good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of wednesday the 8th of september it's a beautiful morning and in our calendar and in many churches across the world traditionally this has been the day when we remember the births of the blessed virgin mary and it couldn't be a better morning for remembering that it's a absolutely perfectly blue sky and lovely late summer sunshine almost autumn sunshine now with the the golden flowers flowering in this herbaceous border where i'm sitting on this particular morning the school term has begun today and from time to time you might hear children's voices in the background it's a an excited sound and we're praying for school children right across the world on this day as we remember the beginning of a new academic year rather different from last year and we're hoping that there will be uh fewer interruptions this year hopefully with the pandemic lessening here in england this is a morning when we want to remember various uh aspects of life here but but we are looking also at the flowers of the border here with their many colors and that will form part of our reflection a bit later on you can perhaps guess why from the story that we're going to be reading but the brightest colors here are belonging to saldago the the golden flowers here which we used at home to call farewell summer it's sometimes called aaron's rod as well but the bright flowers always used to signal the coming of the end of summer and the sunshine on them it was a beautiful golden sunrise this morning but you've also got here the huge banana plants and lovely dahlias and and various accum plants different colors around all through the border japanese anemones and all sorts of flowers that you will recognize from different parts of the world so that as we um look at them uh there's ginger flowers they're growing up uh i can see so many so you perhaps can spot them as we go through and ultramaria here in in great color so as we go along and there's even a little line of fever view here looking like little daisies along the path where i'm sitting just a lovely morning to be outside so please feel welcome here wherever you are in the world we continue to have in our minds scenes of danger where people are needing to be rescued from various areas but let's do a few snapshots of we've done around the world uh just taken at random and we think of the people of belarus today where maria koleski nikova has been imprisoned and has heightened the political tension in that nation so we remember them there we remember also that the duchess of cornwall has been created the patron of nigeria's first sexual assault referral center and we we pray for that that center and for the people of nigeria this morning let's turn our minds to to the sudan where bodies have been found floating down the river from tigre and the ethiopian war to the horror of the people finding bodies of children and women and and and men young men who have been evident signs of torture on the bodies and so we remember that too scenes of distress human activity human cruelty but also scenes of wonder scenes of danger sequoia trees which live for thousands of years have become endangered by the climate changes and in california uh they used to cover the whole earth but now there's a danger actually of their extinction with the climate change which causes us then to remember that the world leaders are going to come together to make decisions for climate change and three of our christian leaders pope francis the ecumenical patriarch of constantinople bartholomew and the archbishop of canterbury have issued a joint statement ahead of the world leaders climate change conference it's under the heading listen to the cry of the earth and i'll just read a sentence from their joint statement we call on everyone whatever their belief or worldview to endeavor to listen to the cry of the earth and of people who are poor examining their behavior and pledging meaningful sacrifices for the sake of the earth which god has given us well a good lesson on which to start our prayers this morning oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise you laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands blessed are you sovereign god creator of heaven and earth to you be praise and glory forever as your living word eternal in heaven assume the frailty of our mortal flesh may the light of your love be born in us to fill our hearts with joy as we sing 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 eighth morning of the month is psalm 40. i waited patiently for the lord he inclined to me and heard my cry he brought me out of the roaring pit out of the mire and clay he set my feet upon a rock and made my footing sure he has put a new song in my mouth a song of praise to our god many shall see and fear and put their trust in the lord blessed is the one who trusts in the lord who does not turn to the proud that follow a lie great are the wonders you have done o lord my god how great you're designed for us there is none that can be compared with you if i were to proclaim them and tell of them they would be more than i am able to express sacrifice and offering you do not desire but my ears you have opened burnt offering and sacrifice for sin you have not required then said i lo i come in the scroll of the book it is written of me that i should do your will o my god i delight to do it your law is within my heart i have declared your righteousness in the great congregation behold i did not restrain my lips and that o lord you know your righteousness i have not hidden in my heart i have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation i have not concealed your loving kindness in truth from the great congregation do not withhold your compassion from me o lord let your love and your faithfulness always preserve me for innumerable troubles have come about me my sins have overtaken me so that i cannot look up they are more in number than the hairs of my head and my heart fails me be pleased o lord to deliver me o lord make haste to help me let them be ashamed and altogether dismayed who seek after my life to destroy it let them be driven back and put to shame who wish me evil that those who keep insults upon me be desolate because of their shame that all who seek you rejoice in you and be glad that those who love your salvation say always the lord is great though i am poor and needy the lord cares for me you are my helper and my deliverer oh my god make no delay so we return now to the book of genesis and the story changes today we've we've still got jacob present but now in verse 37 the story of joseph the son of his beloved rachel is begun so chapter 37 and i'm reading verses 1 to 11. jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings in the land of canaan these are the generations of jacob joseph being 17 years old was pastoring the flock with his brothers he was a boy with the sons of bilhah and zilpah his father's wives and joseph brought a bad report of his brothers to their father now israel loved joseph more than any other of his sons because he was the son of his old age and he made him a coat of many colors but when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him now joseph had a dream and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more he said to them hear this dream that i have dreamed behold we were binding sheaves in the field and behold my sheaf arose and stood upright and behold your sheaves gathered round it and bowed down to my sheaf his brother said to him are you indeed to reign over us or are you indeed to rule over us so they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said behold i have dreamed another dream behold the sun the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me but when he told it to his father and to his brothers his father rebuked him and said to him what is this dream that you have dreamed shall i and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you and his brothers were jealous of him but his father kept the saying in his mind well it's hardly surprising that joseph who was the great favorite of his father not only because he was the son of his old age but because he was the son of rachel his beloved the wife whom he had first met at the well and longed for her and then had worked the 14 years with laban his uncle and then after that of course rachel found it difficult to conceive and we heard how finally she conceived and bore joseph and then when they were traveling she bore her second son benjamin and died in childbirth so that she was buried at besleyhem and all those things are in jacob's heart so that joseph becomes a favorite and he signals that favoritism by giving joseph a coat of many colours that's the translation of the greek septuagint which the early church would have used as its old testament and quite often now a modern translation will call it something else a coat with long sleeves or something of that sort and then underneath a little asterisk saying uh hebrew uncertain traditional rendering a coat of many colors well i'm staying with a coat of many colors because of course it's in all our minds in a wonderful way as a sign of joseph and we'll come later to that but i'm causing the flowers this morning to be our illustration of the coat of many colors and the love that jacob brought to joseph in whom probably he saw the face of rachel his wife who had died in childbirth with benjamin those two sons joseph and benjamin who are natural brothers will play a great part in the story but at the moment the older brothers of leia and the two maids uh are out in the fields and we notice here the growing up of a completely different kind of culture for this is a farming culture where fields and sheaves of wheat have been sown as well as flocks pastured and we see almost a different kind of society building up we shall see that as we go through this story of joseph for truly the story of joseph takes us right through to the end of the book of genesis chapter 50. but at the same time we are putting our foot on the first rung of the ladder of one of the great stories i always think there are two huge stories in the old testament which are mightily enjoyable as they're told one is the story of joseph and his brothers all the way through and the other is the story of david and the whole house of david and those two stories are wonderful stories to tell they're stories that stay in the mind they're stories which many of us know not by heart but thinking yes that's the story of joseph how it unfolds or that's the story of the family of david how it unfolds and it goes through all the vicissitudes of human life there are mistakes made there's violence there is uh feelings towards one another of jealousy there's feelings towards one another of love and support and companionship we are in human society and here in the two dreams that joseph has we have a sign of that we were out in the fields reaping and binding sheaves and you remember how in old times the stooks as we call them of the sheaves were were bound together in a particular way and then leaned together before they were taken in to form the the what we would call haymire's of of of building all of those up with hay or uh settling the straw of the when when the um that the wheat was beaten out of it and winnowed all of those part of settled life because they're sowing seed and they're reaping a harvest we were out in the sh in the fields binding sheaves and my sheath stood upright and your sheaves bowed down to mine well that's not going to be a very popular story for his brothers clearly and their jealousy of him and their hatred of him grew but it does show that joseph the dreamer as his brothers began to call him had a prophetic gift and that will be massively important later on and also the the the concept of dreams whereby people receive insights into their own role or messages is one that goes right through the scriptures the other joseph at the beginning of the gospel of saint matthew joseph the husband of mary who dreams a dream and in his dreams several times he is warned by an angel in his dreams to take mary and the new child into the safety of egypt going down into egypt almost this joseph who himself will go down into egypt is a type as we call it of that new testament story but let's think of him as the dreamer and the two dreams are spectacular out in the wheat field and then the sense of him standing and the sun and the moon and the the 11 stars bowing down to him and jacob reproving him for that and it's a sense of of saying how can you possibly have a good relationship with your brothers when you tell stories of your dreams like that but at the same time rather as on this day of her birthday we think of the way in which in st luke's gospel mary keeps things and ponders them in her heart jacob ponders the fact that joseph is being given these dreams well let's let's look at the way in which this attractive story has taken people's imagination and i want to start with the great german novelist thomas mann who wrote enormously significant novels and writing them at a time of great tension in europe himself having to flee from germany when hitler came to power and relocate to switzerland taking czechoslovakian citizenship and then going from switzerland over to the united states and returning later on to to switzerland but his novels are novels of enormous scholarship thoughtfulness some of them are what we might call novellas little stories and in that you might think of death in venice which was made into a film and a great opera the visconti but also the benjamin britain opera just a little novella but it's none of those i'm thinking of this morning for thomas mann's greatest work in his own mind was called and is called joseph and his brothers it's a vast work some of you may have read it and i certainly have read it but uh waited for the wonderful translation by john e woods there was an earlier translation which was rather stiff and i was told by german friends it didn't capture the way in which the prose spoke in german but the translation by john e woods is a much better one at capturing that if you're going to set out about reading it set off to read it then prepare yourself for a very long journey indeed which takes concentration and you might want to do what i did with don quixote i think i've explained that in the past i bought a fairly inexpensive copy and cut it into bits so that in my mind i was thinking i'm reading this section and i'm reading that section and in the end got through and was glad that i did but joseph and his brothers is itself divided into four parts and thomas mann took 16 years to write it and he bases the whole story on the details of the emotions found and the society in which joseph found himself both at the beginning with his father and all his brothers in that farming community and then in the depths of despair in prisons in egypt and then in of course the life which comes after that and the 16 years can be dated through so the first section of the book is called the stories of jacob and thomas mann wrote that from 1926 to 1930 and it was published soon after separately and then the next section was called the young joseph and he wrote that from 1926 to sorry from 1931 to 1932 and then joseph in egypt 1932 to 1936 when he found himself exiled because of hitler having taken over germany and thomas mann going to switzerland and taking czech citizenship as well and then finally the last section joseph the provider and that was written in the united states between 1940 and 1943 so that if you like it was written between 1926 and 1943 and published between in the four sections 1933 and 1943 but now you can buy that in many editions and you find yourself being led deep in wonderful descriptive language of every infinite detail of the story of joseph on the way through and you feel it's a thomas mann meditation on this vast canvas in early times and all the characters are there it's quite faithful to the story itself but it adds many details and it also adds imagination about how people well were feeling which gives it a a a modern feel as well but the story of joseph does have a much more modern feel than any of the stories in genesis that we've been dealing with so far and as we read it there will be a sense of of yes i understand that or i i can i can feel how that felt at the time it goes from glad scenes to dark scenes to to depress scenes but let's capture it now in a completely different way for the way in which many people know this best children and then as they've grown up through uh younger people and people who've watched their children is the way in which tim rice and andrew lloyd webber captured the story in joseph and the amazing technicolor dream coach it's why i'm loathed to give up the translation from the septual gint of the coat of many colours because in people's minds that coat of many colours is identified with all the songs that they know that they sang probably in school plays it was written first of all in 1968 as a 15-minute cantata a pop cantata for collet court school and then after that in 1972 a 35-minute musical for the edinburgh festival so uh andrew lloyd webber and tim rice expanded and expanded it and expanded till they got to their full version which appeared in broadway in 1982 has been filmed several times now and both donnie osmond and also more more more more recently jason donovan have played the part of joseph and the songs of that we remember many of them are in our heads they're certainly in my head first the first song of joseph's coach the coat of many colors and then probably the the most famous song of all any dream will do and the minute i i mention that then the tune comes into my head i close my eyes drew back the curtain to see for certain what i thought i knew you all know that very well i'm sure and then lastly close every door to me all of that when joseph is shut in prison but there are wonderful pharaoh rock songs and i've seen versions where pharaoh dressed as elvis presley is is actually singing his song and the children loving doing it and then more senior children doing it but then when it appears as a broadway or west end show it's had so many revivals then the story becomes apparent and the incidence of the story and the sense of when donny osmond uh played this uh joan collins playing potiphar's wife becomes something which stays in the imagination we're talking of a modern story unfolding for us and we've just opened it up this morning turning the first pages of section two of thomas mann's great story but also the pages of the musical score of the andrew lloyd webber tim rice wonderful musical joseph and the the amazing technicolor dream coach it's a musical morning today september the 8th because on the 8th of september 1841 the czech composer bohemian composer at that time and that was the austrian empire when he was born in 1841 antonin vorjak was born and his music because it it it takes the folk songs of his native moravia and bohemia and and turns them into beautiful symphonies and and and songs in opera and also piano duets which are lovely to play but also his skill at creating and let's remember that on this day of the blessed virgin mary his starbuck martyr the mother beneath the cross which he composed in 1880 probably his most famous symphony is from the new world the new world symphony as it called and that's taking tunes from a completely different continent and weaving them into a symphony when he was there in the united states also he wrote his very famous cello concerto but there's so much that he wrote tiny pieces like the humoresque which we we know perfectly well the seventh humerus violin and piano and then slavonic dances if you play the piano and you're able to play piano duets all of you would have played the slavonic dances which are so exciting to play in piano duet and you feel that the the four hands at the piano are making the most wonderful sounds and they're lovely dancing sounds from the vorjack but it's not the only musical anniversary today because this also on the 8th of september 1949 is the day on which richard strauss the composer died we've spoken about him often and the gift that he left of his four last songs which were his final gift and they were performed posthumously and have become intensely intensely popular but just as thomas mann felt that joseph and his brothers was his most famous work and his best work perhaps not most famous but his best work so strauss remember how rather like haydn when the french officer as part of the army occupying the vienna knocked at his door and went in and and uh uh he knew who was in there and and sang the arya because he was a tennis singer of creation to hayden to show he honoured the composer so when the allied forces knocked on the door of richard strauss's house and strauss came to the door in old age he simply said i am richard strauss the composer of derozan cavalier and the american officer knew it once the composer so it's quite clear that strauss with his wonderful long and and a comic opera in many ways derozan cavalier with his beautiful music some very simple based on songs and some very complicated and some based on lovely viennese dance tunes it's quite clear his heart was in rosen cavalier at that time because he knew people knew it and loved it amongst all the things he himself had written for me his really simple song morgan morning and the sense of a new sunrise being there to awaken the gift of a new day is one of my favorite probably my favorite piece of all of his very simple and just a song and a simple accompaniment as well so let's say our prayers on this particular day when we have so many things to remember and we here are i'm thinking i'll just look at the list of of uh today we're thinking of the diocese of enugu north in the church of nigeria in the enugu province and also in the diocese as we pray for justin our archbishop and rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambeth we are praying for the benefits which call themselves the six because they are six churches six villages heart clip iwade lower halstow newington stockbury and up church we pray for julian staniforth and amanda lane and simeon neville in their ministry there in those beautiful villages with those lovely churches in that part of kent we ourselves have a name to mention from our own garden congregation whom we mentioned before betty mcneil who is a deacon of christchurch cathedral in victoria in british columbia and we're remembering her because her cancer has returned very severely so betty we are praying for you this morning as a congregation right across the world the garden congregation to which you belonged and praying that god will hold you in his hands as as the severity of your illness is returned so let's bring your own prayers your own names the people that you yourselves are thinking of this morning as we use the prayer for this birth of the blessed virgin mary almighty and everlasting god who stooped to raise fallen humanity through the childbearing of blessed mary grant that we who have seen your glory revealed in our human nature and your love made perfect in our weakness may daily be renewed in your image and conform to the pattern of your son jesus christ our lord amen say the prayer our savior taught us in whatever language you 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 now for your own prayers on this day [Music] come on uh uh this is a morning of new birth because you perhaps have noticed that jane our white turkey we've mentioned once or twice has been missing and then would reappear and they go missing again it's been sitting on eggs in a very thick part of the shrubbery here and we discovered where she was and this morning she has appeared walking proudly through the garden followed by not a young turkey but a white keat which is a young guinea fowl and there may be more to come but the the guinea fowl are desperate uh because they they actually lay eggs and then expect someone else to sit on them and the turkey is obliged in a great way because jane is a great mother so we are um host to a newborn keat walking around behind a proud mother we're leaving you with two images of great color one of this lovely herbaceous border on this autumn uh late summer morning and the other of joseph's great technicolored coat symbol of his father's great love for him carried on from his great love from rachel 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 oh so okay yes [Music] [Music] uh yes oh yes yes you