good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of wednesday the 6th of october as we gather for our morning prayers wherever you are in the world feel welcome it is this morning a dry morning but there's a really cold wind and it certainly changed this equinox time of year as we've said keeps changing the weather and so uh we are sitting here in the working heart of the garden the cold frames here are open but only during the day for little potted plants here need protection at night and as it gets colder and colder that protection will be all the more necessary behind me are plants that are still out at the moment there's a tropical hibiscus there are some coral trees here there's even a few flowers on the jasmine and uh above it the olive tree but the the potted plants here will go soon inside the greenhouse again so that they are protected from this chilly wind oddly it's a west wind and john maysfield says in his poem it's a warm wind the west wind full of birds cries well this morning it may be full of birds cries and seagulls cries from time to time but it's certainly not a warm wind it is freezing cold and a very very big change in temperature as we begin our prayers on this particular morning in the greenhouse yard where the work of the garden goes on in preparation for the winter and all the uh pots of of of little plants here are being sheltered there's a particularity of all these plots which will eventually of course be planted out but for the moment they are in here being protected and someone else is wanting a little bit of warmth here on my lap this morning let's begin our prayers bring your concerns from across the world this morning oh 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 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 and 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 does we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this morning of the month this sixth morning 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 hills so strong and then you hid your face from me and i was utterly dismayed 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 mourning 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 for ever so we turn to our reading not from genesis today we've turned the page and skipped as we said yesterday 430 years a whole age of history until we get to the first chapter of the book of exodus in the bible just the turning of a page and in human time an enormous length of time so that a sweep of history and now we're going to narrow down narrow down narrow down into particularity the particularity of humankind and then human individuals and the particularity of human decision making it's just as we can see that the sweep of a landscape or then come into the garden and see the sweep of the whole garden and sometimes long shots across and then now here we are with tiny plants in little pots each showing a particularity with their leaves as the cold frames are open so that they get fresh air but ready to protect because they need that from the atmosphere here's the book of exodus beginning we're going to read chapter one these are the names of the sons of israel who came to egypt with jacob each with his household simeon levi and judah issachar zebulun and benjamin dan and naftali gad and asha all the descendants of jacob was 70 persons joseph was already in egypt then joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation but the people of israel were fruitful and increased greatly they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them now there arose a new king over egypt who did not know joseph and he said to his people behold the people of israel are too many and too mighty for us come let us deal shrewdly with them lest they multiply and if war breaks out they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land therefore they set task masters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens they built for pharaoh's store cities pithem and ramesses but the more they were oppressed the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad and the egyptians were in dread of the people of israel so they ruthlessly made the people of israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in all kinds of work in the field in all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves then the king of egypt said to the hebrew midwives one of whom was named shifra and the other pure when you serve as midwife to the hebrew women and see them on the birth stool if it is a son you shall kill him if it is a daughter she shall live but the midwives feared god and did not do as the king of egypt commanded them but let the male children live so the king of egypt called the midwives and said to them why have you done this and let the male children live the midwives said to pharaoh oh um because the hebrew women are not like egyptian women for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them so god dealt well with the midwives and the people multiplied and grew very strong and because the midwives feared god he gave them families then pharaoh commanded all his people every son that is born to the hebrews you shall cast into the nile but you shall let every daughter live this is a cruel story it's a particular story that if you like with the selective killing of the boys you you see the first holocaust and the way in which the exiles are now being selectively killed every boy being born thrown into the nile because of the decision of the egyptian king at that time now see what we've done we've come from that great sweep of history down to the little resume of all that went on with the brothers of joseph one named and then it says that they and their generations died and no mention is made of a time but we get to a time when the israelite people are so strong that they begin to threaten in terms of their numbers and strengths those in egypt and therefore really really harsh measures begin to be taken there's then the particularity of even human beings we've now narrowed right right down so that even the midwives are named now and we're in a particular human scene and at first it's it's a scene which we smile at because the midwives tell this simple lie well of course the the the uh israelite women are so strong they they tend to give birth before their midwives arrive and then the the picture turns to complete horror because the pharaoh is having nothing of that he then orders that every time a boy is born to the israelite nation the baby boy will be thrown into the river nile and killed and this uh selective way that he's working at the moment to try and limit the amount of the israelite nation that can't go on because his workforce which he is using now in slavery building cities for him and being given hard and bitter labor and that workforce is important to him this is the story of the first chapter of exodus it's covered in an enormous amount of ground but it's made the exile which had been a willing exile at the time of joseph's family coming down so that they might be fed and resourced in the years of famine a willing exile and a joyful exile into something which is now hard and bitter and cruel tyranny where babies are being sorted so that the population will not grow too big to frighten and and give a danger to fairies people exodus has a very different atmosphere than the end of genesis and we think of the different human situations how history can change at a moment's notice you might think in the way in which afghanistan changed in a a moment to a completely different atmosphere and the way we're thinking about it now than we were thinking about it what six months ago or something of that sort but here we have a sweep of human history and then a piece of particularity and we tend to do this in our morning worship we we think of general situations of joy or of sorrow general situations across the world general situation as a pandemic and then focus on a particular date or a particular situation which a small group of humankind are facing it's the way in which we tend to be but it's the human story of particular people that stays in the mind and then shines a light on the more general well today strangely and coincidentally in 1536 the translator of the scriptures william tyndale was martyred he's someone who appears in our calendar and he died a cruel death first strangled and then burned at the stake and he had been uh the translator of the scriptures he didn't complete the whole bible and as we saw a few days ago miles coverdale finished that bible off and was able then to produce in 1535 a complete bible and the way in which he used tyndale to complete that bible tyndale himself was a much more um skilled translator of languages from the greek and from the hebrew but his old testament was never finished so coverdale relied hugely on tyndale's translation as he himself produced the first complete english bible in 1535 which was then given royal approval in 1537 tyndale meanwhile was martyred in this year in us in the year 1536 on this day october the 6th a cruel death in fact in honoring him as a translator of the the scriptures we can think in two ways which uh joined two of our cathedrals together our own cathedral and as you saw we have a sequence of bibles from different translators for the bible translated into languages that people could understand first of all we have a a vulgate the valgarte jerome translated and so if we if we think of that one first i'm going through five different translations and then after that there's a tyndale bible such as that such as it is and then the bible of miles coverdale and then the great bible which was actually resting on the translations of tyndale and coverdale which was authorized by king henry viii to be put into churches every parish church so that parishioners would have a chance to read the scriptures if they could for themselves or have them read to them in their own vernacular language that was an enormous step forward tyndale was not martyred in england because of his translation of the scriptures he had fled from england because he'd made the king cross because from his reading of the scriptures he opposed king henry divorcing his wife he said that that is not proper for the king to do and that angered the king in a great way we have great great sympathy with henry viii because he was so concerned that the stability of the realm should be continued his own father henry vii had brought stability henry viii uh whose brother had had died and henry became king and henry viii desperately wanted stability but in those days he saw that as neces necessary because of having a male heir and he didn't have a male heir as you know he had princess mary from catherine of aragon um but then he desperately wanted a male heir and then of course anne berlin gave him elizabeth the first who was to prove as as strong and wonderful a monarch if not better than than henry viii but at that time still he desperately wanted a male heir and for the stability of the nation he wanted that so tyndale angered him tyndale fred fled abroad but then fell into the hands of the emperor charles v who very much disapproved of translating the latin bible into the language of the various people tindela said um to every he said i want every plow boy to know the bible better than you priests as he was speaking to the english clergy at the time and he was speaking to a section of the english clergy who have proved themselves not very well educated and certainly not not really um able to read the bible with understanding in latin just reading it by wrote so that that was a a statement of his to the the english clergy but but um as he went abroad he fell into the hands of charles v and hence his martyrdom this day we have then those bibles going through in the library in the archive here but also in our sister cathedral of washington national cathedral in the united states the canterbury pulpit the main pulpit of that cathedral which was carved here in stones from canterbury cathedral and sent across as a gift has on it three panels of people who were significant in the development of the english church and the anglican episcopal strand which that cathedral belongs to as we do here and of course on the front as we've probably said before is the picture of stephen langton the archbishop who's buried here who caused king john to seal the magna carta and then on one side of it you have the venerable bead translating the scriptures at that time and on the other side of it the martyrdom of william tyndale which we remember today and around our statues of those who later rather like lancel lancelot andrews who translated in let me mention the fists bible now james the king james bible which was translated and then published in 1611 after the tudor times in stuart times from the best scholarship and that bible the 1611 bible became the english bible for centuries really and is still valued for its beautiful 17th century language so many different types of bibles but what we have around the pulpit in washington national cathedral is the intention of people to translate it so people could read it lancel andrews or brookfoss westcott or who translating on to the revised bible said that people have it in their own language and can read the stories as we do and ponder them and have them explained to them we remember him tyndale today martyred on this day in 1536. on this day also in 1892 the poet the poet laureate alfred lord tennyson great symbol of the victorian age of the 19th century in this particular culture he was 83 when he died and so many of his poems are very well known and we've quoted some of them in the past i remember sitting on the side of the pool as the as the lily closed uh just behind me here and quoting first the lady of shalott that lovely poem where lancelot and and tennyson of course madly keen on the arthurian legends as so much a strand of the culture of this nation uh but it was that little poem also about the now sleeps the crimson petal now the white and now filled the lily in the porphyry font as the water lily closed and it was compliant on a sunday evening when we read that but one of and we've also read the bit from ulysses we were talking about james bond yesterday and when judy dench is is killed at the as m at the end of of skyfall she quotes before she dies tennyson's ulysses about old age and and gifts that are left um but this morning i want you to look at one of his longest poems i'm not going to read it that the long poem in memoriam which was brought forth from him because of grief at the death of a friend he loved so well arthur hallam and this poem developed as part of his dealing with that grief there is at the very beginning of it but the prologue i think was written some years later a a section of the poem which we use as a hymn sometimes and it's certainly in the school hymn book that i sometimes quote from songs of praise but here it is strong son of god immortal love whom we that have not seen thy face by faith and faith alone embrace believing where we cannot prove thine are these orbs of light and shades thou made his life in man and brute thou made his death and lo thy foot is on the skull which thou has made thou will not leave us in the dust thou made his man he knows not why he thinks he was not made to die and thou hast made him thou art just thou seemest human and divine the highest holiest manhood thou our wills are ours we know not how our wills are ours to make them thine our little systems have their day they have their day and cease to be they are but broken lights of thee and thou o lord art more than they we have but faith we cannot know for knowledge is of things we see and yet we trust it comes from thee a beam in darkness let it grow forgive my grief for one removed thy creature whom i found so fair i trust he lives in thee and there i find him worthier to be loved forgive these wild and wandering cries confusions of a wasted youth forgive them where they fail in truth and in thy wisdom make me wise well the poem goes on it's split into so many sections it's a very long poem but there is one section that i'm very fond of i'm fond of it because it's set to music and i was talking the other day about the malcolm sergeant and his conducting of christmas concerts with the royal choral society in the royal albert hall and the last one i ever heard him conduct the great anthem ring out wild bells which is really a new year ansem was performed by him with the whole choral society the massive orchestra and also the tubular bells ringing out the wild bells and tennis that's from tennyson's poem this very poem which talks about how each new year we try to wring out the old and ring in the new here's that section of tennyson's poem which is not musical this morning it's simply poetry but that anthem is one of a great favorite of mine ring out wild bells to the wild sky the flying cloud the frosty light the year is dying in the night ring out wild bells and let him die ring out the old ring in the new ring happy bells across the snow the year is going let him go ring out the false ring in the true ring out the grief that saps the mind for those that hear we see no more wring out the feud of rich and poor ring in redress to all mankind wring out a slowly dying cause and ancient forms of party strife ring in the nobler modes of life with sweeter manners pure laws wring out the want the care the sin the faithless coldness of the times ring out wring out my mournful rhymes but ring the fuller minstrel in wring out false pride in place and blood the civic slander and the spite ring in the love of truth and write ring in the common love of good wring out old shapes of foul disease ring out the narrowing lust of gold ring out the thousand wars of old ring in the thousand years of peace ring in the valiant man and free the larger heart the kindlier hand wring out the darkness of the land ring in the christ that is to be a reflective tennyson on this day of his year's mind in 1892 and then i wanted to mention also the pre-raphaelite painter who took inspiration from tennis and as so many of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood did ford maddox brown died on the 6th of october in 1893 and his paintings very realistic paintings in wonderful color are quite well known to so many of you and when you see them you think oh yes was that ford maddox brown one of his biggest and the longest he took to to to paint was simply a scene of work in hampstead in the 1860s and it's really a set of of strong workmen digging up the road to prepare for something else and then other people of should we call it victorian society at all levels standing around watching in different ways so that you have a kaleidoscope of society at that time in 1860 there are the tools just as the gardening tools are here with us today particular tools that the workmen are using strong men being physical and on the side to older men sitting on a wall and chatting and reflecting on the strength of the younger ones which they know no longer have some very smart ladies walking along but another person bearing a a basket of flowers which she is going to sell there are children who are delighting in the work that's going on there are dogs there are always dogs in in fort maddox ford's painting and at the same time at the back there are affluent houses of that particular time which would have been new at the time as hampstead was developing it's simply a snapshot but it's full of particularity of that culture at that time and those faces and the pre-raphaelites always painted in a very real way there are two biblical pictures of his that i absolutely love and one of them is called jacob and joseph's coat there is jacob in all his desperate grief and horror and there are the brothers showing him the coat and their faces are giving away their deceit i think jacob is too grief-stricken to notice and around again is the scene of the the affluent household of jacob and the brothers who are obviously explaining yes we found this and the coat is torn the beautiful coaches torn in their bloodstains and there's even there's the dog always the dog is sniffing the bloodstains very realistic picture but at the same time probably the most moving painting of the scriptures of all is jesus washing peter's feet kneeling at peter's feet and peter looking down at jesus jesus in a posture of extreme humility before peter and around the table the supper table the other disciples leaning forward and their faces so like the faces of the workmen in the pictures were of work showing them to be really real and particular characters in the imagination of ford maddox brown i give thanks for images like that because of the the particularity of humankind in those pictures well those paintings we can actually now um go to a different date and this isn't a painting at all it was actually a scene of horror on this day in october the 6th 1981 when the egyptian president anwar sadat who had received a nobel peace prize with menachem begin in 1978 for the peace accord between egypt and israel was assassinated by his own army officers in the middle of a military parade as he sat watching it everything completely took the egyptian nation by surprise and the president was assassinated by people who disagreed with his uh action of creating a peace treaty that was on this day in 1981 october the 6th on october the 7th i remember flying into cairo on my way to khartoum and the plane stopped there there was such disorder in egypt that we were hustled off the plane and our passports taken away and we were motored into the middle of cairo and put in a hotel and as we went through the streets of cairo troops were lining the roads but we were aware of a nation absolutely in confusion not knowing at all what had happened and i was thinking well now what's going to happen i have no passport here i am on my way to khartoum but the plane has been stopped and we're in the middle of a scene of complete confusion three days before it would have been a civilized city of cairo with all the order that one expected there now it was a nation in confusion and i remember those 24 hours really well i remember the next morning sitting in the hotel lobby and next to me was a quite elderly uh professor of greek who was on his way to give a lecture and was on this particular plane and he was sitting next to me and he had in his pockets and in his coat all he needed to continue his study and sat quite quietly and was um quite um comforting to me and would say words of encouragement and saying um please don't worry it will all work out and then go on with his work and he was sifting through ages old uh documents and just carrying on quietly with his studies in the middle of that but it also taught me always to travel around with with a notebook and and uh the way to write and maybe a book to read or something of that sort because then at any time one can sit and reflect and talk to the people around and give encouragement i i learned lessons like that in traveling in those ways when transport actually only ever arrived when it got there and sure enough in the afternoon of that day we were put back into um vehicles and taken back to the airport and there was someone standing with our pile of passports they'd held them up and shouted the names until eventually my name came passport was returned and we were put back onto a plane which flew on then to khartoum and i was thinking all the way there being nervous i wonder if the people there would have waited for me we are actually so late so late but i was get i'm really mistrustful in those days and i learned it well afterwards really very well if you're a guest in cultures like that people never let you down when you arrive they would have been waiting and waiting and waiting and gather you into their household so that that night i was in the garden of the bishop of omdaman on the other side of the river nile from khartoum and in total safety as we shared a meal together and a bed was set for me with a good mosquito net over in the garden because of the heat so a memory sorry from my own past and i i revised my memory this morning because of a notebook that i kept at the time my sedan notebooks are full of little stories of that sort right let's say our prayers on this particular morning giving thanks shall we say for particularity which is is is such an aspect of our life little things which remind us and all the time i've been speaking you'll be reminded of incidents in your own life of particularity on this chilly morning here but the sun is shining directly on me now so i've got a bit more warmth this day we're remembering the anglican church in kenya and we give thanks for the church there and pray for it and in our own diocese as i said yesterday we're being asked to reflect on what the harvest means in in our own areas of life and how we share that harvest so we pray for justin our archbishop and also for rose bishop of dover and emma bishop at lambeth as we say our prayer this morning and give thanks for translators of the scriptures this is the colic for this week bring your own intentions and prayers almighty and everlasting god increasing us your gift of faith that forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to that which is before we may run the way of your commandments and win the crown of everlasting joy through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language 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 amen moment of silence now for your own prayers 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 are men so we give thanks for the translation of the scriptures we give thanks also that some languages rather like the latin when jerome was translating was a language which was spoken by a great number of people right across europe before that in the eastern time the koine greek the common greek was the same and then the translations open up and open up and the english translation we have which are absolutely manifold and many at this time and and many people across the world speak english because really um they watch american films and and also scholars tend to communicate in english in so many different ways but at the same time there are many other languages which are huge in that their perception and it's wonderful going to services in those languages because there when you're not understanding a word the shape of the liturgy itself is a different kind of order and you think ah now this must be the sanctuary so this is the anesthesia and i'm still in my mind speaking those latin words so language tends to feed into one translation after another and it's a lovely thing to check one translation from another which we can do over the way in which we're given those translations and search engines can do it as well for us as we say can we see what that verse is in the king james bible or can we see what that verse is in the tyndale bible or how did it look in the latin or something of that sort and that is a great privilege for us in this generation as we go on i've got a splendid thing to do tonight a nice thing to do tonight and the great mountain horticultural society have asked me to go and speak to them about the way we've used the garden day by day in this time of pandemic and lockdown and i shall be really glad to be sharing the evening with them they will give me much water cultural knowledge and i will show how we have shown fletcher and i the the garden of the deanery and the various plants and spaces to reflect the scriptures day by day so think of me there means i shouldn't be at even songs so i'll say that privately by myself on the way that that's man if you're watching on youtube you'll find below two links you can click on one is the anthem that i was speaking of of tennyson's words ring out wild bells by percy fletcher the other is an adaptation in different music of the same words sung by the donova fellowship and community in southern india by the brothers and sisters of the community and the children of the community and a very charming adaptation of those same words showing how words can be adapted to the music of any culture you'll also see information about the fellowship itself and the work it does in south india