good morning and welcome to canterbury cathedral on this morning of thursday the 18th of june it's a very wet morning and we've sought shelter in the greenhouse with tiger who's just had his breakfast here but outside the rain steady rain has been falling through the night and you may hear it on the roof as we say our morning prayers it's very welcome rain to all who are gardeners in this part of england they've been waiting for it and it's falling steadily in the rain the way that rain that gardeners like does so we give thanks for the seasons across the world as we say our morning prayers and wherever you are be welcome here in canterbury our prayers are for you and we're really glad to have you with us oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise visit us with your salvation and sustain us with your gracious spirit blessed are you creator of all to you be praise and glory forever 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 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 18th morning of the month is psalm 91 it's one of those we always say at complin and there we would use the book of common coverdale translation of the sound this morning we use the more modern version of the psalm and as with all passages of scripture it's good to compare how it feels because both versions give us different feelings about the psalm itself whoever dwells in the shelter of the most high and abides under the shadow of the almighty shall say to the lord my refuge and my stronghold my god in whom i put my trust for he shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence he shall cover you with his wings and you shall be safe under his feathers his faithfulness shall be your shield and butler you shall not be afraid of any terror by night nor of the arrow that flies by day of the pestilence that stalks in darkness nor of the sickness that destroys it noonday there are thousand fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand yet it shall not come near you your eyes have only to behold to see the reward of the wicked because you have made the lord your refuge and the most high your stronghold there shall no evil happen to you neither shall any plague come near your tent for he shall give his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways they shall bear you in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone you shall tread upon the lion and adder the young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot because they have set their love upon me therefore i will deliver them i will lift them up because they know my name they will call upon me and i will answer them i am with them in trouble i will deliver them and bring them to honor with long life will i satisfy them and show them my salvation so we turn to our reading of the gospel of saint luke and we find ourselves in the 12th chapter beginning at the 32nd verse jesus is talking to his disciples fear not little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom sell your possessions and give to the needy provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail where no thief approaches and no moth destroys for where your treasure is there will your heart be also and stay dressed for action keep your lamps burning be like those who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes truly i say to you he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table and he will come and serve them if he comes in the second watch or in the third and finds them awake blessed are those servants but know this that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming he would not have left his house to be broken into you also must be ready for the son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect the first sentence of that gospel passage from saint luke verse 32 is one of the most beautiful in all the in all the new testament fear not little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom it's a present tense the gift is for now what it means may unfold and unfold and unfold in this life and the next but the promise is for now to that little worried group of disciples who are following jesus and sensing his tension as he wrestles with his own vocation as our messiah on the way to jerusalem sensing what he must suffer there and knowing that he must have the human courage to face that suffering and pain and crushing of his human life in the belief of the gift of what lies ahead and on the way when he's been addressing the crowds he says this to his disciples fear not little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom no earning no nothing just the receipt of the most wonderful and most glorious gift and i don't know what they must have been thinking then but i'm sure they didn't realize what had just happened william temple said when i pray coincidences happen well i'm not sure that's because he was praying or because prayer and the development of his inner life day by day gave his eyes the power to notice the coincidences as they happen confluences which happen in our lives as on so many days this is a day full of anniversaries and we can look back 80 years in this nation to 1940 on this day when france had fallen the prime minister stood in the house of commons in the afternoon and made his speech ending with the phrase this was their finest hour it can't have felt like that at that time there must have been the kind of fear that the disciples had about what was about to happen next but at the same time it's a day when confluences happened there was a a monk here in the monastery of christchurch our cathedral church in canterbury here which we live in is a community now his name was jervis and he was the chronicler of the community he went on to be sacristan and sacristan to hubert walter richard the first archbishop whom he had taken with him and who had met saladin the great leader of the turks in a in a a kind of conversation where both respected the other gervais was a chronicler he wrote down things that happened and jervis wrote that on this day in 1178 that's eight years after the murder of beckett which all those monks had witnessed and were present at the burial of their archbishop and the fire which happened later and on this day five monks came and reported that they saw the moon explode in the sky it must have been a very frightening sight to them and then gradually the moon which was clearly crescent-shaped from the way they described it returned to its normality it's described in great detail and people have thought that it was a huge meteorite crashing into the moon and exploding but that would have caused all kinds of meteorites to in great storms to come towards the earth and and no arabic or chinese or or european chronicles chronicle that event on earth and yet this was a definite definite happening in the monks eyes and jervis writes it down in detail and now it is thought much more likely that there was a confluence in their eyes as they looked up over the scene on that clear night between a huge meteorite exploding near the earth 70 miles up or so and in their eyes just in this part of the world a confluence with the the crescent moon which caused them to think the explosion was on the moon itself who can say but it was one of those wonders which gave illustration to gervais writings about this community at this time at the same time a confluence occurred on this day in 1858 when darwin who had been on the beagle 20 years before and had come home to a very private life with his studies his notes his specimens and everything else was given a prompt by alfred wallis a very different kind of naturalist from a very poor background who'd made his own way who'd gone to the amazon rainforest and had years of study there in danger of his life and found himself in an open boat all these things and was now in what is now malaysia and sent his notes to darwin and the confluence between their separate modes of thinking gave the great naturalists the prompt to share what was his gift and which had lain hidden for more than 20 years confluences are important to us and we have confluences in our lives when that sentence of our lord fear not little flock is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom comes real in the present tense and we realize something of the gift the whole gift is too wonderful for us but something of the gift in our human life the passage we read is always read at the ordination of deacons the threefold ministry of the church gives us deacons priests bishops but when you're ordained deacon you never cease to be a deacon a deacon is one who serves and that passage is all about serving the lord saying when the master of the house comes and the servants are ready and the expectation is they will get ready and serve him he'll sit down and they will serve him but no it's back to front the confluence of service of deacon and the one who needs to be served is absolute but the invitation is to the servants sit down and i will serve you that is in tune with our lord's whole ministry that ministry of loving self-giving which is the most important principle of the kingdom who we receive as a gift this morning i can go on talking about it but one of our great poets george herbert has done it much better than i and so before we say our prayers hear how he expressed that love made me welcome yet my soul drew back guilty of dust and sin but quick-eyed love observing me grows slack from my first entrance in drew near to me sweetly questioning if i lacked anything a guest i answered worthy to be here love said you shall be he i the unkind ungrateful oh my dear i cannot look on thee love took my hand and smiling did reply who made the eyes but i truth lord but i have marred them let my shame go where it does deserve and no you not says love who bore the blame my dear then i will serve you must sit down says love and taste my meat so i did sit and eat fear not little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom on this day we pray in our anglican communion for the diocese of nicaragua in central america and for sturdy downs the bishop there and his people the diocese of argentina in south america and gregory venables who have strong canterbury connections family connections and all his people and argyle in the isles in scotland and kevin peters pearson the bishop there and all his people here in the diocese of canterbury we pray for the church of saint peter and saint paul at borden and the people there in that parish we on their invitation pray for their priests robert lane and colin johnson their readers janet beale jill pets christine ford and the ordinand jane barker and all their people there pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover for tim bishop at lambeth in their episcopal ministry the colleague for this day oh god the strengths of all those who put their trust in you mercifully accept our prayers because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without you grant us the help of your grace that in the keeping of your commandments we may please you both in will and deed through jesus christ our lord amen the son collects keep us good lord under the shadow of your mercy and as you have bound us to yourself in love leave us not who call upon your name but grant us your salvation made known in the cross of jesus christ our lord amen so we say together the prayer that our lord taught us to say in whatever language and in whatever way we normally do 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 lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen so we have a moment of silence and ask that we may receive the gift of the kingdom which is offered to us and that our inner life may make us strong as the confluence made darwin strong to leave the greenhouse and use his research and what is his research and all of that as a gift for others to use as they may 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 and remain with you always amen