good morning and welcome wherever you are in the world to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral we've come this morning up into the wilder area of the garden on the path to the orchard here and we are surrounded by all kinds of things which are beginning to show signs of growth which is a wonderful thing on this monday the 11th of january plow monday following plow sunday and as we said yesterday the plows signaled the beginning of work for the year nowadays that is mostly symbolic um but it's nevertheless a good symbol and one remembers again one lord's our lord's words in luke's gospel chapter 9 verse 62 no one who puts their hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of god so our intention is to see our journey going forward with memories of the past which have brought us just here today is also the um date of the death in 1928 of thomas hardy we've enjoyed some of his poetry recently but there was one that i wanted to mention today and i'll then come back to him in the reflection also and we've lit a little fire here amongst the leaves in memory and we're sitting by the pond here memory of rashi pond and egdon heath and hardy country his own country though he gave different names to the places his own village of sins were became melstock but this is just a poem of three verses written in the middle of the first world war that war which horrified him it was published in january 1916 and it's called in time of the breaking of nations and he looks around at the scene about him and sees that thing these things will go on though dynasties fall here's the poem only a man harrowing clods in a slow silent walk with an old horse that stumbles and nods half asleep as they stalk only thin smoke without flame from the heaps of cooch grass yet this will go onward the same though dynasties pass yonder a maid and her white come whispering by wars animals will cloud into night uh their story die a lovely poem about perspectives of the life he sees going on around him and the dynasties falling and being in the end just a page of the history book while everything else he describes goes on so this day when we think of our creative work beginning for this year i got in my hand a little twig of the hazel catkins which are hanging all around me it's a tree which bears both male and female flowers the long one here near me is a male flower and these little ones are female flowers and it's a sign of growth and the trees are now beginning to be covered in them no leaves yet but still little snowdrops and bulbs appearing and we give thanks for the turn of the seasons and no one better for describing that than thomas hardy so let's say our prayers on this monday in the epiphany season still oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your light springs up for the righteous and all the peoples have seen your glory blessed are you sovereign god king of the nations to you be praise and glory forever from the rising of the sun to its setting your name is proclaimed in all the world as the sun of righteousness dawns in our hearts anoint our lips with the seal of your spirit that we may witness to your gospel and sing your praise in all the earth blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this 11th morning of the month is psalm 57 be merciful to me o god be merciful to me for my soul takes refuge in you in the shadow of your wings will i take refuge until the storm of destruction has passed i will call upon the most high god the god who fulfills his purpose for me he will send from heaven and save me and rebuke those that would trample upon me god will send forth his love and his faithfulness i lie in the midst of lions people whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword be exalted o god above the heavens and your glory over all the earth they have laid a net for my feet my soul is pressed down they have dug a pitch before me will fall into it themselves my heart is ready o god my heart is ready i will sing and give you praise awake my soul awake harp and liar that i may awaken the dawn i will give you thanks o lord among the peoples i will sing praise to you among the nations for your loving kindness is as high as the heavens and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds be exalted oh god above the heavens and your glory over all the earth [Music] today we're beginning a gospel it's a long time since we've gone through a gospel at morning prayer we spent the summer with saint luke before passing on to his acts of the apostles as well uncovered all of the lucan writings but this morning we are beginning our journey into st mark's gospel now this began for us yesterday at the eucharist and i found myself preaching at the eucharist in the cathedral on the first chapter of the gospel of saint mark the baptism of jesus as told by saint mark and we in our morning prayers thought of that as told by saint john and the witness of sin john the baptist but i'm going back to the first chapter of mark and our lesson this morning will really begin a little later than that baptism story but i want to just remind you that chapter one of saint mark's gospel which most scholars agree is the earliest of the written gospels they're all of them clearly collected sources which were around either in written form or in story form told but marx is the earliest account and there are signs that make it so but it starts powerfully with the first verse of chapter one the beginning of the gospel of jesus christ the son of god bears the agenda the gospel the evangel the good news that the herod brings quite often in the roman empire the birth of a new emperor or something of that kind or good news of a victory one and here the the writings of the four what we call evangelists are all called a gospel ancient anglo-saxon word an evangel good news altogether well we saw how jesus was baptized by john the baptist and i'm not starting there for that was our gospel yesterday at the eucharist but i'm going to start at verse 12 of chapter 1 and read through simply to verse 20. [Music] the spirit immediately drove jesus out into the wilderness and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by satan and he was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to him now after john the baptist was arrested jesus came into galilee proclaiming the gospel of god and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of god is at hand repent and believe in the gospel passing along the sea of galilee he saw simon and andrew the brother of simon casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen and jesus said to them follow me and i will make you to become fishers of people and immediately they left their nets and followed jesus and going on a little farther he saw james the son of zebedee and john his brother who were in their boats mending the nets and immediately he called them and they left their father zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed jesus marx is immediately a powerful gospel and i've just used the word immediately because it's one of mark's favorite words everything is happening at triple speed as though the ministry of jesus with the evangel the gospel the good news is too important to be slow with the short time that jesus has to proclaim it and we see first of all that after the baptism when we in the other gospels see jesus going into the wilderness 40 days and 40 nights and a sequence begins to happen where he is tempted and the temptations are laid out those kinds of temptations and then after the devil left him and the temptations receded then you find that jesus is comforted by angels not so here the spirit the holy spirit which has come upon him and was witnessed by john in the fourth gospel drives jesus into the wilderness straight away the spirit immediately drove jesus out into the wilderness that immediately is a wonderful greek word usus and it's got good good sounds in it use us immediately we're on the way and we're going fast the spirit immediately drove jesus out into the wilderness but notice that everything happens in the wilderness together in st mark's gospel which is much more like human life he has times of temptation he has times with the wild creatures but he also has times when he is himself being comforted by angels by the assurance from the eternal dimension of the clear channels with the father and all of that in st mark's gospel happens together well you will know that that is how human life is one can lurch from temptation to glorious times to times when one is just reflective with god's creation around us and back to times of temptations to despair in troubled times and so on and so forth well mark gives it to us all there in that little uh paragraph just three sentences and the word immediately and then we come after john the baptist was arrested jesus came into galilee proclaiming the gospel of god and saying the time is fulfilled it's now the fourth gospel gives us much of the my hour is not yet mark plunges us straight into it no time to waste no words to waste everything that mark writes down every word is precious and this word useless immediately is immensely important see how it happens with the um coming along the lakeside to simon and andrew and james and john the fisherman doesn't say how well he knows them doesn't say that there was any preparation we've no idea what all that was about instead we are at the point of the decision-making and the calling and we're at the important point and see how it goes again jesus sees simon and andrew casting their nest they were at their work plough monday and jesus said to them follow me and i will make you to become fishers of people and immediately they left their nets and followed him yesus nothing else just immediately they left their nets going on a little farther he saw james the son of zebedee and john his brother in their boat mending the nets and immediately justus he called them and they left their father zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed jesus they're they're not people without means james and john here is their father with what looks like a fairly affluent fishing business with the hired servants there who could look after the business as the two brothers go off to follow jesus but we know from later that the family are not averse to this and the mother of james and john becomes a character in the synoptic gospels in the gospel of st matthew and later on to this is just a beginning just as plough monday is the beginning of our work but it's a wonderful beginning and it means that we have with this beginning a new gospel to journey with and an evangelist mark to be our accompaniment along this road which is distinctive to mark all four gospels evangels very very distinctive in the way they proclaim the good news but through these weeks let's have mark as our friend as we go along bit by bit through the gospel each morning now i said that this was the day on which thomas hardy died and we've enjoyed his poetry many of you will have enjoyed his stories lovely stories like under the greenwood tree tragic stories like tess of the derbyvilles and jude the obscure and all of the the stories that come from hardy are absolutely rooted in the countryside around him when i was at sherburn the road to dorchester ended with a little hill which went up into dorchester and there at the top of the hill sat thomas hardy a statue of him reminding us that he rooted everything in his own community he was trained as an architect but he soon became a writer of stories and a very famous one indeed but he his his heart never left that dorset location he built his house there designed by himself max gate where he died on this day in 1928 at the age of 87 but at the same time his mind wandered far and wide with the passions that tempted people often to their own destruction and that is a feature of of hardy's work you will all have your own favorite novels of hardy mine is two on a tower it it advised with a pair of blue eyes where hardy is autobiographical with the young architect but at the same time the pair of the two on a tower is the one that somehow caught my imagination we did at o level at school when i was 16 the trumpet major very different kind of historical novel but at this point i think and i brought my copy out it's two on a tower where the squire's lady lady constantine falls in love with the young astronomer swithin sin cleave and at first she finds him on a tower on the estate which he living in the village nearby and a very keen amateur astrologer has found that the door is open and he can get to the top and be there by himself looking at the stars and her ladyship out of curiosity because she's bored and her husband's away in africa looking at lions and things and she finds him on the top of the tower and shall we say she pretends that she's really interested in astronomy we know rather differently that she's more interested in swifting himself but swifton takes it all on board and actually when she is uh with him he tries to give her lessons in astronomy and he talks about the stars above them and says when she goes silent that he tried to give her yet another idea of the size of the universe to put her own life in perspective there is a size in which dignity begins he explained further on there's a size at which grandeur begins further on there's a size at which solemnity begins further on a size at which awfulness begins further on a size at which ghastliness begins that size faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe so am i not right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers to bury themselves in the depths of that universe merely strain their faculties to gain a new horror standing as she stood in the presence of the stellar universe under the very eyes of the constellations lady constantine apprehended something of the earnest youth's argument he went on and to add a new weirdness to what the sky possesses in its size and formlessness there is involved the quality of decay for all the wonder of these everlasting stars eternal spheres and whatnot they are not everlasting they are not eternal they burn out like candles if you are cheerful and wish to remain so leave the study of astronomy alone and her leadership replies i'm not altogether cheerful well then if on the other hand you are restless and anxious about the future study astronomy at once your troubles will be reduced amazingly but your study will reduce them in a singular way by reducing the importance of everything so that science is still terrible even as a panacea very hardy in terms of the dimensions and perspectives and also the hugely consuming passions of human beings and the temptations that they suddenly fall trapped to and everything for hardy is rooted in the rhythms around the countryside he knew egdon heath and brushy pond and the villages and towns that he renamed so when jude goes off to oxford christminster he calls it then it's it's almost a signal for disaster at that point because the the connections are beginning to be broken but there was one thing that i did want to read this morning which is another poem and that is hard is impatience with the vicar of his villages stinsford who had just come and had new ideas hardy's grandfather another thomas hardy had been the leader of the the town or that's rather the village company of musicians who in the gallery sunday morning accompanied the music and the metrical psalms and the hymns on their fiddles and vials and whatever instruments and tom hardy's father and his uncle were part of that band and when the new vicar came he said well i think this is brother old-fashioned it's it's better that we get a little organ and uh now that's all played out in the under the greenwood tree but here's thomas hardy's poem the choir masters burial and it's about an actual event which happened when his grandfather asked those who were of the former band to play around his grave should he die when he was coming to the end of his life and he wanted the hymn to mount ephraim played an 18th century tomb which we still we still sing and uh here is the story as told by one of his two sons who had been members of the band he often would ask us that when he died after playing so many to their last rest if out of us any should here abide and it would not task us we would with our loots play over him by his grave brim the psalm he liked best the one who sent suits mount ephraim and perhaps we should seem to him in death stream like the seraphim so as soon as i knew that his spirit was gone i thought this is due and spoke there upon i think said the vicar a red service quicker than vials out of doors in these frosts and that old-fashioned way requires a fine day hence that afternoon though never knew he that his wish could not be to get through it faster they buried the master without any tune but was said that when at the dead of next night the vicar looked out there struck on his ken thronged round about where the frost was graying the headstone grass a band all in white like the saints in church glass singing and playing the ancient stave by the choir master's grave such the tenor man told when he had grown old hardy's uncle the tenor vile and that is very redolent of hardy and i said his heart never left stinsford melstock but in truth it didn't for although his ashes lie in westminster abbey his heart is buried at stinsford and it's a wonderful place of pilgrimage in a way for his great lesson about creation and the stellar universe and the rootedness in human community there are other anniversaries today perhaps one of the most important is the birth of durufle on this day in 1902 we sang his mass yesterday for men but what is most famous is his requiem he was a perfectionist who wouldn't allow anything to be published that he didn't find totally satisfactory himself a pupil an assistant to vienne the great organist whose masses we also sing in the cathedral here so we give thanks for maurice duruufle and also i'm going to give thanks for diego the tortoise a great big giant tortoise of the hood island species in the galapagos and there were only two males left on the island and and this uh large tortoise the giant tortoise in san diego zoo diego is now 100 years old but in 1970 because of the almost threatened extinction of his particular species he was introduced into a breeding program and he fathered i think about 900 tortoises and uh the species is now safe again on the islands and protected and diego also is back there he was sent over there so in in the way of of uh uh thinking of diego we think of the way in which we protect creation in places that we know and love and have power over and it's what we're trying to do here this morning so let's say our prayers i'm now able to go on about these things too long otherwise um we're praying on this week following the baptism of jesus and the collect for the weeks speaks of that but we are also looking at in our anglican communion the diocese of aficbo in the church of nigeria and here in this diocese as we pray for justin our archbishop and for rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambus we're praying for the parish of borton under bleen very near here and gene burrows in her ministry there and all the people who live there so bring your own intentions and your prayers on this particular day eternal father who at the baptism of jesus revealed him to be your son anointing him with the holy spirit grant to us who are born again by water and the spirit that we may be faithful to our calling as your adopted children through jesus christ our lord amen so in your own words the prayer our savior taught us our father watch 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 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 [Music] 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 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 you