[Music] good morning and welcome to the orchard of the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this wednesday the 2nd of june i'm sitting here amongst a real plethora of wild flowers it's the height of wildflower season and the scent mostly of the lilacs is something as i say so often i would love to be able to transport to you the fragrance of the garden on this sunny morning at the beginning of june is really wonderful to experience but around me and you're looking at some of these things there's the tall red hawthorn and the golden choice here with its white flowers and also two varieties of lilac the ordinary lilac and then the dwarf lylip which is the one i'm sitting next to and has all the fragrance this morning being so near to me but at the same time there's above me the willow that the uh salix tortuoso because its leaves are tortuous its limbs are tortuous and at the same time there's a fancier there and down below we've got well where do i even begin we've we've got the alcanet that we've seen earlier the blue alconet there's a sea of of of white cow parsley there are wild geraniums there's cranesville there are buttercups there's everything this morning and it couldn't be a better day because uh although there's no holy day in our calendar this is june the second the anniversary of our queen's coronation 68 years ago today and we wish her majesty every blessing and pray for her on this day of anniversary for her it wasn't like this on that day the weather i remember it 68 years ago as a little boy and we'll speak about in our reflection um the weather was awful it was it was pouring with rain all day but it did not dampen the enthusiasm of the nation and the world because this was televised it was the first massive bbc outside broadcast triumph which had been encouraged by prince philip and uh all of it therefore is now on record which is wonderful let's begin our prayers on this day o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise visit us with your salvation and sustain us with your gracious spirit blessed are you creator of all to you be praise and glory forever you founded the earth that is the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands in the fullness of time you made us in your image and in these last days you have spoken to us in your son jesus christ the word made flesh as we rejoice in the gift of your presence among us let the light of your love always shine in our hearts your spirit ever renew our lives and your praises ever be on our lips 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 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 son this morning on the second day of the month is psalm nine i will give thanks to you lord with my whole heart i will tell of all your marvelous works i will be glad and rejoice in you i will make music to your name almost high when my enemies are driven back they stumble and perish at your presence for you have maintained my right and my cause you sat on your throne giving righteous judgment you have rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked you have blotted out their name forever and ever the enemy was utterly laid waste you uprooted their cities and their very memory has perished but the lord shall endure forever he has made fast his throne for judgment for he shall rule the world with righteousness and govern the peoples with equity then will the lord be a refuge for the oppressed a refuge in the time of trouble and those who know your name will put their trust in you for you lord have never failed those who seek you sing praises to the lord who dwells in zion declare among the peoples the things he has done the avenger of blood has remembered them he did not forget the cry of the oppressed have mercy upon me o lord consider the trouble i suffer from those who hate me you that lift me up from the gates of death that i may tell all your praises in the gates of the city of zion and rejoice in your salvation the nation shall sink into the pit of their making and in the snare which they set with their own foot be taken for the lord makes himself known by his acts of justice the wicked are snared in the works of their own hands they shall return to the land of darkness all the nations that forget god for the needy shall not always be forgotten and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever arise o lord and let not mortals have the upper hand let the nations be judged before your face put them in fear o lord that the nations may know themselves to be but mortal so today we return to our reading of the gospel of saint matthew and we are in the middle of the parable discourse shall we call it the third of the discourse is that the section of teaching which is being given sin matthew as you know has grouped the parables together in chapter 13. yesterday we talked about the parable of the wheat and the darnell and then last saturday the parable of the sower and now we continue with chapter 13 up to the end of this chapter of parables or at least the section which ends the discourse it doesn't quite get to the end of the chapter and what i'm going to do is as i did yesterday interrupt it because yesterday we read the explanation which matthew gives of the wheat and the donal and so i shall skip that bit but i'll begin before it because matthew intersperses the parables so i'm starting here now at verse 31 and then we will leave out 36 to 43 which we had read yesterday verse 31 of chapter 13 in the gospel of saint matthew jesus put another parable before them saying the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field it is the smallest of all seeds but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches he told them another parable the kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flower till it was all leavened all these things jesus said to the crowds in parables indeed he said nothing to them without a parable this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet i will open my mouth in parables i will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world he also said the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold everything and bought it again the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind when it was full people drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers and threw away the bad so it will be at the end of the age the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth have you understood all these things he said they said to him yes and he said to them therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of the house who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old that last sentence or two is like another little parable on its own and it reflects on the diversity and pictures of the parables there's a little bit of methane explanation put in in there at the end about the parable of the cast net of this means that and that means that and you know what i think about these things the parables are meaning in many many different ways what those pictures mean to you on a particular day because jesus's pictures are there to illustrate not only his definite teaching not only his miracles of healing and the way in which he helped and encouraged people but also his own vocation as the anointed one destined to suffer and to die and to rise again all of those things illustrated in so many different ways and given to us as signs of the earth well this morning it's a whole full of beautiful pictures taken from where some from the garden like the mustard seed and the birds of the air who were singing all around me there's a garden warbler this morning uh which we've been listening to earlier on but the thrushes and black birds who tend to go more silent in the hotter times of day but are early awake and also quite late up singing at night beautifully actually their singing last night was rather interrupted here by the fact that one of our old guinea fowl and i think he's the only one left now who remembers what the days when they were in the front garden roosting at night at the top of the willow tree the weeping willow and um last night instead we we were just a bit later coming out to close the shed on which the six skin is with russell and the gang and and darcy go in and something in his memory must have stirred and he flew right up into the magnolia tree beside the shed far beyond our reach and roosted and we knew that would mean trouble in the morning because guineas hate to be separated they react together they play together and if one gets separated then the hullabaloo which they raise is is is pretty big but he was the one who was early this morning i could hear from the bedroom window um well below it about sort of uh half past four this morning this skinny looking for his friends so tonight we must make sure that he goes with them at the right time into the shed and the memory isn't stirred again where they used to roost because high up seemed good but loneliness was not good for a guinea fowl the images here of the not only the garden but of the kitchen of the making of bread and the leaven which the woman has fermented and has ready then to mix with the flour and what is mixed infuses the whole mix of flour itself so that everything becomes leavened we have a friend andrew mcgowan in uh in um berkeley divinity school at yale who's an expert at biblical foods among his his other scholarship but he gets really cross when that word is translated as yeast because yeast is a modern invention which we cull from the froth on the brewing of beer is added to something as a foreign substance whereas leaven was taken from the flower itself and when it was ready and had been properly fermented and made ready it's mixed with the whole lump and jesus is likening that to the the mixing of the little group with all folk and it's a good image for the life of the church in completely different places in the world for that little group to infuse with shall we say leaven that ordinary flower so that it then comes into a wholesome bread another sign so many little pictures here and they come one after the other and we come to the the parable of the treasure in the field which the person goes and sells everything they have and buys the field or the parable of the merchant who knows all about jewels and finds eventually the pearl of great price which he or she was looking for and at that point again there's a selling of everything else in order to claim what is most precious parables of the kingdom but notice jesus never says the kingdom of heaven is it cannot be expressed in earthly terms except in parables and metaphors he says always the kingdom of heaven is like and the diversity of parables and pictures even in this one chapter of matthew is marvelous to behold because they remind us even the scents of the lilac and the singing of the birds remind us of the precious quality of the pearl of great price of the gospel we're being given we shall go on with matthew tomorrow but there are some dates that i wanted to think about today and the first of course is the memory of that coronation day difficult to think all the way back then even for those of us who remember it but it was a united kingdom which had suffered terribly in the fight against nazism in those those years of the second world war and that was only it had only ended eight years before and when i remember the the bomb sites in the city of bristol which was only eight or nine miles away from us and the way in which the bomb sites were still there there had not been the resources to rebuild and canterbury was in the same state i didn't know it then but but certainly bristol was there was an air raid shelter in our garden which had been used and my mother and her um baby my sister pauline at that time had go had to go down into that shelter when father was away with other neighbors in order to shelter from all that and then it was a nation where rationing still existed and at the same time there had not been much cause for celebration there was celebration at the end of the conflict but now suddenly everything bursts into celebration and although it was a rainy day it didn't matter neighbors and this i do remember neighbours crowded into the houses of those who had television sets little black and white screens and sat around and they shared sandwiches as the day went on and the great service in westminster abbey in the morning the processions in the afternoon the appearing in the balcony backwards and forwards i remember sitting on the floor and and playing and watching the television set uh as this unfolded taking in bits of it and not realizing what a wonderful thing this was of neighbors coming together who who'd been together many of them in the adversity of the conflict and now here was something which seemed like a new beginning and when i remember the site of the queen of tonga who was the one person who would not have the hoods of her horse-drawn carriage put down because she loved the rain and she held her hands up enjoying the rain and became the absolute favorite of the nation on that day because the massive crowds had uh waited in the rain many of them sleeping in the park all night but the rain seemed not to matter this was a day of great joy and i hope her majesty remembers it as a great day of great joy it was certainly a very concentrated day for uh and for prince philip and all those uh who were organizing the event and for the bbc in that triumph of an outside broadcast a diversity of nations represented and a diversity of people sitting in the little rooms of houses which had a television and enjoying the day it the virtual world for the first time opened out for them and they were part of it and then two and this we we just do as a a list rather like the parables because there are so many lovely things have happened today thomas hardy the novelist was born on this day in 1840 a really fine drawer of characters in his novels and just as we have a diversity of plants and fragrances so he too could sketch tensions and characters and times of tragedy times of great sinfulness on terms of one against another times of treachery but at the same time t times of happy joy and times which he loved describing so i love his novel a player of blue eyes because it speaks of an autobiographical aspect of his own character when he was a young architect before ever he had become a famous novelist and the young architect in a pair of blue eyes is very much thomas hardy i could go through all the the ones that i love but there's not actually a time to do that this morning because also this day in 1857 saw the birth of edward elgar sir edward elgar who uh himself was born in the west country in in worcestershire and we remember him but we could remember him for many things his oratorios his symphonies his great marches i just want to mention one thing which brought him to fame and that was the fact that he chose to write a piece called the enigma variations right at the beginning he set out the enigma which he never actually solved he never said this is that it was like a parable you must solve what the enigma is but the variations tell the story of all those who were most precious to him and gave little sometimes jokey hints about their characters and if you look at the titles of them on the way through mostly they're named by initials or else they're named by nicknames like nimrod who was the nit that was the nickname for his reader at the publishers novello whom he trusted totally and uh he was called jaeger which is a german for huntsman so elgar called him nimrod from the mighty hunter in the book of genesis and at the same time he is giving in nimrod a really solemn tribute to the one who most had faith in him and that is the most wonderful thing but also the love for his wife is uh with the initials of caroline alice elgar there and i'm being joined by a diversity of feathered creatures i think they know it's a parable day when the birds are mentioned and leo i think is just beginning to be a little bit alarmed by the number of feathered friends who are coming but i think they will move on leo so don't worry and uh you'll be fine we'll keep you safe um and so we we give thanks for that the way in which elgar told of his friends so that we can remember them too and the bulldog dan jumping into the river y at that that time in one of the the variations and another the the crossing of the sea by lady mary ligand uh in and because he hadn't been able to ask her permission for putting the initials he just puts three asterisks and in that quotes from mendelssohn's overture the calm sea and the prosperous voyage we could go on and on and of course the last great variation is himself and that is a mixture of everything put together and he dedicates it to my friends the diversity of friends the companions so very necessary in the mix which day this day speaks of on this day also um uh vita sackville west died in 1962. her gardens existing aren't too far away from here they're now in the hands of the national trust and and you don't get the same flavor that you would have got when they were her own gardens with the personality of vita absolutely everywhere she too in her books was able to character draw but also then at the end she found most consolation in the planning of her garden and the watching of all that being established at sittinghurst it's not far from here and then lastly on this day in 1913 the novelist barbara pym was born and she had the greatest difficulty a quiet person greatest difficulty getting her books published she wrote beautiful stories about quiet happiness and tension in little communities but at the same time she couldn't get them published excellent women some tame gazelle a glass of blessings quartet in autumn we know them now every one of them is in publication because in 1977 the times literary supplement had uh um an article where various critics and people of a literary inclination whom people knew were asked to say who was the most overrated novelist and who was the most underrated novelist and the poet philip larkin and the critic lord david cecil both named barbara pym it didn't cause publishers to be any of the more racing forward to get her books it did cause people to start reading them and they're beautiful books to read they're all in all in print as also is and sort of autobiography of her so we give thanks for the way in which she quietly wrote pictures of her friends and people she had known as an observer and not philip larkin the poet says that some tame gazelle is uh barbara pym's pride and prejudice because he and david cecil likened her to jane austen as someone who observed with humor and gentle irony all that was going on around her so we give thanks for the way in which our lord points us to signs not only of diversity and our need for companionship but also of signs that can show us the precious treasure of the kingdom of heaven in images from garden kitchen merchant stall fishing boat anywhere really and as we read them we let the parables like leaven mix with our own lives so that they may become wholesome when baked into bread today we're praying for the diocese of cape coast in the church of the province of west africa the ghana province and then in the diocese itself we're praying for the united benefits of recover now that is the parish of saint mary the virgin recover the paris parish of saint bartholomew's in handbay and the parish of holy cross it hoes but since mary the virgin recover is a church which has had three lives the original one which was founded in a very different place and much nearer the sea was founded in 669 and built in the remains of a roman fort so much much earlier and because of the uh um what should we say disintegration of the coastline a vicar called christopher naylor in 1809 demolished the whole church it was a great tragedy really because it was a very very ancient church indeed with other roman remains in it and some of the pillars of that church are actually preserved here in canterbury cathedral and can be seen here the reculver towers meanwhile um one church and then another which replaced it was built in a different place so the church of saint mary the virgin recover has had three completely different lives and we pray for all those parishes around hern bay and hose with sue martin stephen parrott jenny hadlow and leslie lindsey pannell in their ministry there and the life of recover church of england junior school so we pray for archbishop justin on this day and for bishop rose of dover and bishop tim at lambeth in all their work and ministry and you please bring the diversity of your own prayers from across the world on this day here's the collect for this week following trinity sunday almighty and everlasting god you have given us your servants grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal trinity and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the unity keep us steadfast in this faith that we may ever more be defended from all adversities through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language the prayer that jesus 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 moment of silence now as we say our prayers on this morning okay 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 and those whom you will pray for today and always amen in the diversity of our own friends hose the village we prayed for in the diocese today um is the home of two great friends of ours graham and charlotte and graham's been suffering from very poor health for the last few years and so we send out greetings on this day and many prayers for his health and their family life also there in hose [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh you