good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this friday the 11th of june it's in barnabas day but it's also the birthday in 1864 of the composer richard strauss who was most famous for his opera rosen cavalier and so we thought this was a day when you could enjoy roses because they're at their peak and at the moment you're looking at the lady hillingdon rose which covers the front of the house at this time of year and this is the most opulent time of its blooming this great golden rose which climbs high up but in truth i'm surrounded by roses wherever i look and some of them are just about to burst out and others are in full flower but there is a great sense of fragrance as well and we could go across the garden looking at roses in rosen cavalier it's a silver rose which is presented by the the rose cavalier as a sign of the imminent wedding of of a young girl and here are the roses but at the same time we're celebrating the saint of encouragement saint barnabas that's what his name means it was the nickname given to him by the apostles and he's one of the most attractive people in the whole of the new testament so we shall enjoy our reflection about saint barnabas it's also today of course the 11th of june the first day of the meeting in cornwall in the farthest point south west of the united kingdom in kabul's bay of the g7 leaders and other leaders who are invited there as their guests and so in our prayers we pray for decisions to be made for the welfare of our whole planet at this time and plentiful resources for those who are struggling with the weight of the pandemic in their populations at the moment and constantly struggle in poverty but those things we keep in our own prayers so let's together begin our prayers on this friday morning and we remember saint barnabas the apostle oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your faithful servants bless you they make known the glory of your kingdom blessed are you sovereign god ruler and judge of all to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of this age that is passing away may the light of your presence which the saints enjoy surround our steps as we journey on may we reflect your glory this day and so be made ready to see your face in the heavenly city where night shall be no more 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 eleventh 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 by 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 oh 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 pit before me and 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 o god above the heavens and your glory over all the earth notice that psalm has something which acts almost like a chorus just a sentence be exalted oh god above the heavens and your glory over all the earth and rather likes in john's gospel where it's always on two planes when jesus is speaking of the kingdom of heaven metaphorically above and the life here on earth metaphorically below and this is happening in this psalm first of all all the troubles are below and then the little chorus be exalted oh god above the heavens your glory over all the earth back down below they've laid a net for my feet my soul is pressed down and then suddenly the glory of heaven shines in and the psalmist says my heart is ready oh god my heart is ready i will sing and give you praise and music awakes in his heart and mind and once again the little chorus at the end but now the psalmist's mind is on the higher plane be exalted oh god above the heavens and your glory over all the earth for your loving kindness is as high as the heavens and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds special lesson for today because it's in barnabas day so we go to the acts of the apostles and i'm starting to read in chapter 11 at verse 19. now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over stephen traveled as far as phoenicia and cyprus and antioch speaking the word to no one except jews but there were some of them men of cyprus and cyrene who on coming to antioch spoke to the hellenists also preaching the lord jesus and the hand of the lord was with them and a great number who believed turned to the lord the report of this came to the ears of the church in jerusalem and they sent barnabas to antioch when he came and saw the grace of god barnabas was glad and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the lord with steadfast purpose for barnabas was a good man full of the holy spirit and of faith and a great many people were added to the lord so barnabas went to tarsus to look for saul and when he had found him he brought him to antioch and for a whole year barnabas and saul met with the church and taught a great many people and it was in antioch that the disciples were first called christians now in these days prophets came down from jerusalem to antioch and one of them named agabus stood up and foretold by the spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world and this took place in the days of the emperor claudius so the disciples determined everyone according to his ability to send relief to the brothers and sisters living in judea and they did so sending it to the elders by the hand of barnabas and saul barnabas was a good man full of the holy spirit and of faith the wonderful thing to have said about you and it's why i say that barnabas is one of the most attractive characters in the new testament but we learn quite a lot about him from the acts of the apostles early on he is from cyprus and early on in the acts of the apostles i mean we we hear that this man who was called joseph was from cyprus so a greek speaking jew because he was a levite too of the descent from the tribe of levi who served the temple the levites and at the same time when the christians were beginning to form their earliest community after the giving of the spirit we learned that there wasn't a needy person amongst them because they shared what they had and those with possessions and land sold them and laid them at the feet of the apostles and among those was barnabas the cypriot who had some land of his own and sold it and brought the proceeds and laid the proceeds at the apostles feet and we're told then that the apostles called him barnabas which means son of encouragement it's a great word encouragement a beloved of saint benedict in any community we want so much encouragement from everyone for each other and we need so much encouragement from each other to ourselves for it's one of the best gifts that we can give and those who are most intuitive and insightful are the ones who spot what kind of encouragement is best for someone it might be a physical gift or it might be simply a a word of sympathy or or else encouraging praise or thanks that you can go on and on with what encouragement clothes itself in but the necessity of it is very much part of daily life and it's quite clear why barnabas is called the son of encouragement by the way he behaves he's sent because of his greek background and also his jewish ancestry as well his his levitical ancestry he is sent to the ones who have found that there is faith amongst the hellenists as well and they're responding to the gift of the lord jesus so the church in jerusalem sends barnabas as a good ambassador and he goes and finds that this is so good that he needs help so to whom does he turn for help the one who earlier in the acts of the apostles everyone in the church was distrusting because they frightened the death of him saul but it's it's barnabas earlier on in the acts of the apostles taken saul and introduced him and almost saying i believe in this man i believe that his conversion is real and now he proves that by going to find him in tarsus and bringing him back to antioch now in antioch barnabas and saul saul's old name before he becomes the apostle paul barnabas and saul spend a fruitful year together and there's this lovely sentence until then christians have been called followers of the way says it was in christia it was in antioch that the disciples were first called christians we can go on with barnabas because we also know that when they begin their first missionary journey it's barnabus who takes his cousin john mark and mark is normally called by his second name but here john mark how do we know that he is barnabas his cousin well there we have to go to the letter of saint paul to the colossians where we where sin paul writes about mark the cousin of barnabas barnabas takes his cousin inexperienced in any of this and mark goes with paul and barnabas on the first journey but you will remember that mark loses heart she becomes fearful of all the dangers around him and fearful of his own ability and even the encouragement that no doubt barnabas could give him was not enough he went back he went home barnabas that the next time they were going on a journey wanted to take him again [Music] and paul said absolutely not and they had a sharp division we'll come to that in a bit but first of all let's think of an incident which happened and it was reddit even song yesterday afternoon the first stephen song of the feast of st barnabas an incident that happened in lystra which is in uh south eastern turkey these days uh in what was then called lyconia and barnabas and saul are there giving the good news and there is a healing which takes place and when the citizens there see the healing they say the gods have come down to us now i say this because when they name the gods then this gives us an idea of barnabas physical stature as well and the way in which i think he was perceived they called barnabas zeus in that in jupiter the chief of the gods and see paul saul as his spokesman hermes mercury and of course the apostles are horrified at this and the whole story was was set out at the reading we did it even song but it just gives us a flavor of what the presence of barnabas must have been like but then let's go on to the the next little bit of the story because when paul will not have john mark with them again no one was going to get a second chance with paul no he failed as last time this is not happening and we're told that the dispute between barnabas and paul was so sharp that in the end they decided to go their separate ways paul took silas as his new companion and barnabas with his cousin john mark giving him a second chance sailed to cyprus home ground for barnabas but it's the last we hear of barnabas in the acts of the apostles he sailed away to cyprus and there's that little snippet in colossians i have a great friend whom i respect hugely in terms of his scholarship i'm talking about father andrew mead in retirement in rhode island who was the the director of saint thomas fifth avenue who always believed and still believes that the epistle to the hebrews was written by barnabas because it's full of levitical information that barnabas would have known well and the interest in the temple and the sense of all of that so um i would give that credibility only because i trust andrew so much but it's a nice thought that the epistle to the hebrews which no scholar believes was written by paul might well have been written by this son of encouragement but most of all i think we want to take away from this all the gifts that this attractive apostle brings to the ministry in which he is engaged the sense that he gives place to saul and trusts him the sense that he's ready to give a second chance to mark the sense that all his generosity in the giving and laying of his resources at the apostles feet is there and gives him the quality of an apostle himself so his feast day is the feast day of sin barnabas the apostle now we can look at some other dates today because good dates as i said the first of them is um connected with the g7 meeting because i looked down and and saw in the list today that uh the date was the day on which this is 11th of june prince metternich died in 1859 at the age i think of about 84 but the influence of prince metternich the foreign secretary you might say of the austrian empire as the napoleonic wars were reaching their climax and then coming to a conclusion and then afterwards he became chancellor of the austrian empire and was one of the most powerful voices in the whole of europe in the beginning of the 19th century up to 1848 and metternich is very much the mover and shaker in what was called the concert of europe they were a series of congresses or conferences bit like the g7s where the leaders of the nations in europe at that time pledged themselves at the congress of vienna which was attempting to sort out the devastation that had been caused by the long long years of the napoleonic wars and the congress we remembered a few days ago because of the anniversary of its signing what i didn't say on that day was in the middle of all that the news came through that napoleon had escaped again from elba and was coming back to paris and the duke of wellington a british representative at the congress of the united had to leave vienna and come back and fight the battle of waterloo if napoleon had won that the congress of vienna would have been in shambles in fact he lost it and so the work of mettenic and the others was was then signed and ratified but prince metronic didn't want to leave it there he wanted a congress whenever there were troubles amongst the great powers and those that they would invite to the congress and so to come to a common mind this was thought to be the way forward so the congress of vienna was followed by the congress of eksa chapel the congress of verona a series of congresses whenever there were things to talk about and here's an infant league of nations which took over the whole world in that context and then united nations but also an infant concert of europe with guests and we're thinking of the g7 as leaders of nations with influence and guests that they've invited meeting for the next three days to try and iron out or talk through the problems of our planet at this time so i remember mettenic with a gladness it was part of the period of history i was i used to enjoy studying and that time when britain and austria and prussia and russia were the great powers and france was being invited back in but under a completely different type of government the monarchy there had been restored so taliran was actually there as a representative of the new bourbon king louis the 18th but all of those all of those ideas take the sense of a concert of nations forward it's not only a musical thought concert of a coming together of different instruments but a current coming together and we hope with gifts of barnabas of encouragement not only for the leaders there but for this planet all nations coming together and in in concert so that the welfare of all on this day is being talked about and encouraged well on this day too i'll i'll simply mention it we've not no time to do this we've done him not too long ago john constable the great artist of landscape mostly we think of him uh was born on the 11th of june in 1776 and his great landscapes english landscapes and also his beautiful paintings of salisbury cathedral one of the best of those is in the frick museum in fifth avenue but we remember him with thanksgiving the way in which an artist's palette with many colors can create scenes which strike our hearts with imagination and flood our spirits with encouragement and then lastly and um this is this is why we've given you all the roses this morning on this day in 1864 the composer the german composer richard strauss was born now richard strauss i said john constable with his palette could just create beautiful colors and reminiscences of scenes and moods well strauss could do that with his orchestral music he's best known i suppose for his uh opera rosen cavalier which was written in 1911 so quite early in his career because strauss died much much later on but uh he died in in the at the end of the 1940s um and at the same time we when we think of him we give thanks for the fact not only of the way in which he could he could use tone poems if you like with orchestral sounds and human voices creating atmospheres but we think of his great operas and most of those great operas had one librettist hugo von hofmann style who provided the words so that we don't know hoffmann styles name as much as we know richard strauss but he was the shall we call it the librettist using words to take the music forward and strauss was using these musical tones to describe different atmospheres sometimes they're fun sometimes they're tragic but we think also of strauss's enormous enjoyment of the high voices women's high voices and rosen cavalier ends with one of the most famous trios in operatic uh history the the trio like chavion and uh the the young bride-to-be to whom he was taking the silver rose for another the awful baron von ox and now she is going to marry octavian but his former lover the older woman the marshland is there too and the trio of the three women's voices for young octavio and his play is played by a woman's voice and played by a woman uh they're dressed as as octavia and the cavalier and the three sing the most beautiful trio and you can feel strauss's love of the high voices as that comes forward and the atmosphere of that so many on desert island discs have said oh i must have the trio from rosen cavalier at the end but i would go to the fact that strauss always loved that which was simple and so so many of his operas either end with something simple or something quite trivial and domestic and leaves you with a really good feeling so actually the end of rosen cavalier you get a little folk song sung after all that massive music little folk song sung and then a little domestic incident with a few curls of mutes and the curtain comes down and then at the same time at capriccio at the end when there's been massive passion and then that beautiful moon music and the the the um baroness singing uh and the last little incident is uh uh madam dinner is served and she walks off stage it's it's it goes back to the domestic having played a nice little folk song with the harp so if we think of that but i would say i'd go simpler than that and say that my very favorite piece of stripes is his song morning morgan or tomorrow it could be that the sun will come up again tomorrow and that is a very early work of his but the loveliest thing about strauss is the thought that in the royal albert hall on the 22nd of may 1950 a posthumous work was performed strauss had died and left four last songs and it's what they've always been called and on that date in a packed royal albert hall kirsten flagstaff with the philharmonia orchestra and wenger conducting sang for the first time the four last songs which really ring you inside out with the passion put into them so quietly and so sensitively and the sequence if i do it in english the first song spring the second september the third when falling asleep and the fourth at sunset strauss is farewell four last songs all of that gives encouragement but today particularly the lovely character of barnabas was a good man full of the holy spirit of faith and called as a a little nickname with a smile by the apostles the son of encouragement always there to give encouragement and the second chance so let's say our prayers on this particular day sin barnabas day and we are praying today for the diocese of western north carolina in the episcopal church of the united states continue to pray for the people of canada and also we pray for the g7 leaders as they meet pray for insight and and decisions for the welfare of us all and in the diocese we pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover and for tim bishop at lambeth and continuing to pray for the coastal towns and villages in sanet the area dinery there so let's say the correct force in barnabas day together bring your own intentions and your concerns bountiful god giver of all gifts who poured your spirit upon your servant barnabas and gave him grace to encourage others help us by his example to be generous in our judgments and unselfish in our service 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 are men moment of silence now for your own prayers and intercessions on this day of roses so first [Music] so the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and if 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 and encourage today and always amen it's the end of our morning prayers but we've put some richard strauss music on for those of you who would like that and first of all a wind serenade by members of the school orchestra the wind section it's opus 7 by richard strauss and then after that renee fleming singing the four last songs so if you want to listen to that then carry on and have a good day may plenty of people encourage you [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i'm [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] sorry [Applause] wow [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] 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