel which is in the land of canaan he and all the people who were with him and there he built an altar and called the place el bethel which means god of bethel because there god had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother and deborah rebecca's nurse died and she was buried under an oak tree below bethel so he called its name alan bakus god appeared to jacob again when he came from padan aram and blessed him and god said to him your name is jacob but no longer shall your name be called jacob but israel shall be your name so he called his name israel and god said to him i am god almighty be fruitful and multiply a nation and the company of nation shall come from you and kings shall come from your own body the land that i gave to abraham and isaac i will give to you and i will give the land to your offspring after you then god went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him and jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with god a pillar of stone he poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it so jacob called the name of the place where god had spoken with him bethel then they journeyed from bethel and when they were still some distance from ephrath rachel went into labor and she had hard labor and when her labor was at its hardest the midwife said to her do not fear for you have another son and as her soul was departing for she was dying she called his name benoni but his father called him benjamin so rachel died and she was buried on the way to ephrath that is bethlehem and jacob set up a pillar over her tomb it is the pillar of rachel's tomb which is there to this day israel journeyed on and pitched his tent beyond the tower of eder now the sons of jacob were twelve the sons of leia reuben jacob's firstborn simeon levi judah issachar and zebulun the sons of rachel joseph and benjamin the sons of bilhah rachel's servant dan and naftali the sons of zilpah leia's servant god and asha these were the sons of jacob who were born to him in padan aram and jacob came to his father isaac at mamrie or kiriath abba that is hebron where abraham and isaac had sergeant now the days of isaac were 180 years and isaac breathed his last and he died and was gathered to his people old and full of days and his sons esau and jacob buried him an end but also a beginning and at the same time we see how esau and jacob have at last become brothers together in the burial of their father they're burying isaac in the place where rebecca and also abraham and sarah were buried and it becomes another significant holy place in all our minds there will be really special places but notice that the very special place bethel and this is all before the temple in jerusalem all before any law of moses the very special place bethel is actually um a place where jacob had his worst night because he was terrified he'd fled from home he then was there with the stone as his pillow all of the things that we went through in that very dangerous moment for jacob and then he had the vision of the angels on the ladder up and down as god blessed him and in the morning woke up as the sun rose and began his journey again but he chose to take that place of his worst experience when god spoke to him as the holiest place well now i've got in my hand the hymn book because although we don't speak about vessel much there is a hymn which many of you will know and which we sing fairly often and on one particular occasion when we gather around the memorial stone in our memorial garden at the beginning of all things of kent cricket week and the organizations which are in the summer beginning kent cricket week come down and lay wreaths of memory and they sing this hymn which is a hymn of pilgrimage based on that holy place you will know it i'm sure oh god of bethel by whose hand thy people still are fed who through this weary pilgrimage hast all our fathers led our vows our prayers we now present before thy throne of grace god of our fathers be the god of their succeeding race through each perplexing path of life our wandering footsteps guide give us each day our daily bread and raiment fit provide o spread thy covering wings around till all our wanderings cease and at our father's loved abode our souls arrive in peace it's a hymn of its time and 18th century hymn by philip doddridge but it's speaking of journeying and using the imagery of jacob's journey and also the way in which often jacob was perplexed when to stray our wandering footsteps guide and the perplexing path of life but there is in it a sense not only of the holy place bethel but also the arrival at the infinite home of our father there's the two references in it to the uh our father which we say and that one of those is give us this day our daily bread and then raymond fit provide so we have all those images with the lesson that we've just read to bring that to a conclusion and there as a new beginning is bethlehem where rachel's tomb is and remember how in matthew's gospel when king herod in his cruelty slaughters the innocents in bethlehem and there is the prophecy fulfilled of the mothers crying and matthew um brings up rachel weeping for her children for this was rachel's holy place jacob's beloved the one he had fallen in love with at first sight on that day at the well when she drew water and gave him to drink and at the same time we have the foundation stones named the twelve now that benjamin is there that's the whole family of jacob's twelve sons and it's wrong to have favorites but because of his enormous love for rachel joseph and benjamin were really special and that story of joseph we shall begin tomorrow but for the moment we leave jacob and esau brothers together under the oaks of mamrie burying isaac their father at the cave of macpilla special places new beginnings and one or two dates which i wanted to share with you on this day september the 7th 1533 queen elizabeth the first as she became was born and she became queen 25 years later but in fact her way was a really difficult one originally because she was born as the child of anne berlin but already henry viii had another daughter mary born from catherine of aragon and later henry was to have a son through jane seymour and he edward of course in those days that the male took the progression and that meant that elizabeth was brought up being a little distance from ever thinking that she might inherit the throne she was intensely clever and she learned latin and greek and italian and french fluently in all forms of scholarship she was clever but she was also shrewd and when eventually her father died and then her brother edward died after a very short reign and her sister mary who was determined to enforce england back into the catholic fold with a very firm hand but elizabeth was seen as a threat and oftentimes she was questioned by the commissioners of mary but her answers were given with such shrewdness and in such a way that she survived all of that but what must have been going through her mind and her own development at that time what the path must have looked like it certainly wasn't leading straight to the throne at that time for mary married philip ii of spain and was it looked as though there would be a long reign with queen mary in fact it was not to be mary also died without air and in 1558 november 1558 elizabeth became queen of england which included wales at that time but not scotland she was queen of england that was her title for much of the medieval period much of france had been part of the domains of the english crown all that had ended and the last vestige of that disappeared when queen mary lost the port of calais so elizabeth attained the throne and then had to decide what kind of queen she would be well that it knew elizabethan age at that time which became the reign of what the english people called good queen bess became an idealistic time but much of that was because elizabeth knew how to conduct herself with her people and uh a particular historian wrote that she was a model of shrewdness courage and majestic self-display she showed herself to her people as an image of what it meant to be their queen and that was the secret of that elizabethan age just as our own queen has always been there showing herself to the people as a sign of identity and also of the way in which the crown exercises a unifying factor well this is what elizabeth the first had had begun and there is a a lovely stone image on the the west end of our cathedral of elizabeth the first just as there is an image of elizabeth ii and prince philip and at this time we give thanks for the way in which elizabeth you not only united the the nation but also engendered arts and culture and all kinds of loyalties from people it became the beginning of the age of shakespeare and she was really clever at using shakespeare's history stories to just undergird everything that she was as the the queen of england but at the same time it was the time when england was under threat and when the spanish armada began to sail against it and at that time elizabeth knew she must show herself and she did so in a wonderful way by choosing to go to soldiers gathered at tilbury and she came on a horse in a white gown with a silver breastplate and there's that wonderful quote i may have the body of a weakened female woman but i have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of england too i may not have the words quite right but you will know that speech and addressing her people and giving them heart and courage and also bravely going ahead with balanced policies for church and state and never allowing so many people said of course she'll be guided by favorites that she enjoyed being with the leicester the earl of essex uh and yet she always took counsel from lord burley the first of the cecils to serve her and later on robert cecil and in terms of government never let her passions get ahead of her heart and her wisdom for she was a wise and she'd woman another historian has said she was the image of female authority regal magnificence and national pride and of course she was a very devout christian and theologian and she balanced the different ecclesial traditions in her land as best she could this land has a great deal to be thankful for in the reign of good queen bess and later on it was looked look back on in the troubled times of james the first charles the first later on as a golden age uh and uh because europe was now not a place where the english crown had any interest really in in that way having lost calais then elizabeth sailors sailed right across the world sir francis drake circumnavigating the whole globe and uh on the coast of california stopping to have a communion service celebrated and then going on and coming back and elizabeth again won for the the public opportunity knighting sir francis drake on board the golden hind and all of that we remember on this day well i've quoted one or two historians and history is always a matter of interpretation but this was a day when one of my favorite historians who was very influential when i was um beginning to take a huge interest in english history and british history and then the history of the whole world throughout ages and he was a man called ajp taylor and he died on september the 7th in 1990. he was between 1938 and 1976 a fellow of morden college and for some some of that time a lecture in modern history there but i remember him as someone who gave half-hour lectures on television throughout the the end of the 1950s through the 1960s i think even into the 1970s he had no notes and he had no visual aids he would simply walk onto the screen with a dark background as far as i remember and begin ladies and gentlemen tonight we are thinking of and then he would launch in to an historic subject flawlessly and the way he writes is in the same way beautiful english but i was captivated and learned so much history from ajp taylor simply telling me the story and interpreting it in different ways many historians would say oh you've got the wrong interpretation about that but he actually gave the stories in wonderful ways and i've got many of his books on my shelves but um here's a favorite one which is one of the volumes in the oxford um history of england and he wrote the one from 1914 to 1945 and the first paragraph it's quite lengthy but it's it's lovely the first paragraph always use to give me a picture of the world in shall we say july 1914 here in this nation just before everything changed with the outbreak of the great war and this is what he writes until august 1914 a sensible law-abiding englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state beyond the post office and the policeman he could live where he liked and as he liked he had no official number or identity card he could travel abroad or leave his country forever without a passport or any sort of official permission he could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit he could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home for that matter a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police unlike the countries of the european continent the state did not require its citizens to perform military service an englishman could enlist if he chose in the regular army the navy or the territorials he could also ignore if he chose the demands of national defence substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service otherwise only those helped the state who wish to do so the englishman paid taxes on a modest scale nearly 200 million pounds in 1913 to 14 or rather less than 8 percent of the national income the state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases it imposed safety rules in factories and prevented women and adult males in some industries from working excessive hours the state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. since the 1st of january 1909 it provided a meager pension for the needy over the age of 70. since 1911 it helped to ensure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment this tendency towards more state action was increasing expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the liberals took office in 1905 but still broadly speaking the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves it left the adult citizen alone all this was changed by the impact of the great war well he writes as a man of his time but it is an amazing picture of a different kind of life of course it suited best those who had the resources to enjoy all those freedoms and everything changed at that time of the great war and now of course we expect the state to look after us in so many different ways but i would give thanks for the way in which ajp taylor realized that the best kind of communication is one where eye contact is made and a story is told and interpretations are given but there's allowance for many different interpretations in the minds and hearts of those who are listening and they then can explore and go on in their own thinking and their study and the ways in which we can plum into areas of study virtually as well are now manifestly greater than anything that ajp taylor could even have imagined yet in my mind i see him captivating me just standing gently talking without too much emphasis and going on and with the amusing aside from time to time but allowing me also to think and in a balanced way to weigh up the evidence of a historical story so having said that there are one or two dates i'm not going to spend long on at all but uh william hellman hunt died on this day september the 7th in 1910 we've looked at him recently with the light of the world when we were dealing with behold i stand at the door and knock i think the sunday before last so i'm not going to spend too much time on him but those wonderful biblical pictures and i was looking this morning at christ amongst the doctors showing the little boy there being found by his mother in the temple amongst the doctors and then also this is a day on the 7th of september 1892 when the quaker poet the american quaker poet john greenleaf whittier died we know him he was an author and abolitionist but also a great poet and two of his hymns we've sung i think within the last fortnight here the last 14 days here in the cathedral the first a really popular one dear lord and father of mankind forgive our foolish ways set to music now by sir hubert parry with that tuned repton and uh we give thanks for that lovely hymn oh sabbath rest by galilee o calm of hills above where jesus knelt to share with thee the silence of eternity interpreted by love wonderful words and that hymn is really in the hearts of us all breathe through the hearts of our desire the heats of our desire thy coolness and thy balm let's sense be done let flesh retire speak through the earthquake wind and fire oh still small voice of calm full of biblical imagery but wonderful imagery and the other hymn of his immortal love forever full forever flowing free thanks be to god for john greenleaf witcher and hymns which are in our heads usually because we know the tune and can sing most of them by heart so let's say our prayers on this beautiful morning is september morning of new beginnings and the the mug of the emma bridgewater mug that i brought this morning out to see the little bethlehem mug with the farm animals coming into bethlehem here so there are all kinds of creatures there are even guinea fowl on here i don't know there were any guinea fowl at the crib but there's a cockerel and guinea fowl and all kinds of things and we we love her illustrations ron but this is the bethlehem mug and we've just remembered how bethlehem is mentioned for the first time in the scriptures at rachel's tomb in our prayers for the anglican communion this morning we are praying for the diocese of enugu in the church of nigeria and is in the enugu province and in our own diocese for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parishes of sitting born with bobbing for david ridley in his ministry and the assistant curate there chris penfold and the self-supporting curator sue samson in the ministry of that place not too far from here sitting born let's say our prayers then using the collect for this week and bring your own intentions to that almighty god whose only son has opened for us a new and living way into your presence give us pure hearts and steadfast wills to worship you in spirit and in truth through jesus christ our lord amen so each in our own language the prayer our savior taught us 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 and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen image of silence now for your own prayers before we say our prayers in the garden there are no more inveterate travelers and journeyers than the guinea fowl who wander around all day long as journeyers [Music] 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 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 [Music] like is [Music] is oh jesus [Music] quiet [Music] sees [Music] peace [Music] peace [Music] [Music] is [Music] is you