good morning on this saturday the 6th of february and welcome wherever you are in the world this date to us is a very significant one and in the calendar of the church of england it's marked as the accession day 69 years ago the then princess elizabeth became our queen and this morning we give thanks for her long reign and we do that in company with the 17 other nations of which she is queen and the 53 nations of the commonwealths of which she is head this is a day which i remember in 1952 indeed it's the first dated memory that i had i wasn't quite yet five but i remember it because my father came in and was washing his hands at the kitchen sink and said to my mother have you heard the news and his voice gave such a solemn sound that the only thing she could think of of that solemnity from the past 15 years she said is it war declared and he said no the king is dead and my mother instantly burst into tears and that dramatic memory marks this day then as a day first of sadness of course now it's a day of enormous celebration of the long reign of our queen but we know that she keeps this day as a day quietly of thanksgiving for her father and i know that she is at windsor this year but normally she would have been at sandringham where king george vi died we could never mention uh or hear um king george vi without my mother saying are the king and that word ah meant he had been the one with the queen who later became our beloved queen mother he had been the one who had stayed with the nation and with great courage and difficulty in public speaking had given encouragement and faithfulness through the terrible years of the second world war and all of that we remember on this day as well as the thanksgiving for the faithful reign of our queen and the principles which she had enshrined for all of us so we remember that today and we shall do so at even song in the cathedral this evening too which will be of course live streamed we've come outside today and i'm here with uh winston and the three boys they rather rough and tumble their father and have all kinds of games on him he's the most patient father but if he uh if he gets fed up he'll soon show them as you'll see probably and but we're here with the chickens who of course are having their own lockdown and uh where they're covered because with this outbreak not a very serious outbreak of avian flu which i hope will be over very soon they have to be covered and separated from the wild birds you will see when they come out that ducky has gone on a little holiday and she's over with russell and the guinea fowl so we've given her just a little bit more space from this crowd of chickens and we'll let them out now and let them enjoy their breakfast as we say our prayers on this special morning right come on here we go let me take some corn for them up this end and come on chickens hello come on come on there we are let's go up here as well the ground outside is very wet following weeks of rain but inside because of the cover it's dry and that's good for the chicken's feet so here they all are the pigs actually don't mind the wet they rather enjoy it but they don't like being rained on but they like sloshing about in and rooting with their feet in the mud put this here so we can now begin our prayers wherever you are in the world please feel welcome on this morning you'll see that for the chickens uh shelter and entertainment we've recycled the christmas trees and they're now in a completely different use so let's begin our prayers bring your own concerns wherever you are on this saturday morning o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the true the only light banish all darkness from our hearts and minds blessed are you creator of all to you be praise and glory forever as your dawn renews the face of the earth bringing light and life to all creation may we rejoice in this day you have made as we wake refreshed from the depths of sleep 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 and as we rejoice in the gift of this new day say 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 this sixth morning of the month is psalm 30 i will exalt you o lord because you have raised me up and have not let my foes triumph over me o lord my god i cried out to you and you have healed me you brought me up o lord from the dead you restored me to life from among those that go down to the pit sing to the lord you servants of his give thanks to his holy name for his wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye his favor for a lifetime heaviness may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning in my prosperity i said i shall never be moved you lord of your goodness have made my hill so strong then you hid your face from me and i was utterly dismayed to you o lord i cried to the lord i made my supplication what prophet is there in my blood if i go down to the pit will the dust praise you or declare your faithfulness hear o lord and have mercy upon me o lord be my helper you have turned my morning into dancing you have put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing o lord my god i will give you thanks forever well there's a favorite verse of mine in verse 5 of that lovely psalm heaviness may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning god's favor for a lifetime let's then turn to the gospel of saint mark now if any of you are following the lectionary i'm going to do something which doesn't quite accord with the lectionary because there's a great gap in the middle of the chapter that we're reading chapter six if we follow the lectionary over the next two days so i'm actually going to complete the reading of chapter 6 as we go through and then on monday morning we'll find ourselves back again with the lectionary at verse 53 but we're reading following the story of the death of john the baptist the beheading of saint john the baptist which we read and thought about yesterday but at the same time we're completing mark's sandwich today here's the other piece of bread after the first piece of bread was laid down with the apostles the twelve being sent out two by two to take the good news to the villages of galilee so we are starting today at verse 30 of chapter six the apostles returned to jesus and told him all that they had done and taught and he said to them come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while for many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat and they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves now many saw them going and recognized them and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them when jesus went ashore he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd and he began to teach them many things and when he grew late his disciples came to him and said this is a desolate place and the hour is now late send them away to go into the surrounding countryside in villages and buy themselves something to eat but jesus answered them you give them something to eat and they said to him shall we go and buy 200 dinari worth of bread and give it to them to eat and jesus said to them how many loaves do you have go and see and when they had found out they said five and two fish then jesus commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass so they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties and taking the five loaves and the two fish jesus looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people and he divided the two fish among them all and they all act and were satisfied and they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish and those who at the loaves were five thousand men let me emphasize that last word normally we would re-translate that as people and later in st mark's gospel that will happen from the greek words allowing it a mixture of the people in the crowd the greek is very definite that these are men and the word says that and for a good reason we will think about that in a moment but first of all what i wanted to think about was the way in which these stories of the storm at sea and there's another one pending in this chapter and also the feeding of the five thousands shade into parables as well as miracles they shade into images which we carry with us and become crucially important in our understanding of all that is going on the nourishing of the crowds with the hands of jesus and with the resources he has given from them becomes a crucial not only miracle but parable and also you see in that reflected the image of the the eucharist the last suff the lord's supper the the the mass what whatever we like to call the action when christians either formally or informally break bread jesus says to the disciples more or less what resources do you have go and find out that is a a very narrow question for them and they they give the answer it's also a question for the people and jesus then takes what he's given him and the the four actions he takes the bread looks up to heaven blesses the bread [Music] breaks the bread and gives it to the disciples to distribute and that the the people have sat themselves down on the green grass here's another detail which only said mark gives us like the cushion in the boat green grass we know what season of the year it is because the grass is green and they're sitting comfortably there but they're not sitting in a disorganized way this also becomes important they are seated in groups of hundreds and fifties and the resonance and now i come back to that word men the resonance of this story has echoes of the story in st john's gospel where at the end of that feeding they try to make jesus king these people have the resonance of almost a political army who are seeing in the one that folk are beginning to say here is the messiah and they're the ones who've stayed late the one who might be their leader politically against the forces around them but that would be not only against the authorities and the herodians of king herod who we were thinking about yesterday the the political establishment but also against the overarching roman establishment too jesus in every aspect of that and in john's gospel it becomes very clear has no interest in being that kind of king he is there to serve and to nourish and he does so from the people's own resources your faith has made you well go in peace what resources do you have to the disciples well we have five loaves and two fishes bring them to me and in his hands he feeds the people and they collect afterwards the 12 baskets significant again as a number and another parable oblique miracle for here are the baskets that the twelve will take but it's a very particular crowd not only of jesus people but of men in groups of hundreds and fifty and so on set down almost like an army and after this as we shall see jesus himself needs to go apart for his ministry as being challenged by one of the temptations he could easily have been the leader of hundreds and thousands in that political sense in his own nation later only in a couple of chapters time we shall find the feeding of another group of thousands they are a mixed crowd and as we shall see the number of baskets taken up at the end have a different number and all that we can look at when we come to that point because it's significant of the ministry not only as we're thinking today of jesus to his own people and what that meant and it didn't mean political leadership with armies and it actually meant giving the good news to his people but that is going to be broadened in an enormous way so that the baskets after the next feeding of thousands of people will be a sign for the whole world and we remember that today these signs and symbols and miracles and parables which mark as we've said again and again threads for us like jewels along a string of beads and as we read each one of them morning by morning we enter into the depths not only of the story happening in rural galilee at that time by the lake and in this desolate place but at the same time it gives us the insight to reflect on the ministry which jesus has handed to his church what resources have you it takes me back to a scene in 1975 when the bishop of salisbury with the archbishop the then archbishop of the sudan archbishop elena called the diocese of salisbury of which i was a member at the time on to old sarah on uh i think it was the feast of pentecost it was certainly a sunny afternoon in early summer and uh an and a great crowd gathered all around and the two bishop the the archbishop and the bishop broke bread bread and it it wasn't a eucharist the order of the church's ministry and everything else we wanted everyone to be included it was what the church might call an agape a love feast the blessing of bread and the sharing of it which for christians every meal becomes an agape that self-giving love of the totality of one's self and it it was a moment i would never forget i had never been at that time to the sudan it was soon after that that same bishop of salisbury sent me there for this for the first time after the the devastation of the civil war then and that archbishop who was breaking bread elena became my honorary father for a while in his house with his wife dorica and we broke bread many times but we also celebrated eucharist together in his churches mostly under the trees because so many of the churches have been destroyed but on that afternoon the diocese of salisbury represented in its deaneries area deaneries uh the the groups of parishes and in its parishes by its clergy and its people broke bread with this symbol of a church with which we were going to be linked in very different circumstances well today if we think about other other dates um other years when february the sixth was important then let me remember that in our calendar also on this day are the martyrs of japan who in 1597 because the shogun who was the power in the land not the emperor in those days decided that the the the christians there and there was quite a a big christian congregation right across japan and they'd been welcomed at first but now he began to see or think that this was something that was given foreign influence too much influence in japan and 26 of them were crucified in nagasaki and we have lots of friends in japan and one of them early in the first lockdown embroidered the most wonderful white stone for me to wear as she was watching as a member of this garden congregation it's a a gift that i value because it's a sign of my priesthood which can break bread and feed and nourish the people but i'm only a symbol of the way we're able to do that for each other in all sorts of ways as we keep saying so we remember the martyrs of japan today i also wanted to remember that on this day in uh 1836 charles darwin and captain fitzroy and the ship the beagle landed in what was van diemen's land tasmania and uh the letter that now darwin had been away from home his beloved home in shrewsbury for uh over four years and the cramped conditions of the ship the beagle we've experienced because nearby here in darwin's house that he lived in for years in kent there is a a completely um made up cabin where you see just how constricted everything was now of those which will become almost five years at sea 18 months was spent somehow or another in the beagle in quite often rough conditions and three years and three months on land making all kinds of discoveries but when he came to van diemen's lantern tasmania what comes across in his letter which i re-read this morning to his uh his sister catherine at home uh is his homesickness and the way that tasmania reminded him in its landscape so much of england and home so we remember once again the precious concept of home and that can mean so many different things to different kinds of people but it also reminds us in terms of family and extended family as we might call it all those whom we care for wherever they are the way in which that we are locked down at present so let's uh let's think of that this morning as well um in let me just see what else is here uh in 2015 a royal marine andy grant uh on this day had lost the bottom part of his leg in an operation and he had had tattooed on his leg will never walk alone and the alone was on the bottom part so he woke up to find just the top part saying you'll never walk which gave him the encouragement to say yes i will and the inspiration to walk to run say that he won two gold medals at the invictus games and abseiled down the shard and became a motivational speaker for those who need encouragement well there's that word again encouragement today the in 1840 the treaty of waitangi in new zealand was was signed in 1818 uh singapore was founded all these things and in 1935 the monopoly board game went on sale for the first time i've found that in the past to be not only a pleasure but some families have had to ban it because it's caused so many arguments in the way it's played and uh um so but we give thanks for it and how it's been transformed sometimes in all kinds of ways for different parts of the world and in 1964 uh france and the uk uh signed uh the um channel tunnel accord and we can talk about that on different dates because uh the canterbury accord at some stage was signed also and received in here in the chapter house of canterbury cathedral and and um we'll do that on the proper date between the prime minister margaret thatcher and uh president meteorol uh we give thanks for that link with the continent through which is so near here the channel tunnel um i want to mention also that christopher plummer died yesterday and he is beloved not only as the duke of wellington fine portrayal in the film waterloo but even more so of course as captain ron trapp in the film version of rogers and hammerstein's uh sound of music and he his singing of the song edelweiss and all of that well i needn't go on with that but we give thanks for his acting time there are other things here which i could be mentioning but um perhaps one last thing in 1958 the manchester united airplane that was bringing them back from playing football in germany uh crashed at his third attempted taking off in on a snowy day and of the 44 passengers and crew 23 died and eight of them were of matt busby's team the matt busby himself who became samat busby was seriously injured in that but at school we were collecting at the time pictures of football teams and they were i don't know what they came in packets of something and that card of the the manchester united football team became a prized item because of the memory of them so we remember that too and uh i think we'll then begin to say our prayers we've got first the prayer for the sovereign on this accession day almighty god the fountain of all goodness bless our sovereign lady queen elizabeth and all who are in authority under her that they may order all things in wisdom and equity righteousness and peace to the honor and glory of your name and the good of your church and people through jesus christ our lord amen and then the ordinary colleagues so bring your own concerns and intentions to this this is the last time we'll say this the third sunday before lent collect 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 amen [Laughter] so with thoughts of our lessons of encouragement our queen's lesson of long christian service and an understanding of different cultures and different faiths and the way in which jesus himself resisted the temptations of narrow earthly leadership and gave us the concept of leadership as the serving of all and the giving of life as a ransom for many i came not to be served but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many that will come later in sid mark's gospel let's say the our father together in whatever language we like to use 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 moment of silence for our own prayers this morning in 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 would pray for today and always amen [Music] so we're surrounded by chickens i wouldn't want you to think that we've exiled ducky because she baptized me here last time we were praying together here she's actually having a great time with russell and all the guinea fowl and the hens here these brown hands are always the the most friendly aren't you three sisters here all enjoying the morning on dry land and outside winston and the three boys enjoying the muddy place where they can find lovely things if they snuffle around