good morning and welcome to the lower part of the orchard in the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this uh thursday the 11th of march well it's the windiest day that you could possibly imagine enormous gusts of wind and we've had that through the night i think the electricity has been off and on and we've had to reset fire alarms and computers and goodness knows what but the wind is still very strong so if you hear the roaring of the wind we've just said matins in the cathedral early and it was hard to hear ourselves speak with the roaring of the wind it reminds us that we are very near to the sea here eight or ten miles away and uh we're sticking out on the very eastern edge of england so surrounded by sea and the wind is gusting up so it's a very good thing that there are no leaves on the trees as yet because they'd be seriously in danger these big sycamores and and cherry trees and the great ash trees if they were covered in foliage and the wind was blowing against them at this strength so forgive me if it's a bit noisy this morning with the wind but we will have our service outside so that there's a sense of fresh air and the daffodils are still looking absolutely luminous i want you to say that there is a sense of enormous sadness right over england and in kent for the death the tragic murder as it seems of sarah everard walking home young woman walking home in london on a walk she'd done so many times back to her home at brixton hill in the evening and she at first disappeared and now it seems certain that she was murdered abducted and murdered and that is shocking everyone and in a way making the streets which are emptier anyway because of lockdown feel less safe and that sense of giving one another safety is important but we we say prayers for the repose of sarah but also think of her boyfriend josh and her family and all those who are grieving who knew her and those also who are made more frightened about being out alone by all of this it's one of the things as i say of this lockdown where there are few fewer people around for contact with others makes us feel safer and so we bear that in mind throughout our prayers as a theme here in england particularly on this particular day so let's say our prayers together and wherever you are throughout the world please feel welcome here bring your concerns as i've just expressed one of our nation's concerns today and also your thanksgivings so that we're able together to offer as the psalmist says a sacrifice of thanksgiving with our morning prayers o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise hear our voice o lord according to your faithful love according to your judgment give us life blessed are you god of compassion and mercy to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of our sin your light breaks forth like the dawn and your healing springs up for deliverance as we rejoice in the gift of your saving help sustain us with your bountiful spirit and open our lips to sing your 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 does 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 psalm on this 11th morning of the month is psalm 57 be merciful to me o god be merciful to me for my soul takes refuge in you in the shadow of your wings will i take refuge until the storm of destruction has passed by i will call upon the most high god the god who fulfills his purpose for me he will send from heaven and save me and rebuke those that would trample upon me god will send forth his love and his faithfulness i lie in the midst of lions people whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword be exalted o god above the heavens and your glory over all the earth they have laid a net for my feet my soul is pressed down they have dug a pitch before me and will fall into it themselves my heart is ready oh god my heart is ready i will sing and give you praise awake my soul awake harp and liar that i may awaken the dawn i will give you thanks o lord among the peoples i will sing praise to you among the nations for your lovingkindness is as high as the heavens and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds be exalted oh god above the heavens and your glory over all the earth so we turn back to the gospel of saint john and take up the place that we left off at yesterday in chapter eight and i'm beginning at verse 31 jesus is still standing in the temple and attempting to teach but he's finding that so much of the seed that he is sowing of his word is falling on stony ground verse 31 of chapter eight so jesus said to the jews who had believed in him if you abide in my word you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free they answered him we are offspring of abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone how is it that you say you will become free jesus answered them truly truly i say to you everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin the slave does not remain in the house forever the sun remains forever so if the sun sets you free you will be free indeed i know that you are offspring of abraham and yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you i speak of what i have seen with my father and you do what you have heard from your father they answered him abraham is our father jesus said to them if you were abraham's children you would be doing the works abraham did but now you seek to kill me a man who has told you the truth that i heard from god this is not what abraham did you are doing the works your father did they said to him we were not born of sexual immorality we have one father even god jesus said to them if god were your father you would love me for i came from god and i am here i came not of my own accord but he sent me why do you not understand what i say it is because you cannot bear to hear my word you are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father's desire he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him when he lies he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies but because i tell you the truth you do not believe me which one of you convicts me of sin if i tell the truth why do you not believe me whoever is of god hears the words of god and the reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of god it's an important passage and it involves once again the truly truly the double underlining it also involves very often in that passage the word truth when jesus said the end of the gospel of saint john when he is standing before pilate and pilate says are you the king of the jews and jesus answered king is your word i came to bear witness to the truth his mission as he sees it to share with others that which he himself proclaims from shall we say it the heavenly dimension the spiritual gift which infuses the minds and bodies and of course spirits of those who are truly and once again that word is used it's used often in this passage truly his disciples there can be confusion because the evangelists quite often uses general terms like the jews and we have to distinguish and here in this passage at the beginning he's speaking to those of his people who are believing and reaching out in heart and mind to receive his word and then the theme changes when those who will do no such thing question him and the questions once again come as a result of that dual plane that jesus is working on the finite world and the infinite world and all the questions come from the finite world but in this passage also for us there is the most enormous phrase which overarches our whole anglican communion and that phrase written in greek on the huge compass rose which lies in the nave of canterbury cathedral the truth shall set you free or you could translate it if you wanted truthfulness will release you you can play with the words in a multitude of different ways but jesus is absolutely clear that he from the depths of his being is giving them the truth not only about the world but also about the infinite character of the creator and the gift he wants to bestow on us his children if we receive it and the answer about slavery we're not enslaved and of course this is something which is important because jesus says well you are enslaved if you don't accept this teaching your slaves of sin and hence all the talk about the devil the emblem of that sin as jesus sees himself as the emblem of our own humanity but he the son of man as he calls himself who will be lifted up when the time is fulfilled has come to bear witness to the truth and those words the truth shall set you free from saint john chapter 8 verse 32 become the motto the strap line part of the ethos of our anglican communion the anglican episcopal dimension the strand of the holy catholic church to which we belong and many of you will be of other communions but embracing the same sentence the truth shall set us free a free man in the greek uses the the depth of that same word which here is used and the the freedom is the gift of jesus i talk about the compass rose and it reminds me of something that we are really missing this year and we missed it last year too and that is the coming together of young people in training for christian ministry a few from so many lands who come here generally in the summer to share our life for a period something like the inside of three weeks it has been when we began uh 20 years ago now uh it was a larger group and a longer time and it was done in the summer and now we tend to do it in june when the whole cathedral community are here working so that all those people coming in their early years of ministry or still in as seminarians mix together to explore what that means the truth will set you free and to listen to one another we miss it because of course we learn much from it we do the same with bishops from the anglican communion in the early years of their episcopal ministry that we do for a shorter time and we do that generally at the end of january or in february all these things have stopped and it's a sadness to us we pray for our communion province by province diocese by diocese of course now but nothing takes the place of physical contact and the sense of as the younger people come in in their early years of ministry or the end of their seminarian time when they come together they sit out and sing their songs or bring the songs of their own tradition to our daily worship and they eat together and pray together and learn together from an international group of people that we bring here as teachers for them together with our own telling of the canterbury story all of that within the context of the compass rose the truth shall set you free it's written on the floor in the nave and it's written also on the usual alter frontal of our nave altar at the moment of course it's a lenten frontal but usually those words are there you know in a circle and the points of the compass of the compass rose break through the outer circle as if any kind of enslavement to that which is not the truth has been broken through if i'm to talk about the way in which those courses feel then they always begin with loud voices speaking in english from those areas of the world which understand the language well and are feeling confident that ends fairly soon and other voices begin to be brave because they become used to one another and also then after that the arguments begin and the differences in thinking and modes of behavior and modes of ministry begin to appear those arguments aren't going to get resolved but where they're coming from is better understood and by the end of the course there is a sense of loyalty one to another from those who've lived together within the context of this place which belongs to them all for canterbury belongs to well all christians of course it's a holy place and to those searching who've not yet discovered where their own journey will lead them but especially at this time in history to those who own this strand of of the church and as they're here then nobody can say um this isn't your home it's ours because rowan williams used to call it mother's kitchen where the family can have rows walk out slam the door but still come back and that becomes important in terms of getting the white heat out of something because we become bound up emotionally with everything that we're doing and there are really strong arguments in that second and third week but at the end there's a sadness that there's going to be a separation and now thank goodness because of the virtual world they can keep in touch with one another we pray that those times together will soon begin again they can't happen i think uh this year in the summer and then next year of course we shall have the whole lambeth conference meeting here god willing but that coming together becomes an important time of acclaiming that shall we say strap line of the communion the truth shall set you free and we give thanks for jesus proclaiming it in the midst of hints of violence and what must have been fear in his humanity as he stood before those authorities and spoke about what truth and freedom really meant well if i look at the dates that we have set before us on this particular day march the 11th i find that in 1702 the daily current was published for the first time that was england's first national daily newspaper and what a story that began as the sense of newspapers and news and the freedom of the press to speak and and publish truth as they saw it developed well you can trace that story in your own cultures in your own minds now of course so much of the news that we get is not through the press it's through other kinds of media but let's state it back here in england to that first daily newspaper in 1702 where the kind of discussions and arguments sometimes very heated arguments which are seminarians and even our bishops know when they come and and meet here in a neutral space how that can happen in the pages of the press as well in 1985 on this day mikhail gorbachev was elected as the last head of state of what was the ussr what a long time ago that seems in heart and mind it was before of course the the great wall in in berlin was broached and we were in a very different world but we give thanks for mikhail gorbachev because there was a sense with him of the argument going forward and barriers beginning to break down as we remember back to those years then some sadnesses on this day in 2004 on this day the madrid train bombings happened at rush hour killing 191 people part of a sequence of bombings following 9 11 in the years which followed like 7 7 in in england in european cities and other cities of of terrorist activity and we remember that with sadness and also in 2011 we remember with sadness the huge japanese earthquake which happened on this day which triggered the tsunami killing thousands of people and also triggered the second largest nuclear accident in history all of those things in our hearts and minds it's amazing how quickly we assimilate those things and the years roll on and it's good to think of those sadnesses and how parts of the sadnesses could have been averted but of course these things continue to happen in the fragility of a human world and the eternal dimension becomes even more and more important as we embrace it and jesus offers us the truth thinking today also in 1955 alexander fleming died and we give thanks for his work with penicillin at a time when all kinds of advances are being made in the way that we're attempting to deal with the coronavirus kovid 19 for our own safety's sake and the safety of so many others and trying to make that a world activity with his shared i wanted to mention also because it's a an interesting and fun part of the media that on this day in 1952 douglas adams was born and douglas adams was best known for his hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy now that was best known first on radio i don't think he uh he was a screenwriter a playwright a comedian a children's writer a novelist and a science fiction writer of a quirky kind and i don't think that he thought his hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy would achieve really global fame but it began on radio 4 in 1978 in six episodes when arthur dent set out on his journey and then in 1980 five more radio episodes lots of things happened in other media in the books he published and in films and all sorts of ways but the radio kept on saying that in 2003 and up to 2005 three more series came out on radio and in 2018 as a last throw he died in 2001 but in 2018 a sixth series on radio was broadcast it's nice to think of sound radio still holding our imagination in this way and one has to go to both the books and the soundtracks of that in order to see the enormity of his imagination uh we've recently enjoyed his uh his gentlers holistic detective agency series and that too is full of amusement but of quirky thinking which prompts us to use our imagination and to embrace huge concepts that are really beyond our thinking and leave us with all kinds of questions so we give thanks on this day for douglas adams and his imagination and his personality well i think that's probably all the the dates that we need to deal with another comedian 2018 ken dodd died on this day age 90 and he used to amuse us a great deal and 1818 mary shelley's book frankenstein was published another act of imagination of what might be and uh the the the fears that it engenders within us and then a time of shelter in 1682 the chelsea hospital was founded for pensioners from the armed services to have a quiet time at the end of their service and then tragically also 1965 the reverend james j reeb a white minister from boston died after being beaten by other white people during a civil rights demonstration in selma alabama these things cause us sadness of the harm that we do to one another but they become part of history and the story which unfolds and part of what it means to accept that truthfulness causes release which takes us straight back once again to the sense of release coming when the truth is told admitted and repented of which is part of our daily spirituality each of us so that we may be free indeed in the way that jesus wants us to be i believe in the forgiveness of sins says our creed as we say it right let's say our prayers on this particular day and we're praying today for the diocese of auckland in the anglican church in aotearoa new zealand and polynesia and i know that this will be of huge interest to our archdeacon who comes from auckland herself and here we are also praying in the diocese for justin our archbishop and for rose bishop of dover and for tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parishes of chariton with newington now there at the moment are looking for a new incumbent a new parish priest and so we pray for them as they search and pray for the retired clergy joe robertson and eileen webb who are looking after their pastoral welfare welfare so the prayer for this day in this third week of lent for the week following the third sunday of lent almighty god whose most dear son jesus christ went not up to joy but first he suffered pain and entered not into glory before he was crucified mercifully grant that we walking in the way of the cross may find it to be none other than the way of life and peace through jesus christ our lord amen one of the best times when these students gather from across the communion to live our life for several weeks and the bishops gather is the time when we say the our father together in our worship everyone in their own language and then in the middle of that multitude of sounds of communication in different languages at the end comes the same word amen let's do that this morning in our various languages across the world 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 now as the wind continues as we say our own prayers christ give you grace to grow in holiness to deny yourself take up your cross daily and follow him 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 [Music] you