good morning and welcome to the deanery garden in canterbury cathedral on this thursday the 10th of december uh a nice still autumn morning and uh though the air is chilly there's no rain and all the chickens are out enjoying the the morning they've been joined actually by the guinea fowl today and that means that you'll hear their noise a little bit if they walk near us but uh russell is certainly here with his hens and on this day we've come to sit here because our tree is the box tree and you'll see there are taller species of that as you look towards me practically the first green tree that you see coming past russell's shed there and down past the fruit cage but earlier on that taller box tree we know that to be 150 years old at least because it's in the black and white photographs of that time of the deanery but mostly box is grown in shorter measure so that it can be shaped and we can talk about that later it's a very hard wood indeed and very slow growing but let's think about that in our reflection if we look at dates from the past on december the the tents there's an interesting collection i'll i'll use just a few of them so shall we say first and foremost that this is the jewish feast of hanukkah the festival of lights the festival of the dedication of the the the second temple when judas maccabees restored it in 164 bc that festival we see jesus attending in st john's gospel chapter 10 it was winter it says in st john's gospel and the festival of dedication was happening the festival of lights when the menara is lit which is the uh nine branched candlestick but the eight days of the first dedication festival and the candle in the middle from which all the others were lighted and are lighted so we uh pray for our jewish friends on this particular day and the feast of hanukkah which proceeds from now at the same time if we look back into history a little bit in 1768 the royal academy of arts was founded and joshua reynolds became the first president 1868 whitaker's almanac first published and has been published annually ever since uh a work that we used before google times always to be consulting but now we seem at a flick of a button to be able to to find the facts in 1884 mark twain published his adventures of huckleberry finn and that is reckoned as one of the great novels of the united states but also i always think the hero of the whole piece is not only huckleberry and the friends he meets of all different kinds but the great river mississippi winding through and we remember that story today in 1928 charles renee mackintosh the great scottish architect and painter died and then some theologians in a in a very big way thomas merton monk and author died at a conference in thailand on this day in 1968 died tragically in 1968 on the same day december the 10th carl bart the theologian monumental theologian best known for his epistle to the romans and his huge work which remained unfinished church dogmatics pope pius xii and carl bart was a protestant theologian a swiss pastor pope pius xii called him the greatest theologian since thomas aquinas he took a stand in his christology and his his hold on the concept of the holy trinity against the german liberal theologians at that time but also took a stand against those who were ruling the world politically beginning with adolf hitler and as a swiss pastor he had the protection of switzerland there but was brave in the things he said and continue to be so after the war we'll come back to him in our reflection and then on this day in 1984 desmond tutu received the nobel peace prize we think of him today bishop desmond tutu and i'll give thanks for him and god bless him on this particular day which must be a memory for him in a great way 1982 the united nations opened four signatures the law of the sea extending sovereign rights over the sea to 200 miles offshore to every nation that came into force in 1994. that if you can 200 miles off nations mean an awful lot of shared sea and it's a political point at the moment so we remember all these things and we also remember and this too i shall come back in the reflection in 1830 the american poet emily dickinson was born so let's leave emily dickinson till we begin to think of her in our reflection let's begin our prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise reveal among us the light of your presence that we may behold your power and glory blessed are you sovereign god of all to you be praise and glory forever in your tender compassion the dawn from on high is breaking upon us to dispel the lingering shadows of night as we look for your coming among us this day open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will that the world may rejoice and give you praise blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind 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 the psalm for this morning the tenth morning of the month is psalm 50 and i'll read some verses from that now 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 his judge here oh 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 goes out of your foals 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 for whoever offers me the sacrifice of thanksgiving honours me and to those who keep my way will i show the salvation of god so we come back to our reading of sin paul's first letter to the thessalonians this earliest of his epistles which has a freshness all of its own we're reading the whole of chapter 3 this morning therefore when we could bear it no longer we were willing to be left behind at athens alone and we sent timothy our brother and god's co-worker in the gospel of christ to establish and exhort you in your faith that no one be moved by these afflictions for you yourselves know that we are destined for this for when we were with you we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer persecution just as it has come to pass and just as you know for this reason when i could bear it no longer i sent to learn about your faith for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain but now that timothy has come to us from you and has brought us the good news of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and long to see us as we long to see you for this reason brothers and sisters in all our distress and affliction we have been comforted about you through your faith for now we live if you are standing fast in the lord for what thanksgiving can we return to god for you for all the joy that we feel for you for your sake before our god as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith but now may our god and father himself and our lord jesus direct our way to you and may the lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all as we do for you so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our god and father at the coming of our lord jesus christ with all his saints it's a lovely chapter and it takes us right into the heart of paul and also of his emerging theology for so much of it is already there as we've seen in chapters one and two and we see also and again we can go back to the acts of the apostles and find the story corroborated of paul being alone in athens and anxious not only because it seems not to be going very well but also because he is worried about the church in thessalonica so he sent timothy as his messenger and timothy doesn't come back until paul has moved on to corinth and then timothy comes with silas as we've seen at the beginning of the letter and brings good news of the growth and life of the church in thessalonica which heartens the apostle so much and he pours out his love for that little community and his thanksgiving and as we've seen yesterday uses metaphors of nursing his children or being a child himself and missing their love and their care and attention and so on this occasion he is expressing the joy he felt when timothy returned so all of that we give thanks for this morning and we also see how the apostle worked because he worked in terms of getting to know his churches and keeping in touch with them by letter and then also by his agents his his ministers timothy and silas and the others who went off for him and he worked also by struggling in his journeys to visit them and those journeys go across land and see through terrible times and face afflictions and hardships and persecutions but all is well because his churches are growing and that gives him joy in the gospel that we give thanks for on this day and we remember also if i go back to carl bart the way in which carl bart made up a stand for the christology which was very much incarnational that jesus christ was god's gift of himself and was in human form as that gift but was strong for that kind of what you might call conservative christology compared with the german liberals at that time but he was also strong in affirmation of the doctrine of the holy trinity and we've seen that doctrine already in chapter one of paul's earliest epistles when paul silvanus and timothy write to the church of the thessalonians in god the father and the lord jesus christ and in the holy spirit which is god gifts to them all that in the first verses of this epistle and bart took strength from that shall we call it incarnational theology and that that christology that doctrine of jesus here sharing our life strength to confront human leaders of the time and the the the terrifying things going on in in in germany nazi germany at that time he even wrote a letter to adolf hitler and and set out everything he believed that was so wrong and people like dietrich bonhoeffer took great strength from bart's theology but even after the war when he gave lectures everywhere as a very profound theologian he would confront the leaders without fear or favor without uh looking sort of to the to the right to the left whatever ever they were doing which was not giving honor to humanity made in the divine image and to god himself he confronted and uh later on when we say our prayers i'll give you his last sentence said to a friend the night before he died which which affirms that but you can see why pius xii thought he was the greatest theologian since thomas aquinas the volume of his work was massive but if i come to someone else and the work the volume of the work also massive to emily dickinson then we come to a very different kind of creativity much more in the vein of gerald manny hopkins a very private life lived out in mostly in amherst where she was born lived out an awful lot of the time in her own room and as life went on she became much more silent in terms of mixing with those who were out there uh in even in her own society in amherst keeping in touch with friends through many letters but in her life only ten of her poems were published and when she died it was found by her sister lavinia that she had written eighteen hundred poems many of them little cameos and so beautiful in their thoughts we uh recently maybe a couple of years ago or more recently than that saw a beautiful exhibition in the morgan gallery in in fifth avenue in new york which showed her letters written through the time of the civil war when there was so much loss and so much division but her own life going on bravely and continuing to write poems and her handwriting moved me greatly and the the pictures of her there but if we just think of some of her sentences and i can leave you to look at the parents themselves that mass of poetry which poured out of her and she said there is no frigate like a book to take us to lands far away nor any courses like a page of prancing poetry in poetry she expressed herself here are just some of her phrases almost taken at random hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tunes without the words and never stops at all and because i could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me the carriage held but just ourselves and immortality and and this very profound and just five words forever is composed of nows and then perhaps her most famous poem i'm nobody who are you are you nobody too then there's a pair of us don't tell they'd advertise you know there are two versions of that and sometimes it ends they'd banish us you know for she felt in so many ways to be an outsider but when she loved or made friends with someone and there were those in her life she really never let them go and if they died or were killed in war the loss was felt intensely here's another phrase and i could go on through the morning with these because there are so many of them this is lovely truth is so rare it is delightful to tell it [Music] emily dickinson from creativity in a sheltered place allowing it to grow slowly in short rhymes with great humor and great insight into the creativity around her and let's think too of the box hedges they're surrounding me and they become a material which people can shape it's quite often that you will find because they can be shaped into creatures there's a a house in in in rhode island um called green animals because its gardens are filled with topiary works of the box clipped to form animals and in the same way we mentioned peres castle before the shapes that one finds there as well as the u shapes are from topiary people can reach out and and use all kinds of things but box is one of the things that can be used in topiary just as emily dickinson used words for her poetry and the hard wood of box was used by printers for their blocks when printing was much sought after because it was such hard wood and i think for violin pegs as well very often but that's been used again since people have come back to printing only one box would old time is is left in england now in box hill in surrey and you'll find in emma they go on a picnic there but there are other planted boxwoods one in gloucestershire one in herefordshire but box comes from this part of the country indigenously originally and so we're looking at a very native and and homely plant when we see the green of the box all around us i set out before we said our prayers and i would say the sentence of carl bart and the sentence he used before he died and he died in 1968 so we're talking about the political situation of the cold war and everything at that time he said to one of his friends the night before he died do not be down-hearted for things are ruled not just in moscow or in washington or in peking but things are ruled even here on earth entirely from above from heaven above i leave you with those words of carl bart as we come to say our prayers on this morning of the month the 10th morning we're praying today for the diocese of singapore in southeast asia and titus chung the bishop there and his people the diocese of egbu in nigeria and jeffrey oko roaford and his people and the diocese of egypt in the province of jerusalem in the middle east and munir hana anis the diocesan bishop there and we are told that the diocese of egypt is expected to have become the province of alexandria by this time so there we are and we pray for in our own diocese the care of creation and amen to that as we think of all the good things around us in god's creation and our stewardship at this point in the earth's history for that creation and our reliance on that and the care that we must take about it so we pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover for tim bishop at lambeth and bring your own prayers wherever you are in the world as we say together the collect for this season of advent of watching and waiting almighty god give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light now in the time of this mortal life in which your son jesus christ came to visit us in great humility so that on the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead we may rise to the life immortal through him who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever are men so we use the prayer our lord taught us to say in whatever language we like to say it 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 moment of silence as we say our own prayers this morning christ the son of righteousness shine upon you scatter the darkness from before your path and make you ready to meet him when he comes in glory 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] well it's a bit drier today isn't it for you you stayed on okay i think it's probably breakfast time for you leona we'll go in okay