good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this thursday the 4th of march as we come to say our morning prayers together welcome wherever you are in the world as you will see we're giving a last chance for the snowdrops of winter to have their way with the the pictures this morning because we're thinking very much of the seasons this morning it's an anniversary vivaldi and the four seasons are much in our mind so here are the snowdrops which have cheered us as winter drew to a close at the same time we're surrounded by plants which talk about the coming of the seasons we we have uh coming spring flowers here with the hellebores still flowering through the beginning of spring but hyacinths beginning to make their way and crown imperials but in front of me lots of wild tulips and a late cyclamen still blooming there which again like the snowdrops comes in wintertime and then if we go through to uh summer we then begin to see the summer plants coming up here and even an autumn plant the opioid here which won't flower until autumn so you've got a spread of the seasons here and behind me the architecture because there's no leaves on it yet but it's like an arthur rackham type architecture and pattern of this great magnolia tree one of our magnolias as you will see fairly soon is about to flower but this is a much later one and we'll flower later on but we shall enjoy that when that time comes it's one of the lovely things of the seasons that the day lilies of summer are already beginning to sprout and the leaves of autumn which will wait for the flowers later and then the tree trunks and the architecture really of all the trees giving patterns on this morning when it's rained in the night and is set to rain again but i think we've we've caught a little dry period behind me as you'll see uh um russell and that the his hens and the guinea fowl and ducky who's having a wonderful time in the the pond that we've created for her during this we hope last few weeks of avian flu seclusion and then they'll be round again on the lawns to enjoy the coming of spring today is national book day and lest we forget it we had a really cheerful message from our little niece arabella who was going to school in spain and was dressed as a character from her favorite book cinderella beautifully dressed herself in her ball gown and toeing along a wonderful model that's been made i think with some help from her her mother and and her grandmother on this particular day uh of the coach and the white horse and the footman the mice footman and also behind a great clock showing the hour ticking on until she must must must be away from the ball because the magic ends at 12. well we'll talk about book day later on because uh it used to be on the 23rd of april that was moved because of conflicts with shakespeare's birthdays and george's day and also that children were on holiday but let's think about that later in our our prayers let's begin our prayers for this morning oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise hear our voice so lord according to your faithful love according to your judgment give us life blessed are you god of compassion and mercy to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of our sin your light breaks forth like the dawn and your healing springs up for deliverance as we rejoice in the gift of your saving help sustain us with your bountiful spirit and open our lips to sing your praise blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever [Applause] 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 sun this morning on this fourth morning of the month is psalm 19 the heavens are telling the glory of god and the firmament proclaims his handiwork one day pours out its song to another and one night unfolds knowledge to another they have neither speech nor language and their voices are not heard yet their sound has gone out into all lands and their words to the ends of the world in them has he set a tabernacle for the sun that comes forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber and rejoices as a champion to run his course it goes forth from the end of the heavens and runs to the very end again and there is nothing hidden from its heat the law of the lord is perfect reviving the soul the testimony of the lord is sure and gives wisdom to the simple the statutes of the lord are right and rejoice the heart the commandment of the lord is pure and give light to the eyes the fear of the lord is clean and endures forever the judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether more to be desired are they than gold more than much fine gold sweeter also than honey dripping from the honeycomb by them also is your servant taught and in keeping them there is great reward who can tell how often they offend oh cleanse me from my secret faults keep your servant also from presumptuous sins lest they get dominion over me so shall i be undefiled and innocent of great offence let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight o lord my strength and my redeemer wonderful juxtaposition of the sun as the sun travels through the heavens giving light for our day and then the law of the lord with all the attributes giving light for the way in which we behave ourselves to each other and to god throughout the day and those two parallel lines run through that wonderful psalm of creation and god's glory we're turning back to st john's gospel now and starting a new chapter chapter seven there is no great i am statement in chapter seven but there is as we go through it section by section and it's a long section uh chapter again as we go through there is much about the development of jesus's ministry and the atmosphere around him with which he has to work in which he has to live so we're starting at the very beginning of chapter seven and we're going from verse one to thirteen after this jesus went about in galilee he would not go about in judea because the jews were seeking to kill him now the jewish feast of tabernacles was at hand so jesus's brothers said to him leave here and go to judea that your disciples also may see the works you are doing for no one works in secret if they seek to be known openly if you do these things show yourself to the world for not even his brothers believed in him jesus said to them my time has not yet come that your time is always here the world cannot hate you but it hates me because i testify about it that its works are evil you go up to the feast i'm not going up to this feast for my time has not yet fully come after saying this jesus remained in galilee but after his brothers had gone up to the feast then he also went up not publicly but in secret the jews were looking for him at the feast and saying where is he and there was much muttering about him among the people some said he is a good man others said no he is leading the people astray yet for fear of the jews no one spoke openly of him well that gives you all kinds of clues to both how jesus is feeling the atmosphere of the family the atmosphere of rural galilee and also the strands of violence and opposition in judea and particularly in the capital city where the authorities had their base jerusalem what we learn first of all apart from the fact that jesus is staying in galilee and going about in galilee there's movement in that first sentence and his sense of not wanting to go to judea because the jews were set to kill him that's become evident in john's gospel so an atmosphere of violence but also we learn about the family habits of the galilee household that it was their custom to go up to the feasts the feasts in jerusalem we saw that in luke's gospel when we were doing that in the summer with mary and joseph taking their child up to jerusalem and here is another feast in st john's gospel it's the feast of shall we call it tabernacles i like that word because the psalmist used it for that god giving up a home to the sun in the heavens for it's a tabernacle for the sun and the tabernacles are very important for this feast was a memory of the way in which the lord brought his people out of egypt but for 40 years they they lived out in the open and had to build themselves tabernacles to live in we talk about the the tabernacle of the ark which was the place where they the name of god would be based and the ark of the covenant lived but their own cases also were tabernacles or booths that they built and still this feast was a feast where people went out into the open air and built themselves a shelter and that still goes on and that that sense of being outside at the time of harvest for this would be an autumnal feast in the northern hemisphere and the gathering the in gathering of fruitfulness and the the booze the tabernacle where people would sleep and also eat during these days of the festival which went on for several days and that was made of something that was giving proper shelter but it was decorated and the four plants became very important in this and were used as decoration and also symbolically in the feast the willow and the metal and the palm and a type of citrus let's call it a lemon tree but it's a special type of citrus and those four plants become significant in this feast of booze jesus would have been used to that it was part of the the family worship throughout the year but it was their custom to go up to the feast and the brothers says go up to the feast make yourself known if you want to show this to the world you can't do it in secret here in galilee keeping everything private it's not the way that that things become known and the evangelist puts in the clause for his brothers themselves didn't believe in him we might say yet for we know those brothers become very important after the resurrection of jesus with the development of the early church particularly in james but at the moment there's this sense of go and prove yourself and then people will believe that the 12 aren't mentioned in this at all jesus is with his family and the brothers are saying go up to jerusalem and he said no you you go up i'm staying here but he does go up secretly the greek and crypto and that is how he wants it for this beginning and we hear the whisperings of the crowd and the way they argue about him and that will continue through chapter seven for jesus finds himself secretly privately in jerusalem but he's also said this is important for the whole gospel my time has not yet come that word time becomes important we've seen it on the clock with arabella cinderella as time moves on we've seen it in the seasons here as time moves on but for jesus the important thing was that his time his kairos has a total confluence and uh absolute partnership with god's time and that's so for us all in any work we're given it's not time for that yet it's impossible to look for autumn flowers in springtime and jesus says my time is not yet remember he says that in chapter two to his mother at the uh wedding at cana of galilee my hour has not yet come here it's much more deep the word is not our as on the clock it's time the concept of time so all of these things are set in this little paragraph which gives us context but also as we hear the words of jesus gives us a clue about how we are to respond to god's time for us and that will be one of the strands we think of as we go through saint john's gospel over the next few days let's think then of various other things about this day march the 4th he's said that um it's the only day uh it works better if you say it in in the american way of saying it march 4th uh we'd say in england march the 4th um but uh it's the only day of the year that is a sentence by itself march 4th so we march 4th today in our journey and we're thinking also of the sense of the jews stressing exile for this sense of at the moment where we're reading hebrews in the evening at evensong and that the the sense of being those who seek a city which god will prepare for them an eternal city and at the same time are living in a sense in exile and singing the songs of zion in a strange land but living out god's plan and waiting for the time that is all very much part of the feast of the tabernacles the harvest the fruitfulness but also the temporary nature of citizenship here on earth and the two planes in which jesus is working metaphorically on earth and with heavenly truths on this national book day i wanted also to think of the way that we ourselves are identified for one another when you go into someone's house and you're maybe left for a moment while they make a cup of tea for you or something of that sort and you look around at the the books that are on their shelves and those books tell you something about the person maybe you go and stay with someone and the books in the bedroom or the books around the house tell you something about that person's journey they certainly do in the dinner here for us if people come there are books which were important in parts of our development and now are on the shelves and maybe aren't used a great deal and other books that are are the present reality of what we're reading and also things that we we look at to to to help with all that we're doing but there are also books that we would never be without however much we use the internet to find out information and refresh our memories there are books that we would never be without and they're different for each of us and that will be so with all of us it's a day for revisiting that and also seeing the kind of reading material we have around us because this is active for the mind but some books encourage the body to be creative like cookery books which are the best ones and we all use different ones are fairly worn and and also spotted with the things we're cooking very often in the in the kitchen but they stay with us and oftentimes you cut things out and put them inside or gardening books which sometimes have muddy fingers or i'm i think of of uh pg woodhouse novels with outdoor demsworth at branding's castle where his favorite book was whiffle on the care of a pig and to him that was a bible because his prized pig the empress of blindings absolutely we are defined by what were really shaped also by the words of others teaching us and the way in which we use the scriptures which themselves are a complete library of books you can't define the scriptures in any one category nor do they settle in money any one season or any one time and as one goes through and the pages become well summed and one has one's favorite copy of the scriptures but others to help us understand as well then all these things become gifts to our humanity and i found in the past there is a time for reading certain books maybe someone will give you a book or you inherit a book from your parents and there it is on the shelves and suddenly the day comes when it's time to read it the time and the confluence of god's time and our time and there's a time for understanding psalms maybe that we've read all our lives and suddenly on one day they speak to us time becomes important as i said 1678 vivaldi was born and his four seasons take us through the time the prayer books in olden times in latin times used to be the breviary used to be sectioned in time so you picked up one book in in winter here malice in winter and then one book in spring werner and one book next when you got to that point in summer i stever and then lastly one book in autumn autumnalis it doesn't work anymore of course because the church being international the seasons are different in different parts of the world but nevertheless the seasons and also morning and evenings govern our rhythms of life and our time and i rejoice and in vivaldi's music and we hear it often we heard the most wonderful performance of the four seasons by musica venezia in a little church almost adjacent to saint mark's in venice on a winter's night and suddenly the place became alive with the energy of that performance as it goes through the seasons and then the gentleness of the ticking clock and almost the warmth of the fire in winter all of that that people like musicians are able to conjure up what else happened on this day well nice thing probably the most well-known song in the english speaking world and many others too because it's been translated it's happy birthday to you and on this day it was first um copyrighted uh and and uh it had been sung before but on march the 4th 1924 that was first published and uh of course it's known to us all the best well and the most well-known song that you don't need a book for happy birthday to you the words are pretty simple and remember in the the the innocent days at the beginning of this lockdown a year ago we were told that we washed our hands for as long as it took to sing happy birthday and uh oh twice i think and at that point it seemed you know something simple we had no idea what lay ahead of us but then in different parts of the world it's done differently i'm told that in canada when you sing happy birthday to you of course you sing the first verse and then if it's a child uh you sing how old are you now how old are you now and go on and at the end then everyone says to the child are you one no are you two and when you get to the the age of the child all the hoorays and happiness breaks out different customs in different countries and probably canadians will say no it's not like that and tell me because i've never actually been to somebody's birthday party in canada but i know that the song goes right across the world and that is something that binds us rather like let's come to another image the fourth bridge the railway bridge i'm talking about was opened today by edward prince of wales who actually planted a turkey oak here which still lives in and is a great tree in the in the precinct but he he opened the fourth railway bridge in 1890 spanning something and joining the two sides rather as i spoke about the seven bridge the other day or the clifton suspension bridge which was really part of my childhood bridges are hugely important to us as our seasons on this day in 1193 saladin the sultan died and he was an educated and and really wonderful man um he had been the the person that richard the first the lionheart was fighting but richard's archbishop hubert walter who is buried here actually struck up a conversation with uh saladin and they had a dialogue which ended fruitfully with saladin allowing under certain circumstances christians to be able to be pilgrims again in jerusalem and so we look at hubert walter's tomb as a way of of having dialogue with someone which at a deep level uh who would you might disagree with but at the same time it's not only fighting which gets through very often it's the the kind of conversation and diplomacy which saint francis had in the same way when he went to the holy land so we remember that and so many other things um quickly through them in 1989 the lovely glass pyramid which is really the ticket office of the louvre was uh and designed by the famous architect iron pay was inaugurated by president mitterong in 1681 king charles ii granted the charter for william penn to found a colony which of course became the state of pennsylvania and uh then um in 1226 this gives perspective of time on this day jupiter and saturn reached a confluence and shone together as one bright star and that happened on that day in 1226 and didn't happen again until december the 21st last december in 2020 it shows how time has to wait for confluences we've become bright in the heavens 1951 chris ray the english singer-songwriter was born and uh fletcher particularly loves his road to hell and uh has uh um rear i'm told it's pronounced she's telling me getting everything wrong this morning and um that that actually gives me cause to remember the old adage the road to hell is paved with good intentions a lesson for us all as the sun takes its journey around the clouds and the law of god takes the journey across the world in our own lives as the psalmist says 1933 franklin delano roosevelt uh was inaugurated this was the old date march the 4th for the inauguration of the american president he came in in the middle of the great depression but led the country through that and then through the second world war as well and so fdr is on our hearts and minds this morning 1824 the royal national lifeboat institute formed by sir william holiday and we of course give thanks for that so many things as we come to say our prayers but i wanted to to say today that we are in our prayers now we'll come to them now praying uh for the recovery of a a very well-known local figure richard dyer and he and annette and the family run the wingham country market and we use that and outside that market a horrendous accident of two great lorries happened on i think on monday and richard was involved uh in his tractor and is now very very seriously ill in a london hospital so we pray for him this morning and his recovery and for annette and the family at this time and we bring our own intentions and prayers wherever we are in the world and let's see who we're praying for today in the anglican communion we're praying for the missionary diocese of aru in the bendel province of the church of nigeria and remembering all the people there and those who minister to them pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover and for tim bishop at lambus and the historic church of saint mary in castro actually in dover castle which is served by volunteer chaplains and we name them jonathan russell bob coles peter sherrid polly mason kevin jacobs pray for the community that worship there when churches are open and pray for all of us that churches may soon be open to congregations again as the pandemic is gradually seen off let's say the prayer for today almighty god you show to those who are in error the light of your truth that they may return to the way of righteousness grant to all those who are admitted into the fellowship of christ's religion that they may reject those things that are contrary to their profession and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same through jesus christ our lord amen so we say together the prayer our savior taught us in whichever language we normally 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 as we say our own prayers on this day christ give you grace to grow in holiness to deny yourself take up your cross daily and follow him and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you on those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen [Music] [Music] you