good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of tuesday the 5th of april as we come to say our morning prayers please feel welcome wherever you are in the world i think all of us are utterly shocked and sickened by the photographs and film footage coming out of ukraine of the cities totally destroyed and the dead lying in the streets there it's hardly believable but it's a feature of humankind and we remember that this morning and we are even more keen to undergird everything that we are doing this morning with prayer for the ukrainian people last night we listened to a wonderful interview on global news with julia julia campbell our friend that we've we've spoken about before and i've been in touch with her and you remember how her mother and her family got out of mario pole but they are still quite near there and still in danger as they wait to come further it's a long way to the west of ukraine from there and there aren't many routes where a safe exit is possible but so many have not escaped and so we remember that with total reality this morning as we say our prayers now we've come a new guest already to a special place it's raining quite steadily outside but we thought we'd not visited our friends the turkeys for some time and uh the three jacks as they're called the the boys are growing up now and won't be here with us much longer they'll go out to be um fathers themselves uh with a friend of ours who who keeps turkeys and uh so they're almost ready to go they're beginning to challenge their father darcy here but also we've got uh lizzie here and uh the the uh the jill uh who is the the girl turkey she very much is staying with us but for the moment uh we are in and you'll see why when we come to the reflection we're in the turkey school room but for the moment we're going to say our prayers so begin to gather your thoughts and bring the images that you would like to bring to prayer this morning as we say our prayers on this tuesday of passion week o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise let your ways be known upon earth your saving power among the nations blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief your only son was lifted up that he might draw the whole world to himself may we walk this day in the way of the cross and always be ready to share its weight declaring your love for all the world 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 before i go on you'll remember i i did from memory yesterday a hymn that we used to sing at school is so long ago and i realized i had made some mistakes in the words it's a hymn by thomas carlyle and i'll read it to you now properly and it goes with the gift of this new day so here has been dawning another blue day think will thou let it slip useless away out of eternity this new day is born into eternity at night will return behold it a fourth time no i ever did so soon it forever from all eyes is hid here has been dawning another blue day think we'll now let it slip useless away it's a lovely verse and it's a question we might ask ourselves as we talk about the gift of the new day and go on now to our psalm which on this morning of the month is psalm 26 give judgment for me o lord for i have walked with integrity i have trusted in the lord and have not faltered test me o lord and try me examine my heart and my mind for your love is before my eyes i have walked in your truth i have not joined the company of the false nor consorted with the deceitful i hate the gathering of evildoers i will not sit down with the wicked i will wash my hands in innocence o lord that i may go about your altar to make her the voice of thanksgiving and tell of all your wonderful deeds lord i love the house of your habitation and the place where your glory abides sweep me not away with sinners nor my life with the bloodthirsty whose hands are full of wicked schemes and their right hand full of bribes as for me i will walk with integrity redeem me lord and be merciful to me my foot stands firm in the great congregation i will bless the lord so we're returning to the gospel of saint john and we take up from where we left off yesterday with the words of jesus ringing in our ears loose him let him go free as lazarus steps from death to life life in this human world which our lord has come to share but everything about this gospel is opening out life for lazarus for mary for martha for all of us with the gift of our lord life for eternity and the gifts and graces of the kingdom of heaven even here and now as body mind and spirit we give ourselves in total self-sacrifice to our lord so i'm beginning today at verse 45 of chapter 11 just where we stopped yesterday many of the jews therefore who had come with mary and had seen what jesus did believed in him but some of them went to the pharisees and told them what jesus had done so the chief priests and the pharisees gathered the council and said what are we to do for this man performs many signs if we let him go on like this everyone will believe in him and the romans will come and take away both our place and our nation but one of them caiaphas who was high priest that year said to them you know nothing at all nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people not that the whole nation should perish caiaphas did not say this of his own accord but being high priest that year he prophesied that jesus would die for the nation and not for the nation only but also to gather into one the children of god who are scattered abroad so from that day on the council made plans to put jesus to death jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the jews but went from there to the region near the wilderness to a town called ephraim and there he stayed with the disciples now the passover of the jews was at hand and many went up from the country to jerusalem before the passover to purify themselves they were looking for jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple what do you think that he will not come to the feast at all now the chief priests and the pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was he should let them know so that they might arrest jesus the drama of this gospel begins to come to a head at this point we'll think a little bit about chronology though in fact the chronology of the gospel is not as important as the message is given and also the voice of the evangelists comes through to us very much in this passage notice that those who had left the village to go to the tomb following mary and martha to lazarus's tomb yesterday and then had seen and witnessed what happened there and heard the words of jesus loose him let him go free many of them believed and that word in the fourth gospel as we've found is the key to everything do you believe lord i believe it was martha's eye-opening experience on the way to bethany when she came out of the village to meet jesus do you believe this and then she answered yes lord i believe that you are the christ the son of god who is coming into the world notice the present tenser and many of the jews now having seen the sign believe also but others go off to tell the pharisees now this is interesting in this gospel because in a while the whole council will be gathered and the council is made up of uh the ruling party who are sadducees and from whom the high priestly family and of pharisees who themselves believed in a resurrection after all things were accomplished nicodemus joseph varamasia members of the council of the pharisee party no doubt and as they are told the pharisees call the council and they are expecting the majority of the pharisees are expecting trouble for the state and then they're saying to one another what are we to do so the council is called and there are the chief priests and the sadducees who don't believe in any kind of resurrection but are the party in power and the chief priests and the pharisees gathered in council and then this conversation takes place which is absolutely crucial but it also gets a reflection from the evangelist what are we to do for this man performs many signs if we let him go like this everyone will believe in him and the romans will come and take away both our place and our nation that's what they're concerned about fixed their own place and the bounds of their own nation as it is and caiaphas the high priest and the evangelist says he is without knowing prophesying caiaphas says to them he's the no doubt the chairman of the meeting he's the most important person there you know nothing at all he's about to rehearse for them one of the guiding principles of statecraft the fact that if one has to die to save the many then that person must die for it's the task to look after the welfare of the many in fact they're looking after the welfare not only of themselves and their position in the state as it is but also the jewish position as they find it so at this time we're with caiaphas in this and he says to them you know nothing at all nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people not that the whole nation should perish there's his principle and at that point it's the evangelist's voice that takes over the voice of the one whose hand is writing this gospel whether that is john the son of zebedee as so many believe and whose name this bears or of the community the johannine community much later on shaping this in the way that john's material would have it shaped and that becomes very very important and the evangelist says when kaepha says it's better for you that one man should die for the people not that the whole nation should perish i think that comes from the fact that there were those amongst the pharisees who are saying we can't push him to death that's surely not and then that's you know nothing at all of course we must put him to death as the high priest it's better that he should die rather than that the romans the imperial power should come and destroy the whole thing as they did in 1870 and it may be that this gospel was written down after that when the temple was completely destroyed and all that they knew had been destroyed by the romans and many of the people taken away into slavery and exile but that's much later on and it's very likely that all this was written after that but the evangelist isn't saying that this morning he is saying that caiaphas didn't say this of his own accord being high priest satya he prophesied that jesus would die for the nation but the evangelist then says and not for the nation only but also to gather into one the children of god scattered abroad there's the evangelist voice saying that both high priests jesus and caiaphas are now on the same course jesus knows his vocation is to be lifted up and to die for the sins of the whole world and caiaphas has prophesied that this one man will die for the nation and from that day on they made plans to put him to death so what happens then jesus withdraws for a while it's dangerous for him to be in jerusalem he doesn't go there yet he withdraws for a while and he takes his disciples apart so often in the synoptic gospels come apart and we hear he's teaching his disciples i've no doubt that's what's happening at ephraim he is preparing them to be courageous in what is to come and it's impossible really to make people courageous until the situation is there and to know how the thing will work out but i believe that in at that quiet place at ephraim when he went away near to the wilderness well away from jerusalem with the disciples the evangelist is quite clear about that and the tradition of john of course is there in the gospel and john one of the the twelve um he was with the disciples almost schooling them to understand that this must be that this must happen we'll come across an awful lot more teaching around the supper table in this gospel later on but for the moment they're at ephraim and then we're told the passover a feast of the jews was near the last time we had a chronology it was of course winter in the feast of dedication that was well back now and then when jesus comes in wintertime the controversy starts jesus had gone away once come back at the calling of the the beloved friends mary martha and lazarus and now goes away again this time not with many people but with the disciples ready to begin the entry into jerusalem where our great high priest will die for the sins of the whole world caiaphas having said it's better that this man die that was an answer to the pharisees of course we must kill him it's only sensible otherwise the romans will come and destroy this whole nation and we shall lose our place in it all of that well lots of schooling going on and i wanted to say um that we have now come to the turkish school and before we begin to we'll give them some breakfast properly and i'll uh here we are look at this here we go there's nothing like good meal ones for anyone and i'll put the whole exercise okay here we go great excitement [Applause] now what am i saying is the turkish schoolroom well because our date today is a really important date for the life of the church in england at a particular time in the late 18th century it's the anniversary of the birth of robert rakes that's spelt r-a-i-k-e-s if you want to look him up and as we remember that date we remember the vision in the mid-18th century that robert rakes had it was a wonderful vision he lived in gloucester and his father was the printer of a newspaper there and later on robert reggs himself became the proprietor of that newspaper business but his vision was caused by the fact that in gloucester and particularly in the terribly poor areas and at gloucester jail he saw many who were suffering so badly because they had committed terrible crimes of mostly of theft some of it fairly minor theft but that could cause call forth dire penalties in the 18th century and rakes began a good churchman um rakes began to think it would be better really if we help these people understand and they can only do that if they have some kind of learning there was no state education at that time and so he looked around and thought when is the day of the week when we might teach these children something of the scriptures and something of the way of reading and writing and he thought well the only day of the week we could do that is on sunday for the other six days these boys as he was looking mostly at the people in gloucester jail these boys are working in the factories for a pittance all the hours god gives and on sunday we would have an opportunity perhaps just show them something different and to teach them different skills and so he conceived the ideal the idea and the ideal really of a sunday school and it would be led by lay people because they were the ones on sundays that had time to do that and these lay people would give their time free of charge to teaching the children in a sunday school his vision when he developed it a little was that the children would come mostly to private houses at the beginning and the first one took place in the the house of a gloucestershire lady called mrs meredith and they would come at about ten o'clock in the morning and for two hours they would learn to read and to write and the text would be the holy scriptures but essentially the workshop the school was all about reading and writing and the conversation with the teacher going on in a particular way which helped them to understand in a valued way their place in the society of the city of gloucester at that time and the idea then would be that they would at 12 noon take a break and then return it one and at one o'clock they would go to church and then in the church they would worship and come back and begin to learn their catechism so that they began to feel that they were part and parcel of the life of the churches of gloucester at that time as well it was a high idea at five they would go home they'd have been given some refreshment and all of that and they would go home and they were told on the way home not to make too much noise in the streets that was his ideal sunday school and the idea was something he wanted after it began to take root in the city of gloucester the idea was something he wanted so much then to promote how could he do that well of course he it was easy because he was the owner of a newspaper firm he would promote it through the newspaper he would set forth this idea which seemed to me to him to be a wholesome and and really wonderful christian idea that members of the laity men and women could give themselves to for the welfare of the children and people embraced that and the idea grew and grew and grew so that one found that um by the uh the um beginning of the the 19th century you you had about a million children in in sunday schools across the nation but there was great hostility and it came from unexpected quarters they were they christened them rakes ragged schools as though these boys and girls by then had no right to education and bishops objected because these schools might promote uh some kind of political uh opposition to the established order nothing was further from rex's mind nor the mind of the the very loyal teachers in the sunday schools but also nothing was further from the children's learning that went on but the the biggest objection can one believe it came from those who wanted the sabbath kept free from work and teaching children to write was work and in the end the sunday schools had to give up teaching children to write at that time because of the objection of mainly middle class um church folk saying this is not right on the lord's day that they should be doing work and the teachers themselves doing work teaching them to write well does it surprise us really that opposition comes whenever there's a good idea and uh it expands and expands for the welfare of all there's always opposition and here we are with opposition for jesus in the gospel itself but robert riggs was not to be stopped and neither were those who caught on to the idea and eventually the church itself caught on to the idea that the setting up of schools in each parish for children to be educated at an elementary level was something that ought to be part of the church's vocation and that began to develop through the 19th century but there was always opposition to denominational schools because the church itself was divided and so one denomination would say to the other you've got an advantage here but it's the kind of thing that one expects whenever something begins to develop with success for whatever reason for good then you find people who object and refuse to support it positing their reasons as good ones we're back with caiaphas and we're back with the pharisees like nicodemus and ander and joseph varus they're no doubt saying of course this man must not die and kaif is saying you know nothing at all we're the ones in charge and it's it's uh expedient that he dies for the nation because otherwise the romans will come and destroy everything that we know and take away our place in it that kind of reaction is always to be seen in these developments and yet as all this began to develop the sunday schools went from strength to strengths to strength until 25 percent of the nation's children on sundays were being educated totally free of charge to know the scriptures to learn to read and also once again after a bit to write and um then uh to go on to even more education well the nation in the end of course caught up with that and uh in 1870 a parliamentary act not without much opposition was passed to ensure that everyone could have some form of elementary education the foster education act of 1870 and then in 1902 the balfour aj balfa our education act was passed which set the tone of elementary education for the english nation for the next four decades until the 1944 butler education act which developed it further and further and now of course it's seen as a completely natural thing that the nation's children should be given education a task of the state but the church still plays a massive part in that and so many of the primary schools here are still church of england schools open to the clergy that will will come into them and even secondary schools which are church of england schools and that dimension of opportunity is still there so that the clergy can go into the schools as of right and talk to those in them about the message of the gospel in a way that is giving that gift to development but sunday schools then became stronger and stronger and certainly i've spoken before about the baptist sunday school uh in our village that that my sister and i attended and the afternoons of sunday and i've told you before that i put my knowledge of the scriptures in its foundation right down to the godly teachers who taught me the scriptures at that time totally free of charge we just turned up which gave father and mother a nice peaceful afternoon and then we went back and we were at home for tea but the sunday schools across the land that was in the 1950s and 60s were massive in their work that's died away somewhat now and that work somewhere needs to continue because of course it's essential that people know those scriptures if they are to receive the gift of god and also have good teachers to help them understand what these scriptures are saying to give them background and of course the ways of doing that now have increased so much we're using them every morning and we see what a completely different world that is and we're able also to feel ourselves as part of one planet because at all times we can see what's going on across the world but nothing takes the place of being together in community physically to learn those lessons so now you see why we're here with the turkeys before the three jacks go off to a a different life they need to learn what the dangers of that life and the evils of that life might mean but at the same time um we shall have still here darcy and little jenny as we're calling her the jill that's the common name for a turkey a girl turkey of her age she is looking at me now and uh and lizzy of course the mother and that will calm things down because the jacks are getting a bit stroppy with their father darcy who's trying to give them a good education but at the time they're growing up and they're wanting to be dads themselves at some stage so glory be to god for the work of robert rakes for all he achieved in a simple and totally voluntary way and caused so many more men and women right across the the board to do that and uh so um there we are let's say our prayers now because we've come to the time when we need to offer all that we've been thinking about to god and i hope you'll bring your own intentions and concerns and we'll use the colic for this week but the parishes that we're praying for we're praying for a particular parish this morning in our diocese of borton manchester saint peter's borton manchester with philip goody as the priests there and we pray for the ministry the important montreal c pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover for emma bishop at lambeth and in the anglican communion the diocese of coutine in the anglican church of canada probably said it in the wrong way but you'll tell me no doubt by the time the end of the day is over uh and uh that is in the british columbia and yukon province of the church of canada so pray for your own communities of faith pray for those whom you know to need your prayers and all of us offer with suffering and grieving hearts and minds the situation in ukraine itself where the capacity of humanity to evil is set out so clearly before us in the horrific pictures that we're seeing but also in our prayers we know too the gifts of god and the grace of humanity made in god's image to do good as well and when we fall away to receive forgiveness and use the gift of the new day once again for good and the qualities of the kingdom of heaven so here's the prayer for today and then we'll say the prophet lent itself most merciful god who by the death and resurrection of your son jesus christ delivered and saved the world grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross we may triumph in the power of his victory through jesus christ our lord amen and the collective lent almighty and everlasting god you hate nothing that you have made and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent create and make in us new and contrite hearts that we worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness may receive from you the god of all mercy perfect remission and forgiveness through jesus christ our lord amen so each in our own language we say 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 time for our own reflections on this day and as we do so we give thanks for all who teach the faith and particularly those who teach the faith to young people and and to children and we give thanks for those who do so in a a voluntary way giving of their own time to that adam smith the political philosopher looking at the work of robert riggs not too long after all that began said that this to him seemed the most simple and lovely idea for the transformation of the society at all levels that he could think of since the days of the apostles well that's a wide claim but we think of those disciples in their school at ephraim learning from jesus and so often getting it wrong so let's reflect on all those things [Music] [Music] [Music] so foreign [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] christ crucified draw you to himself to find in him a sure ground for faith a firm support for hope and the assurance of sins forgiven 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 will pray for now and always are men now let's call these pupils forward come on hey and we can make them sing a little song by just saying they'll always respond to you i was saying on the way through jackson jill's because that's uh was in my mind as boys and girls but uh the the little female turkey is of course a jenny and that's how she responds hello you're very beautiful you take after your mother you're very placid as well aren't you yes hey hello i hadn't forgotten our riddles but uh tiger have been waiting patiently outside and so i've come out here to do this with him so i'm just outside the turkey house now um so yesterday uh the two were i had many rings and get a brand new one every year but they are not worth much they will tell you how old i am of course that is a tree and i have a head and i have a tail but my eyes can never see my tail and that is not tiger it's a coin and this morning here or two i'm the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen canned processed or in any other form but fresh what am i and then the second i'm the type of room you cannot enter or leave i rise from the ground below i could be poisonous what am i leave you with those it's soon time to go on to harder ones i think but the lost words this morning where yesterday we were with uh the bluebell today we've come to bramble here we are bramble and the acrostic on the way down each line beginning with b-r-a-m-b-l-e bramble is on the march again rolling and arching along the hedges into parks on the city edges all streets are suddenly thick with briar cars snarled fast business over mothers have come in their millions bramble has reached each house now looped it in wire people locked doors closed shutters little shoots steel through keyholes to leave in quiet halls empty stairwells bowls of bright blackberries where the light falls so if i turn the page then we get the most lovely picture of the birds enjoying the berries on the bramble it's not that time of year yet the spring is coming and these are awesome berries but some of you of course in the north in the southern hemisphere are enjoying lovely autumn days and so we think of that too the way the seasons move around our planet have a good day have you come back palu we have to think of a riddle about you i think tyga at some stage