good morning and welcome to the dinery garden on this tuesday the 27th of july and here we are looking again at golden flowers because the olympians continue and all across the world you'll be following your own particular teams but this seems to be the morning of the three toms here because uh tom daley and tom pidcock and tom dean have all got golden meadows medals and at the same time duncan scott's got a silver so all these things are are um are causing us to be cheerful on this particular morning and at the same time we're praying of course for areas of the world we think of australia in in lockdown at the moment with the the pandemic and other areas which are beginning to open up a little we continue to pray for those areas of the world suffering from natural disasters of of fire or flood and you will have images in your own mind but on this morning we come to say our prayers in the garden under a blue sky earlier in matins in the cathedral there was heavy rain going on outside but it's gone away and so here we are in a lovely fresh smelling scene and we bid you welcome wherever you are in the world and ask you to bring your own prayers on this occasion as russell greets the morning with his crow oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the day star dawn in our hearts and triumph over the shades of night 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 and 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 and 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 this morning on this 27th morning of the month is one of the short pilgrim psalms which span the 27th day of the month morning and evening and i'm choosing psalm 122 and i'll say why afterwards i was glad when they said to me let us go to the house of the lord and now our feet are standing within your gates o jerusalem jerusalem built as a city that is at unity in itself vither the tribes go up the tribes of the lord as is decreed for israel to give thanks to the name of the lord for there are set the thrones of judgment the thrones of the house of david o pray for the peace of jerusalem may they prosper who love you peace be within your walls and tranquility within your palaces for my kindred and companions sake i will pray that peace be with you for the sake of the house of the lord our god i will seek to do you good it's a pilgrim sound of the gladness of those who travel to jerusalem particularly at festival time but on this occasion we're now going to go back to our reading of the gospel of saint matthew where we left off yesterday and find that it's anything but a day of thanksgiving and gladness particularly in this reading for peter himself i'm taking up from exactly where we left off yesterday in chapter 26 of saint matthew's gospel and verse 57 then those who had seized jesus led him to caiaphas the high priest where the scribes and the elders had gathered and peter was following him at a distance as far as the courtyard of the high priest and going inside he sat with the guards to see the end now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against jesus that they might put him to death but they found none their many false witnesses came forward at last two came forward and said this man said i am able to destroy the temple of god and to rebuild it in three days and the high priest stood up and said have you no answer to make what is it that these men testify against you [Music] but jesus remained silent and the high priest said to him i adore you by the living god tell us if you are the christ the son of god jesus said to him you have said so but i tell you from now on you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven then the high priest tore his robes and said he has uttered blasphemy what further witnesses do we need you have now heard his blasphemy what is your judgment they answered he deserves death then they spat in his face and struck him and some slapped him saying prophesy to us you christ who is it that struck you now peter was sitting outside in the courtyard and a servant girl came up to him and said you also were with jesus the galilean but he denied it before them all saying i do not know what you mean and when he went out to the entrance another servant girl saw him and she said to the bystanders this man was with jesus of nazareth and again he denied it with an oath i do not know the man after a little while the bystanders came up and said to peter certainly you two are one of them for your accent betrays you then peter began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear i do not know the man and immediately the crowed and peter remembered the saying of jesus before the crows you will deny me three times and he went out and wept bitterly this is not only jesus's story it's also peter's story and the sound of the growing is the sound that peter from that moment onwards probably for the rest of his life as morning broke that sound was something that would have brought him back to that moment despite all the forgiveness later there are things that one can't erase from the memory and sounds and sense that come back to one and prompt one in a different way of course but for the moment let's look at this passage and see what has happened this is a hurried trial it's not usual for the council the sanhedrin to sit in the middle of the night they're sitting in the high priest's palace it's easier for him to have that there caiaphas and he's gathered those of different political persuasions sadducees like himself pharisees lawyers and important citizens who sit on the sanhedrin and they are set to try jesus because caiaphas has decided that he must be out of the way by the time the feast begins or there could be desperate trouble which could upset the uneasy balance of power between the roman governor and the high priestly authorities in jerusalem [Applause] let's follow their peta for the last time we met the disciples they'd all forsaken jesus and fled and peter regains a little bit of his courage and follows at a distance right into the courtyard of the high priest's house and begins to watch what's going on out there and the trial proceeds according to the way in which mark tells it as well the gospel of saint mark is at this sort of basis of all of this and as the trial proceeds then it seems quite clear that jesus is not going to give them the evidence they need he meets them first in silence and then with two prophecies it's a it's a a counter statement to what the high priest has said and he's he's endured jesus by the the strongest in adjournment he can actually give i enjoy you by the living god are you the christ the son of god and jesus says you say that i am and then he quotes psalms as is so often the case with the way he he is going forward he quotes first of all psalm psalm 110 lord said to my lord sit at my right hand and then secondly the concept of the son of man in the book of daniel coming in power now this son of man the title that jesus so much wants to have uh to use for himself in terms of the way in which it's set out is a a composite term for the the perfect representative of our humanity jesus in his humanity the son of man or um the the representative of humanity because those words are not gender-specific in the way in which that works in the ancient language and the son of man title of course comes from those images in the book of daniel where power is given to one like a son of man and a representative of humanity jesus is lifting humanity to a new dimension and restoring to it the dignity and gift of the spirit of the creator and the image of the creator but meanwhile in the courtyard outside terrible things are happening to peter first of all in the voice of a little maidservant one of the maids of the high priest's household he hears an accusation you're one of them too i saw you with them there's the inference now you have to remember here is a a galilean who had always before no doubt with his family as with jesus own family as a boy come up to jerusalem with a sense of huge excitement for the festival and the holiness of the place the sophisticated nature of the doctors and society in jerusalem in judea and now he is confronted as a galilean by the servant of the high priest albeit one of the serving maids and his courage fails him and he denies we enter into terrible lies at this point lies which can easily be disproved by those standing around and then the second time peter has gone out slightly farther away into the outer courtyard now and in mark's gospel it's the same maid who comes up and said surely it was you i know that but here in matthew's gospel he makes it into a different servant and then peter begins to get more and more angry about this and to make more and more lies which he underlines with cursing and swearing and invokes the curse on himself and the bystanders themselves hearing him saying all these things is but your accent gives you a way you must be one of them what are you doing here you're a galilean and peter then tells the biggest liable i don't even know the man and at that point the crows and peter remembers what jesus has said in luke's gospel luke places him within sight of the lord and there's that phrase and the lord turned and looked at peter but we have actually to remember that that each gospel is significant from the person writing it specific here we are with matthew and matthew adds the words he went outside and wept and the word is added bitterly for this is a complete breakdown of everything he is in a mental physical and spiritual turmoil at this point and here we say farewell to peter in matthew's gospel for the moment uh let's look at some of the dates because um i i think that they can be important to us one of them 1054 seaward the earl of northumbria invaded scotland and defeated the king of scotland macbeth the scottish play of shakespeare whom we're told actors have a superstition about mentioning the name of the play well i'm mentioning the name of the chief character this morning because macbeth in that story being told by shakespeare is a complexity of terrible temptations and in the end the complete breakdown in mental stress and in every other kind of way that that macbeth feels in the beginning we see the forces of evil and the tempt tempters portrayed by the three witches i i know macbeth really well as a as a play because twice in studying english at school we did macbeth once when i was probably i'm 12 or 13 and after that at an a-level stage so much later 17 and 18 and that play when when i hear it read lots of the words stay in my head but certainly the scenes do and certainly the witches when they begin um and when shall we three meet again in thunder lightning or in rain when the hurley bell is done when the battles lost and won all of that come to mind and i'm taken straight back to those occasions when we would enact it in a classroom situation and read the parts as we went around and they were given out at particular times and one remembers best of all i remember best of all that scene where macbeth himself confronted by the witches is at that time an honorable and even gentle character despite being a warlord but there he is having won a battle and then you come to the scene where lady macbeth is reading of that and saying this is what could be ours she's by herself but i'm too afraid of his nature he's too full of the and the wonderful words milk of human kindness so she sets out to steal her husband that's i'm not not not stealing the the word meaning theft i mean be make him more steely put a bit more metal into him and when he arrives home then of course her plan to murder duncan when he is their guest the king and macbeth resisting all of that and even to the to the the the end um of of this conversation there's that moment when duncan's actually staying and macbeth says to his wife um we won't speak again of that matter i i think that's not good he's been he's been good to me and the influence is he's our guest we and then the the massively strong response because unless one seizes the moment now they can't go forward and she pitches in and and also says um is this how you show your love for me in this that all the things we talked about and planned you suddenly let me down and that look of human kindness well you know how the the matter unravels in a terrible way with macbeth in the end believing false prophecies about no one being able to kill him who was born of woman or uh the the the dancing will not fall until burnham wood has walked all these things but at the same time there are terrible moments when macbeth's mind is seeming to go and then is lady macbeth's mind which goes but when macbeth is that hearing the news of the death of his wife when everything is falling apart there is that heartbreaking soliloquy i've written it down so that we can hear it about life and what it means now he has denied everything in that terrible temptation and the acting out of it to kill the monarch who had favored him and to kill a guest in hofstra and then to begin to kill other friends like banquo tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death out out brief candle life's but a walking shadow a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing the absolute desolation which takes us back to how we left peter and what those days between then and the day of resurrection and even after that until the day of forgiveness what those must have meant to him and then the savior saving him with those words first of peace be with you in the upper room and then on the lakeside later the healing but that sound that cockroach must always have wrung him to his vitals shall we say because it would have reminded him of the desperate lies and denial despite all the promises there are other things which have happened on this day which which show how just a quirk of history can turn everything in a different direction and in 1214 here in europe the battle of bhuvin was held with the armies of the holy roman emperor in which uh king john's england was fighting the holy roman empire otto the fourth the emperor otto iv fighting against king philip ii of france and soundly defeated and that meant a complete defeat for king john and all his plans and although we don't know the name of that battle very well the battle of buvine in 1214 it caused stephen langton to have the power then to uh muster the barons and cause magna carta to be sealed and a very different kind of passage for the um for england after that developing through in a particular way it also called philip ii to consolidate his power in france and it gave absolute power there so that what began to develop was what we would call the asean regime of absolute power so that this battle is a turning point both for england and for france and it was in 2012 14 and 12 15 presided over by that very powerful pope that we've talked about innocent iii he then forced uh his will on king john but he also deposed otto the fourth the holy roman emperor and put frederick ii there instead such power to the medieval papacy and then at the same time in 1942 here on this day the battle of el alamein ended and that it gave a certain hope to citizens in this beleaguered set of islands at that time facing all the uh power of of nazism just across the channel but the so say in pregnant and unbeatable german army had been then beaten the italians and germans and and the the line held in north africa and that gave a seed of hope and from that moment onwards that the the steps in the defeat of nazism began to take a different course so all of those things this morning and essentially we're thinking of the way in which temptations hit us and the force of others on our will can be the way in which temptations are grasped but at the same time unlike macbeth the temptations which peter had fallen for in terms of denying his lord because of his own fears and weaknesses are lifted into a new way of making christ's rock on which he would build his church even stronger because of the way in which he had come through all of that and received the loving forgiveness of the lord and his new commission on the lakeside later so let's say our prayers on this particular day and we give thanks on this day for the diocese uh where are we of delhi in the church of north india we think of india in its struggle against the pandemic but we also think of all the christians in the diocese of delhi there and give thanks for them here in this diocese we pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover for tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parish of luke the evangelist at maidstone garris dickinson in his ministry there and all those whom he cares for so let's say our own prayers on this day bring your prayers from across the world and join them together [Music] almighty and everlasting god we beseech you to direct sanctify and govern both our hearts and bodies in the ways of your laws and the works of your commandments that through your most mighty protection both here and ever we may be preserved in body and soul through our lord and savior jesus christ amen so we say the prayer our savior taught us in whatever language we 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 are men moment of quiet now as we say our own prayers on this day [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] ah [Music] ah ah so [Music] 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 today and always amen hello russell you've come back a bit quieter now hey lizzy and jane and even darcy [Music] [Music] you