good morning there's no doubt where we had to be this morning probably you can hear the sound of the very hard rain falling as it has been first several hours now and is due to go on all day so we've come into the homely atmosphere of the warm greenhouse with our friend tiger here and also with the passion flowers and the flowering spa mania this day in the lectionary which is the list of things which tell us what's going on in the church's year and what we're meant to read and what we're not meant to read and so on there is a long uh sentence saying ordinary time begins today now many clergy colleagues have always laughed at me because when i'm asked which season of the year do you find you enjoy best i've always said um ordinary time when the church is wearing green and the seasons change of course the special seasons are wonderful but the ordinary time gives us rhythm and a chance to enjoy the development of the seasons and the sense of creation all around us and to think of jesus's ordinary ministry with the ordinary people of rural galilee especially the bits where there's no fraction of faction or or or opposition but of course we've we've come through that with mark's gospel now and every day we find some new turmoil which is trying to oppose the good news that he is bringing and the healing he brings and the sense of people being made whole again and that all within the landscape so this morning as we say our prayers we remember all of that usually we get a few weeks of ordinary time now the day after candle mass but this year easter is very early the 4th of april and so ash wednesday is very early the 17th of february so we have only two weeks of ordinary time and during that time we shall continue to to read sequentially since mark it means actually that when ash wednesday come we shall still be in rural galilee with jesus and his disciples and we won't pick up again on st mark's gospel until we come after pentecost to the long block of ordinary time which takes us through spring and then summer and right through to the autumn in fact right up to the advent season the longest season of the year but sunday by sunday day by day week by week we see things unfold so let's enjoy this little fortnight of ordinary time 14 days and enjoy also our worship this morning as good rain falls here we think of our friends in new york with plentiful snow at the moment and also others in the northern parts of the united kingdom and there is more snow forecast but here in kent we give thanks for the rain oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise visit us with your salvation and sustain us with your gracious spirit as the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind and as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this third morning of the month is psalm 16 preserve me o god for in you have i taken refuge i have said to the lord you are my lord all my good depends on you all my delight is upon the godly that are in the land upon those who are noble in heart though the idols are legion that many run after their drink offerings of blood i will not offer neither make mention of their names upon my lips the lord himself is my portion and my cup in your hands alone is my fortune my share has fallen in a fair land indeed i have a goodly heritage i will bless the lord who has given me counsel and in the night watches he instructs my heart i have set the lord always before me he is at my right hand i shall not fall wherefore my heart is glad and my spirit rejoices my flesh also shall rest secure for you will not abandon my soul to death nor suffer your faithful one to see the pit you will show me the path of life in your presence is the fullness of joy and in your right hand our pleasures forevermore we turn then to our reading from sin mark's gospel and we're beginning today chapter six jesus went away from there and came to his own hometown and his disciples followed him and on the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue and many who heard him were astonished saying where did this man get these things what is the wisdom given to him how are such mighty works done by him by his hands is not this the carpenter the son of mary and brother of james and joseph and judas and simon and are not his sisters here with me with us and they took offense at him and jesus said to them a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household and jesus could do no mighty work there except that she laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them and he marveled because of their unbelief and he went about among the villages teaching we can perhaps equate that story with the story in luke's gospel of jesus coming to his own synagogue in nazareth where he'd grown up and being asked to read and taking the scroll of the prophet isaiah and reading those verses saying the spirit of the lord is upon me and he has anointed me to bring good news and then those sentences of release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind and broken victims being allowed to go free all of those things but let's take it from what mark gives us first of all we're not now talking about capernaum he's gone to his own home town and his family are there as well and his disciples as we saw have followed him there how well they knew nazareth it's a about 30 miles from the place where they were brought up themselves on the lakeside but no doubt there was a consciousness of nazareth but they follow him there so they would have been there too and when jesus begins to teach in the synagogue and all of us who are clergy have had this experience when we go home they're remembering jesus as he grew up amongst them now notice in saint mark's gospel the earliest of the gospel it's is not this the carpenter in others is not this the carpenter's son but here straightforwardly is not this the carpenter which gives us the sense of jesus's hands in physical activity as they knew it carving and handling and knowing the wood those hands which would later be forced to lift wood of a different kind and they then say but where does all this teaching come from he himself had been brought up in that synagogue mark doesn't tell us how many years it's not a biography but they knew him well enough to say this is mary's son again maybe a clue that joseph by then has has died only mary is mentioned and are not his brothers and the four brothers are named they've come into the story a bit before and they certainly come into the story of the fourth gospel and later of course james becomes a leader of the early church but for the moment there is puzzlement and possibly amongst the brothers a certain degree of embarrassment because of their brother jesus or their half brother or whatever we like to see if this the four brothers may have been a children of an earlier marriage of joseph we don't know and all of those things are biographical details that we can hunt for and be disappointed by but we don't need to know them what we need to know is the fact that there's an old english saying familiarity breeds contempt they can't see this person in this particular way aren't his sisters sitting here with us all of that and then they because they they can't accept it jesus is unable to exert the power of healing and saving and the everything that we've been seeing him do and he himself marvels at this and himself quotes a proverb a prophets not without honor except in his own home because they can't forget that he was just brought up amongst them and families can be wonderfully supportive or on the other hand they can be those who just say well actually we we can't see gifts in you we remember you as our younger brother or women and and so on we all know those things and uh to go back to one's own home is a time of going back to routes and memories and people who've grown up it's a wonderful experience and i've enjoyed going back to to to speak to the people who knew me but i'm very conscious that they knew me in a different way and that it was they who taught me things and so i think jesus is actually showing understanding by saying there is great truth in this prophecy later of course the journey of mary and the brothers and the sisters will take them to a completely different place but the fact that they are wondering and pondering and making wrong conclusions uh though the the family themselves aren't mentioned is doing that this morning it's the neighbors who does he think he is he was brought up amongst us he's mary's son and his brothers and sisters are here with us and who are the people who suffer from that well they themselves so it's a kind of lesson for us all of openness of how wonderful homecomings and families can be but jesus is very concerned and we saw that a chapter or two against marx to make sure that his extended family as a concept that is very much known in certain societies across the world his extended family are given also the the same support and the same kind of acclimation by him remember him looking around at the crowds and saying where are my mother and my sister and my brothers here they are who are listening but of course his own family are puzzling and putting all that into their minds and hearts and mary herself for instant luke's gospel is always pondering and wondering has a journey as we saw with simeon yesterday of certain sacrifice and and suffering to make well this particular day when we learned that lesson in the warmth of the greenhouse and the protection of the greenhouse from the weather outside i wanted to mention one big thing in particular let me leave that till last um it's the 3rd of february and in 1399 john of gaunt the father of king henry the fourth king henry iv is buried here in the uh cathedral church at canterbury now uh um just beyond the high altar um john a gaunt died and most of all i remember john of gaunt for his speech in shakespeare speaking of these islands this royal throne of kings and uh we used to sing that a great song it's worth reading again today it's a lovely shakespearean speech yesterday we were treated to those words of grief which shakespeare must have felt himself for his son who died aged 11 and the words of grief for a child lost is spoken by constance in his play king john but today john of gaunt's song is the one to look for and then uh in 1821 let's go there elizabeth blackwell was born in bristol she was the first woman doctor in the united states and the first on the united kingdom medical register and we give thanks for that of course now it's something that we would hardly notice because there is a complete gender equality across the medical profession all are fighting and resisting this pandemic and and and uh with the help of scientists working hard with the vaccines and then again the sense of making communities is remembered with a a funny little song and you can see it on google some of you will remember it we are the oval teenies and it was an advertising campaign but the makers of ovaltine uh recruited five million members to their society of children who saw themselves and they were given a good code of conduct from that and the song came back in 1975 as a television advert for ovaltine 1960 harold macmillan a very conservative looking prime minister rather edwardian in his manner made a wind of his wind of change speech to the parliament in south africa and saying to them a wind of change is blowing here and it was something that he was intending to support and further and because he looked so conservative and sounded so conservative the the content of the message was was missed and he was cheered to the echo still but it was that conservative government that began the huge change which uh macmillan saw at that time a change of gear rather like our day-to-day going from one time to another and we give thanks for that um and then we remember also that in 1894 norman rockwell was born who as an artist captured the atmosphere of a certain period in the united states and his pictures well known 1959 a sadness buddy holly the rock and roll star was killed in a plane crash and we remember that but give thanks again for his creative activity and then just a word the same year 1959 vincent astor died and left all his fortune to brooke astor his wife i only want to mention her because i remember when i was first at st thomas fifth avenue in new york she was a a regular worshiper there and a very faithful member of that so uh we hold out a uh prayer for saint thomas fifth avenue and its life today so uh apart from that let's go back to the very important person that i wanted to mention in 1809 felix mendelsohn was born i love mendelson's music i love playing it on the piano i love listening to it as chamber music and his oratorios paulus simple and also of course elijah always thrill me by their drama but also move me by the things that they say mendelssohn became an enormous friend to england came here 20 times and some of his premiers were were here and certainly elijah was translated immediately into english and was a favorite oratorio almost immediately and he himself was rooted he was a child prodigy like mozart and he was born at an interesting time born in 1809 but uh his family um fled from hamburg where he was born to go to berlin because they feared that napoleon would take reprisals against his father abraham and his bank for the way he had supported legislation against napoleon so they went to berlin and that would have been the the city that felix and his musical and composing sister fanny and felix and fanny were devoted to one another lived in and the family was rich and the father recognized both his son and his daughter's gifts and provided resources for those gifts to develop and began a salon in berlin where artists musicians scholars would come and little felix grew up as a prodigious composer almost from the very beginning when you think of the way that she composed the overtouch of the midsummer night's stream when i think he was probably only 16 and that's a very famous piece but he also loved not composing that because he was writing music for the play that came much later in the 1840s he did it because he wanted to express the atmosphere of the play and the story he continued to do that with natural landscape with his scottish symphony or with with the pebbles over here fingal's cave all of those things mendelson's music is explaining in musical terms and painting a picture for us all to see so when we remember his italian symphony or the various overtures he can't see in a prosperous voyage all those things that he paints in musical terms but they're rooted and grounded in his love of the the works of j spark it's hard to think that in 1809 the sin matthew passion had more or less been forgotten it was mendelssohn who retrieved it and gave it a an enormous performance and and brought it back into the musical landscape and the way in which he he valued bach but also another german who had made england his home handle and gave that back to the people but that influenced his own writing for a while um mendelssohn fell out of fashion and of course uh in nazi germany his men his music was not allowed to be played because of his jewish background though he himself had been baptized a christian his father and certainly his grandfather was very firm on the jewish faith and mendelssohn was always proud of that strand of his heritage but at the same time he is the one who lifted so many areas of our christian scriptures and gave them drama when one hears the choruses in elijah the prophet elijah comes absolutely to life but then there are little recitatives and and they stay in the mind they do mine when i'm reading the scriptures and elijah's journey when after the the fire descending from heaven and the prophets of baal being being routed by elijah he goes into a low point wondering what is left and there's a journey through the wilderness and then that lovely recitative see now he sleeps under a juniper tree in the wilderness and the angelic chorus lifts sinai so lift thine eyes and one remembers all of that but then also that lovely aria which is used so often at funerals a rest in the lord all of those things meddlesome gives us with high drama representing the great waters which came when uh elijah announces that the drought is over i could have wished he'd ridden operas because to hear elijah is very much an operatic activity and i'm i'm very fond of all of that but his chamber music is such a delight to play and such a delight to listen to as you see i could go on and on about mendelssohn but i give thanks for the way in which his writing has opened up the scriptures and brought back the works of so many composers who had been forgotten and and then given them to us so we think it natural to listen to those oratorios of handel and the the great works of j.s spark and so we give thanks first of all for mendelson's humility and finding them editing them and then giving premieres to them but also his massive energy he lived at a time between really the end of the napoleonic wars and he died just before the revolutions of 1848 which turned europe upside down so it was a time of tranquility and it was a time also of um his own family's affluence and and we remember he didn't sit lightly to the resources he had he and his sister both shared them and it's really thought that mendelssohn worked himself to death and died at a very early age um so he died in 1847 but his works continue and who can not be pleased when one hears the first bars of mendelssohn's wonderful violin concerto it's uh a a thing one rejoices over at all times so here in the quiet greenhouse with the rain still patterning on the the roof here and with our friend tiger there's a homely atmosphere but we give thanks for all the works of god's creation and the music which at the moment were denied alive but we can hear at all times virtually which is a wonderful gift so let's say our prayers on this day and this day in ordinary time and we're praying today in the anglican communion for the diocese of amazonia which is in the compass of the episcopal anglican church of brazil and in this diocese as we pray for justin our archbishop and for rose bishop of dover and tim bishop at lambeth we pray today for the parishes of benindon st george and sandhurst nicholas and pray for david commander in his ministry there and the cure that eva mckenzie and also we pray for ben and church of england primary school but also ben and school with a long history and we pray for sam price um the headmistress uh great friend of ours and her husband yori and yori was one of my servers at sherban abbey long ago and one keeps in the anglican communion and in the church of england meeting folk on their journey sometimes there are gaps of years but it doesn't matter at all because friends are still friends and there's a sense of coming home when you meet them so let's say the connect for the no it's a different college now because we've changed into ordinary time so if you are in one of the books of the common worship we're using then it's the third sunday before lent almighty god who alone can bring order to the unruly wills and passions of sinful humanity give your people grace so to love what you command and to desire what you promise that among the many changes of this world our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found through jesus christ our lord are men so we say the our father together and as we do so we bring our own concerns and memories from across the world and today um we would want to remember one of our dearest friends june taylor who died yesterday evening after a brave struggle with liver cancer and so we remember her with enormous thanksgiving and she also was someone who would have adored ordinary time because the rhythm of faithfulness was deep in her and also in her teaching life the children always came first so let's say that the our father together our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen let's say our prayers now in a moment of silence the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and of his son jesus christ our lord and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love today and always amen