good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of monday the 10th of january it was a very heavy frost this morning uh and it's cold here we've come into the the meadow garden as you see it's plow monday the day when traditionally ordinary work began after all the festivities of christmas the monday following the first sunday after the epiphany and our epiphany carol service last night ended all of that at uh at and and now we we start again with the ordinary work of the world on plough monday and the plow becomes a symbol of the work of the world not many people will be handing a plow today but many will be returning to ordinary work and many at home i'm going to feed our two little plows here who have successfully plowed up this side of the garden and we've separated this in two so that they've got some some less muddy ground over there but they're doing very well and we've a treat or two for them as well this morning i'm going to give them that ordinary let me just take the treats out these are things that you will recognize very soft now um but here we are let's give them this as well and go around and let them spread a little bit and there we go and there's another of these squashes that marrow for you here that's really big treat for them so we can say our own prayers now and uh i can put that up there probably safely for a little bit and see where we go you're seeing here in the picture an stabilizer of the plow it's in terms of the century it's a very modern invention but now of course a very old piece of farm equipment and one of those would have gone on each side of the plow so that it didn't sink into the muddy ground but this was a day when the plow symbolized and symbolizes our ordinary daily work and in many country parishes uh yesterday would have been called plow sunday and today plow monday the work began i remember very well in my country parish in tisbury in uh the 1970s taking the plow an old-fashioned plow into the church and it was a very much a real thing there because of course many of the people were involved in agriculture this day symbolizes the beginning of the english agricultural year but let it symbolize the beginning of ordinary work for 2022 on this plow monday and we can hear around us the ordinary work of the precincts beginning the score in preparation for the return of the scholars and we've got our own two plows who plowed up very successfully this side of the meadow garden ready for planting and now gradually we'll get them to plow up the other side and you can watch it develop in a particular way through the year as you did last year and see the flowers come at springtime when we've sown it and watched the seasons go this is very much one of the four agricultural seasons of the church's year plow sunday and then regation sunday when the seed is beginning to just germinate and grow and then after that lama's day loaf mass in early august with the first fruits of the harvest and after that in the autumn harvest home harvest festival all of these are symbols of the way the seasons change but they change in different sequences across the world the northern hemisphere the southern hemisphere and so we see each of them should we say we've been dealing with signs during the epiphany as signs of the way in which our human work in partnership with our creators gifts to us in creation how that proceeds through the year and what we give of our own creative energy to each other and to the work of the world day by day and we've got back here in the background of course the chicken run with the chickens and pheasants all under cover at the moment because of the avian flu but there are two here who are not endangered by avian flu and they're having their breakfast before they start their daily work so let's say our prayers on this particular day and uh join with your own intentions from across the world however you would like to o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your light springs up for the righteous and all the peoples have seen your glory blessed are you sovereign god king of the nations to you be praise and glory forever from the rising of the sun to its setting your name is proclaimed in all the world as the sun of righteousness dawns in our hearts anoint our lips with the seal of your spirit that we may witness to your gospel and sing your praise in all the earth 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 amen our psalm this morning on this tenth morning of the month is psalm 50. the lord the most mighty god has spoken and called the world from the rising of the sun to its setting out of zion perfect in beauty god shines forth our god comes and will not keep silence consuming fire goes out before him and a mighty tempest stares about him he calls the heaven above and the earth that he may judge his people gather to me my faithful who have sealed my covenant with sacrifice let the heavens declare his righteousness for god himself is judge o my people and i will speak i will testify against you o israel for i am god your god i will not reprove you for your sacrifices for your burnt offerings are always before me i will take no bull out of your house nor he got out of your folds for all the beasts of the forest are mine the cattle upon a thousand hills i know every bird of the mountains and the insect of the field is mine if i were hungry i would not tell you for the whole world is mine and all that fills it do you think i eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats offer to god a sacrifice of thanksgiving and fulfill your vows to god most high call upon me in the day of trouble i will deliver you and you shall honor me but to the wicked says god why do you recite my statutes and take my covenant upon your lips since you refused to be disciplined and have cast my words behind you when you saw a thief you made friends with him and you threw in your lot with adulterers you have loosed your lips for evil and harnessed your tongue to deceit you sit and speak evil of your brother and slander your own mother's son these things have you done and should i keep silence did you think i am even such a one as yourself but no i must reprove you and set before your eyes the things that you have done you that forget god consider this well lest i tear you apart and there is none to deliver you whoever offers me the sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me and to those who keep my way will i show the salvation of god it's a wonderful sound for this morning when the work of the world is symbolized by the plow and in many places the blessing of the plow which we'll think about in a little while but i'm starting to read this morning a short book of the old testament which if you like is almost a pastoral ideal it's a lovely story and i'm talking about the book of ruth now we're being joined by the robin but i don't think that that's our orchard robin this is uh our meadow garden robin and he's looking around for the same things which the orchard robin looks at there are about six territories of robins in the garden and they are very territorial especially when they come to mate and build their nests and that time is fast approaching so if you see a robin fluttering about it's not our friend from the orchard who is and it's it's not uh ones that were with us in the snow in different parts of the garden this is the meadow garden robin and it's his territory so um we're going to read the book of ruth and it is a wonderful story of as i said pastoral life very different from all the violence of the book of judges which precedes it and it is sandwiched it's chapped as a sandwich between the end of the book of judges and the beginning of the first book of samuel in our bibles in hebrew bibles it finds itself in a different place but here it is there and i think because of the words in the time of the judges and we get to that particular uh point in the book when we find where it's all happening and most of the action takes place in bethlehem but as i say this isn't the moving of great statesmen or wars or armies this is the life of country folk and it's set in different seasons so it suits us well it's a story of life and death of family life of marriages and of funerals and a story also of seed time and harvest but it's also a story of loyalty and it's got one of the most powerful statements of loyalty in it that i can imagine and so we're going to read a beautiful book but i wanted first just to read a tiny poem of thomas hardy because the book of ruth reminds me very much of the way hardy in his wessex tales talks about the country people and how seemingly irrelevant the great movement of states and armies are in the context of daily working life and human life living itself out here's hardy looking at a person not with a plow but with a harrow which with an old horse coming along and and pulling the harrow would break up the hard clods of us here's the poem only a man harrowing clods in a slow silent walk with an old horse that stumbles and nods half asleep as they stalk only thin smoke without flame from the heaps of cooch grass yet this will go onward the same though dynasties pass yonder a maid and her white come whispering by war's annals were clowed into night uh their story die a man harrowing the clogs with his we think of his old horse pulling the harrow or a fire of what my father used to call cooch grass that's a good west country expression for the particular kind of of grass which roots itself and you've got every bit of root has to come out with cooch grass and father would make a bonfire and the smoke would rise and you'd smell the smoke of a bonfire their new flame just just a wisp of smoke as the grass burned very slowly and then finally in hardy's poem two young lovers walking the maid and her white old-fashioned word come whispering by their words a secret to one another and in this wars in the the big context wars animals are less important than the fact that these things go on day by day so let's begin the book of ruth i'm just going to begin with a short passage and i'm reading from verse to 5 of chapter 1. in the days when judges ruled that there was a famine in the land and the man of bethlehem in judah went to sojourn in the country of moab he and his wife and his two sons the name of the man was elimelech and the name of his wife naomi and the names of his sons were marlon and chileon they were ephrathites from bethlehem in judah they went into the country of moab and remained there but elimelech the husband of naomi died and she was left with her two sons these took moabite wives the name of one was oppa and the name of the other ruth they lived there about 10 years and both marlon and chilean died so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband let's stop there for today because it sets the back cloth of the story we are to hear and enjoy first of all it's a lovely link with all that we've been thinking over the last weeks of christmas tide a lovely link with the town of bethlehem and that word ephrathite is dwelling on the old word for bethlehem now if you go to nine lesson and carol services very often one of the old testament lessons in the lessons that are read at a carol service begins but thou bethlehem ephrathah though thou be little among the thousands of judah yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in israel and the prophecy goes on in the book of micah it's in chapter five beginning at verse two if you want to look at it verses two to five but it gives us one of the references to bethlehem it was the place where jacob had buried rachel his wife and uh ephrathah is just another name for it and so the ephrathites are very much people of bethlehem of the tribe of judah which will become of course the royal line of david one of the titles the lion of david comes from all of that well uh the lion of judah i mean comes from that um well what else do we have here we have the fact that there's a famine takes us back to the story in genesis of jacob and joseph and all of that with the famine and so elimelech takes naomi and his two sons marlon and chilean away from bethlehem and goes the other side of the jordan to a foreign land moab which appears so often in the psalms the name the moabites were foreigners a different kingdom it was along the side of the dead sea on the far side the ancient kingdom of moab and they went to live there and there in that kingdom as they lived there marlon and chilean took wives from the moabite people and say oppa and ruth were murabites elimelech died and then marlon and chilean both died and the setting is therefore that first of all they're in a foreign land but ruth and oprah are not because they are murabites and although they're the daughters-in-law of naomi they are in their own country but naomi is very much in a foreign land and her heart begins to yearn for bethlehem and tomorrow we shall see how that yearning affects itself it becomes an increasingly important part of the story but so too do the harvest times and the seed times and the seasons that are going on around that and so as this story opens up we are telling the story of country folk you won't find any kings or armies or anything else in this story it's just the way the seasons pass and a good story to be telling on this plow monday there's also the sense of a mixture of nations there no account is made really for the fact that marlon and chilean have married uh moabite women which in parts of the old testament will be considered uh just awful but in in this it's it's simply taken for granted in this story and we shall see how that too plays out and i look forward to sharing this story with all of you as we go along as all of us to consider our daily creative work on on this day when the plow symbolizes the uh the beginning of work i wanted to mention and we'll come back to the plow in a moment uh but i wanted to mention that on this day in 1645 the very height of the first english civil war which would break out again afterwards and go through until the execution of the king in 1649 but on this day january the 10th the archbishop of canterbury william lord was executed on tower hill he'd been imprisoned for some years by then and the parliament was in two minds about what to do with him the uh his his companion in terms of the political life of england before the civil war when the king was ruling without a parliament the isle of stratford had already been executed and lord was disappointed that the king had consented to the execution of the isle of stratford but lord himself simply languished in prison until in the end when the civil war reached a height in 1645 they decided to execute the archbishop so on this day lord became one of the five archbishops of canterbury who were killed in office and the chapter house window tells the story of all of these um and first it shows the murdering of alfaj by the danes and the murdering of beckett we know that story only too well and the murdering of simon sudbury in the peasants revealed and then the burning at the stake of archbishop cranmer and now on this day in 1645 the execution on tower hill of archbishop lord lord was an absolute target for the puritans at that time and the english civil war was a very religious affair it was a very bloody affair in terms of the amount of citizens killed in percentage just as the american civil war a very high percentage of the population losing their life and being caught up in this everyone caught up in it but here a very religious conflict and the the loyalties were sharply divided the king had his capital in oxford london was very much for the parliament and different areas were for the parliament and we've said before that the the dean here uh bargrave was taken away from here and died as a result of the treatment he received from the soldier's hands and his his family were kicked out of the the deanery but at the same time the king appointed another dean in oxford a man called aglianby who sadly died within a few months and then the king appointed another and thomas turner who was appointed in 1642 as dean of canterbury had to wait although he was the dean already because he'd been given that job by the king he had to wait until 1660 to come here and be installed and then spend his own fortune setting this place to rights and causing the services to be celebrated again according to the old problem which had been criminalized during the years of the commonwealth well what we've got with the archbishop here is someone who had been vilified for his particular stand and right from his youth lord lord was a a good theologian but in his preparation for the doctoral thesis he had said that there could be no true churches without diocesan episcopacy well that was strong meat for puritans to accept and he was rebuked very sternly by one of the examiners who said he was promoting discord with the reformed churches abroad and he went on in this way james the first found him troublesome but charles the first particularly with the advice of the duke of buckingham actually took him as a counselor lord became bishop of saint davids and then bishop of batham wells and then bishop of london he was dean of gloucester for a time and nailed his color to the mast because the table where the lord's supper was celebrated was very much set in the middle of the the choir area and was set on a sort of east-west basis as a table and lord had that removed in gloucester cathedral and put it the east end and eventually his his plan was to have altar rails and make that into a sanctuary which was so used to now but that tended to them to suggest it to suggest that an altar was being suggested and um lord was there their enemy because of this and also his his great uh a great defense of of episcopacy as the way forward for the church now this is a long tale but the only thing i want to say is on this day in that conflict he lost his life and the office of archbishop of canterbury first went into obeyance and then it was abolished by the um republican uh government of the parliament and then the the oliver cromwell years said there was no archbishop of canterbury between 1645 and 1660 when the king returned we have a huge portrait of lord on the dinery staircase here and so as we come down the main staircase archbishop lord is looking down at us but he had a sad end because he was there in the middle of a very much a parliamentary held area and really without much friends and many friends and comfort and thinking that his life work has probably at an end well let's uh give thanks for the good things in terms of the the way in which we um uh receive aspects of what archbishop lord was planning for the church an episcopal church here the ancient church the restoration of the the daily offices the way in which we say our prayers and the fact that all of that now is for us taken for granted but in those times was a cause of hot contention as i go into the house here there's not only on the staircase the portrait of archbishop lord there's also a lovely portrait of thomas turner the dean who came back having been dean for so many years 18 years before he was actually installed here and he was dean if you count the years from the king appointing him for 30 years and he himself was filled with the sense of there must be no revenge we must put this behind us and go on as one nation and we honor thomas turner for that there's one other thing i wanted to say about today before we go back to the plow and that is that on this day in 1946 the general assembly of the united nations met for the first time in westminster central hall an infant united nations like one of the seeds being planted in the ground from the idea given at that dumbarton oaks conference that we've talked about before when the nations in the war itself came together and planned something like a united nations and now we see all the fruits of that so on this day the first general assembly we give thanks for that the coming together of nations let's go back then to the plow because uh as i say some parishes in the countryside keep that on plough sunday some still have processions of school children uh in in the the streets of their villages on plan monday and the sense of taking the plow along the houses of the village which is very much a sense of okay daily work is now beginning and we bend our best exercise to daily work it'll go up to um candle mass and break a bit and then on again and at the moment and i have a very very uh doubtful feelings about this because i'm old-fashioned this was the day we went back into ordinary time and all our vestments became green again to show ordinary time nowadays the church of england and it's different in other provinces of the anglican communion and different in in other communions of the church the roman catholic church for example the church of england keeps in white right up to candle masses they're keeping the festival of christmas all those way through special season i find that i try to keep special seasons for too long they cease to be special an ordinary time becomes the working of the plow becomes the the sign of daily work so we do that today and i'm thinking of the way in which when we used to bring the plow into the church there was a a wiltshire prayer which was said in blessing over the plow and an old-fashioned plow was was there the villagers standing around which would be taken out afterwards uh and there was a massive reality about it as i said because so many of them the servers the members of the choir were involved in agricultural work sometimes the young people as volunteers earning earning extra money by helping at the farms and others very much farmers themselves and farmer um bob carter of place farm magnificent farm in those days was the church warden that one of the church wardens with colonel david swift and they would stand with their staves uh showing that their badge of office on each side of me as i blessed the plow a sign of the work of the world the words were god's speed the plow the beam and the mouldboard the foot and the toe the share and the cultures gods speed the plow in fair weather and fowl in success and disappointment in rain and wind in frost or sunshine god speed the plow think of that as your own physical work it mentioned the old-fashioned parts of the plow but actually you could think of every aspect of your body mind and spirit setting out on the work of this year in the ordinary days which follow christmas time when decorations are taken down and we go about the work of the world and the plows are at their work like our two plows here in the garden work that we shall see their fruit and flowering significance and beauty as the year proceeds so let's say our prayers on this particular day i think fletcher may have found a plow song if you can put it on uh later on which gives a sort of ear of the countryside the sound of the countryside as well but for the moment let's let's bring all our intentions together and uh as we do that we think especially of the people of new york after that appalling fire in the bronx and we think of the people who are um so badly affected those who've died uh and really the the horrific nature of the fire itself so we're praying today in our anglican cycle for the diocese of jaffna in the united church of south india and here we're still in the area of the bridge deanery but the the the place that we're praying for is not so much a church as a retreat center called the living well where people can go and find rest and reflection and silence or a sense of being simply somewhere else from their own place as they take space to consider their lives it's called the living well at nonington and the chaplain there is lorraine apps huggins and her assistants hilary hills and ray horton but also they welcome new members to the chaplaincy team from time to time so we give thanks for that ministry which is a very special ministry as it goes on at the living well reminding me of the oasis that was the crib in the church of the madeline which i was talking about earlier in this week let's say the prayer for today and then the prayer our lord taught us in whatever language we like to use eternal father who at the baptism of jesus revealed him to be your son anointing him with the holy spirit grant to us who are born again by water and the spirit that we may be faithful to our calling as your adopted children 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 are men so some space for you to reflect on your work in the world and your creative gifts which god has given you um [Music] on the edges and there are the trees [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] wow [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] it shines [Music] dancing [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] the mothers all dressed up so brightly to entertain all they will bring you their play how nobles and torch he defeated [Music] is [Music] well thank you most kindly for all you can give us to entertain [Music] is [Music] we stand [Music] [Applause] you want to get up oh there we are up you go not much wrong with this particular plow and in total working order but that's uh an experience they all like and it's another blessing of the plow christ the son of god perfecting you the image of his glory and gladden your hearts with the good news of his kingdom 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 well have a good working day in whatever creative work you find yourself and uh enjoy this this plow monday now while uh while we've been tending to one the other has found the mario but they are now sharing it quite happily so they're gonna return to their work as our little plows later on in the day you