[Music] good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of saturday the 24th of april it's a wonderful morning here with a pure blue sky and the sun just rising above the trees and we've come to this very special spot on this day because we want first of all to wish happy birthday to fletcher's mother jackie who is separated from us down in spain and we say a very happy birthday to you and also uh remembering those who will celebrate it with you particularly dany and and arabella we're here because these cherry trees are cherry trees which have always signaled april the 24th jackie calls them her cherry trees and last year they were not only um blossoming they were almost past their blossom season remember we had a very warm spring last year this year they're hardly out we've had fine days but very cold days yesterday a pure blue sky again but a very deep frost when i got up to go to matings yesterday morning and this morning the sun making patterns on the lawn through the bare trees but the cherry tree is beginning just to leaf and you can see some of the flower buds but we shall enjoy them in full a bit later on this year so we've got something to look forward to i wanted to to mention with sadness the the death yesterday of a friend spencer whiting he had a sudden epileptic fit and it was everything unexpected at the age of 47. uh his younger brother austin went to school with fletcher at the age of three and has been a lifelong friend ever since so we remember the family and also spencer's mother jean on this particular day but some good news a couple of months ago uh i mentioned the terrible accident which had happened to richard dyer who owns the wingham country market and the the tractor that he was driving was sandwiched between two great lorries on that road uh who were trying to overtake and and and richard was the victim of that with his tractor turning over there was little hope given for his life and so much damage done to his body well after hospital care he is now conscious again and aware of who is uh with him there's a very long road ahead but we think of annette his wife this morning and the family and gives thanks for this measure of progress due to expert medical care today also for me is the um funeral of wendy white thompson very small number able to go and it's in y parish church and fletcher has given up his invitation to go there so that another member of the family can be there so he will be remembering wendy under one of the great magnolia trees and there's still one as we saw yesterday flowering and i'll come back to her in in in a bit in the reflection just as a a good reflection a happy reflection which helps us on this particular morning but for you wherever you are in the world bring your own concerns you'll be naming particular people as i have people whom you love the people whom you know and of course we're keeping in our minds those nations who are which are really badly affected by the increasing pandemic and the overstretched medical services in those nations so let's say our prayers on this saturday morning oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise in your resurrection o christ let heaven and earth rejoice alleluia blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as once you ransomed your people from egypt and led them to freedom in the promised land so now you have delivered us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of your risen son may we the first fruits of your new creation rejoice in this new day you have made and praise you for your mighty acts 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 son on this day is psalm 118 a long sound and i'll read the the preface shall we call it of the psalm and then the the main section of the psalm so psalm 118 oh give thanks to the lord for he is good his mercy endures forever let israel now proclaim his mercy endures forever let the house of aaron now proclaim his mercy endures forever that those who fear the lord proclaim his mercy endures forever the lord is my strength and my song and he has become my salvation joyful shouts of salvation sound from the tents of the righteous the right hand of the lord does mighty deeds the right hand of the lord raises up the right hand of the lord does mighty deeds i shall not die but live and declare the works of the lord the lord has punished me sorely but he has not given me over to death open to me the gates of righteousness that i may enter and give thanks to the lord this is the gate of the lord the righteous shall enter through it i will give thanks to you for you have answered me and have become my salvation the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone this is the lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes this is the day that the lord has made we will rejoice and be glad in it a wonderful sentence this is the day that the lord has made we will rejoice and be glad in it and what we find is that this is a day when there are no special readings because it's not a saints day so we can go back to our reading of the gospel of saint matthew which we've only had two days at this week because of the uh great amount of saints days and we shall come to another saints day on monday because mark's day which will be tipped off because of sunday being the 25th will be on monday so more special lessons but we'll get to matthew and we do so today we're starting at chapter two these will sound odd verses to be reading at this easter season but sometimes that's a great advantage because it lets us hear them in a completely different way chapter two of the gospel of saint matthew now after jesus was born in bethlehem of judea in the days of headed the king behold wise men from the east came to jerusalem saying where is he who has been born king of the jews for we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him when headed the king heard this he was troubled and all jerusalem with him and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people the king inquired of them where the christ was to be born they told him in bethlehem of judea forsake is written by the prophet and you o bethlehem in the land of judah are by no means least among the rulers of judah for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people israel then herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared and he sent them to bethlehem saying go and search diligently for the child and when you have found him bring me word that i too may come and worship him after listening to the king the wise men went on their way and behold the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was when they saw the star they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy and going into the house they saw the child with mary his mother and they fell down and worshiped him then opening their treasures they offered him gifts gold and frankincense and myrrh and being warned in a dream not to return to herod they departed to their own country by another way matthew's beginning of the story of the birth of jesus we know so much from luke and we also have different beginnings from mark and john but matthew is assuring us in as we were thinking his uh assurance to the jewish christian community that everything is built on the foundation of the ancient scriptures and of the prophets and psalms and the law and here in his first verses of chapter two which we're so used to reading at christmas carol services and also at epiphany here we find matthew should we say setting out his stall for all kinds of signs are given both silently and also in words silently from creation with the star and the star is a part of everything that we know and believe about the birth of jesus from the stories that we tell at christmas time but it's actually a sign also of the way in which creation can speak of heaven and earth and give us pointers to the way in which we should be thinking mentally and spiritually and acting as well is tiger come to join us i don't know if that jumps too much for you tiger is it don't you get up can you get up yes good good boy you are [Music] so what matthew is giving us is not just words but words there are and the words are words of prophecy from king herod's wise men and you bethlehem in the land of judah are by no means least among the rulers of judah for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people israel we're given words from prophecy and titles for the one who has been born and also the fulfillment of prophecy with the birth of one of david's royal line in bethlehem son of david another of the titles for the anointed one the christ who is jesus and joseph has named him the uh the king though is keen to turn the words of prophecy to his own advantage and the word secretly there is a word signaling the devious nature not secretly in silence as uh the way in which we can perceive in creation sometimes in our hearts all that's going on and the message of the star but to these journeyers who frighten herod coming from different lands for these journeyers he's wanting to get some information from them so he draws them aside secretly and that word is full of menace the one who has temporal power political power at that time is doing something secret and it's working against god's plan go and find him and when you find him come back to me and then i can go and worship also so off go the three wise men were saying three simply because matthew never says three anywhere he simply says wise men from the east or magi from the east and he we say three because of the gifts gold and frankincense and myrrh which will be offered again signs silent signs which we have interpreted in our christmas carols for gold and frankincense and mer gold for a monarch the king of kings and frankincense which is burned in adoration for one who is divine and myrrh is connected with the grave one who will suffer and die all those things are interpretation they're silent signs and they are signs of creation if you read the the lovely hymn by uh bishop heber brightest and best of the sons of the morning those three gifts are placed where they should be in the places of creation the way in which he mentions the ocean and the forest and the mine and all of those signs of creation as jesus is born in matthew's gospel and he searches back and gives that birth foundation in prophecy and in sound well the psalm that one would turn to most of all in all of this would be psalm 72 and there we read if i can turn it up and you can look at it later it's not the morning sun for today but it's a psalm that talks about uh the the the birth in in in a prophetic way and the most important thing that it says is the kings of tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute the kings of sheba and siba shall bring gifts all kings shall fall down before him all nations do him service long may he live unto him may be given gold from sheba may prayer be made for him continually and may they bless him all the day long may there be abundance of grain on the earth standing thick upon the hilltops may its fruit flourish like lebanon and its grain grow like the grass of the field may his name remain forever and be established as long as the sun endures and may all nations be blessed in him and call him blessed well prophecy and prophecy is something that matthew is keen on having interpreted we'll come back to the psalms in a bit because i'm wanting to go to various things about today and these things become important first of all we're thinking of the journey of those kings as we have come to see them because of that prophecy those wise men those magi those journeyers who are journeying on a pilgrimage and pilgrimage is something which we're missing at the moment because people can't physically be pilgrims here but in fact we're we're seeing many pilgrimages and so many of you have shared your journey through lent and your journey at this time with things that you have sent us for which we are immensely grateful because it helps our own journey as followers of the way as the earliest christians were were called and that fulfillment of prophecy as we read the ancient scriptures becomes intensely important well on this day uh on the in in 1771 daniel defoe died and he wrote the immensely popular book still robinson crusoe the castaway on the desert island he also wrote a journal of the plague year a journal of lockdown in 1665 in london and that journal is something that is interesting for us during this year following lockdowns all over the world 1743 on this day edmund cartridge bourne the inventor of the cotton spinning power loon he was granted because of the importance of that invention a gift of ten thousand pounds by parliament enormous amount to develop that idea it's an early version of dragon's den uh in the sense that he's come to parliament this is a television program uh which is in england where people with new inventions and new things that they want to develop come before uh uh five people who have the the the the money to to to help them if they believe in their products well the parliament did believe in the product of edmund cartwright and granted ten thousand pounds of the development of that and it was the beginning of a huge journey for the spinning of cotton for good and for evil in those mills of the cotton mills later on 1889 the birth of sir stafford crips who was the chancellor of the exchequer here after the war and the labour chancellor who laid the foundation of britain's post-war economic recovery by the decisions he took 1900 on this day the first issue of the daily express and if i'm permitted to say so when i think of the daily express i think of rupert there because it's in the daily express that the the strip uh animated uh little it's not a cartoon so much as a story of an animated character and his friends rupert bow which has gone on from not on that day at the beginning from the 1930s right through to today hello tiger come and join us hello um and then on uh this day in 1957. now this i do want to spend just a little bit of time on uh the astronomer patrick moore presented the first broadcast of the sky at night the study of the stars and this was an astronomical program which spoke about the dimensions i'll go out into space still finite dimensions not eternal dimensions finite dimensions part of creation but that program was presented by patrick moore from that day in 1957 once each month on our bbc one channel up till the 7th of january 2013 the longest running television program presented by the same presenter and he had a way of exploring the stars with children and with adults and those who had never been interested in astronomy before and also he had a a wonderful tune which my mother used to to to love best of all of the program it was called at the castle gate and was taken from the incidental music to pelea melissand written by sibelius and it began and ended the program with a depth and dimension of wonder serious wonder and patrick moore could do well with that he would invite all kinds of people onto his program who were famous astronomers but the program was his his own creation and to the benefit of so many of us who learned astronomy from him and bought our own telescopes and went out and explored the night sky and i was one of them and so i give thanks to patrick moore who died in december 2012 and the last program that he introduced was published or rather televised and shown posthumously because he'd made that program before he died then we come to 1965 the official opening of the pennine way on this day which is a path leading 256 miles along the pennine chain from derbyshire to the scottish border a walking path and so much pilgrimage is done in walking and so much friendly meeting is done in walking on your own walks daily the same thing will be happening but the fresh air and creation on a walk like that speaks in silence in the way that these journeyers from the east were spoken to by the star and were able in their dreams to escape the machinations of earthly political power which had evil designs on all that god intended with the birth of the christ child this day we remember also in 2005 the formal installation of pope benedict the 16th who's who still lives of course and we we wished him a happy birthday quite recently i'm thinking on this day of all kinds of creativity and in the fresh air that's a lovely thing to to think of but each of you will have different creative gifts uh yesterday i was i was talking about jan strutzer remember i had difficulty in remembering her name and mixed her up with elena fargen first of all but i was talking about that about him and i fear i got some of the words wrong because i'd only just remembered it on the spur at the moment as we were speaking to each other on yesterday's broadcast i've now pulled out the school hymn book and jan schroeder wrote that him for songs of praise she was the the writer of the book mrs minima which was was made into a film but she wrote many hymns for the hymn book uh um songs of praise and when a knight won his spurs is one of them so here we are i'm trying to sing it to you i've got a cup of tea if my voice goes horse three verses only and important to us when a knight won his spurs in the stories of old he was gentle and brave he was gallant and bold with a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand for god and for valor he rode through the land no charger have i and no sword by my side yet still to adventure and battle i ride go back into storyland giants have fled and the knights are no more and the dragons are dead let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed against the dragons of anger the ogres of greed and let me set free with the sword of my use from the castle of darkness the power of the truth it's a powerful little hymn and my singing has awakened the tension of tiger but what i wanted to say was if that sense of the sword of my youth is saying to you well that sword of my youth was long ago know that creativity can awaken the freshness of youth in many different ways and i'm going to um another sound now psalm 103 and right at the beginning in its first five verses here it is it gives us a prophecy we might fulfill by our creativity bless the lord o my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name bless the lord o my soul and forget not all his benefits who forgives all your sins and heals all your infirmities who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with faithful love and compassion who satisfies you with good things so that your youth is renewed like an eagles crowned like monarchs by the blessings god gives on our journey like those whom sometimes we call kings sometimes wise men sometimes may die but at the same time our youth has the possibility of once again being the sword which awakens through different aspects of creativity for there's nothing that awakens the joy and freshness of youth like an act of creativity with the unique gifts that god has given every one of us when they're exercised now we're wishing jackie a happy birthday on this day and she's something of a painter an artist and i know that when she paints there's a freshness to what she's copying from the garden here and also there's a friendship with the art groups that she joins in with and i know that she will feel at that time that the strength and freshness of new gifts which is what the freshness of youth is involved in each of us can do that i've seen it in the things that you've sent in the artistic words in the words that you've spoken of and in the way in which you feel that the scriptures and i feel this too and you encourage both of us here to feel it in all that we're doing the way in which the community of the garden congregation has awoken the freshness of youth at this time of lockdown and we claim that prophecy for us of psalm 103 and you can read the whole of the psalm i've sat in the book i'm not going to read the hell of the psalm you can do that but who satisfies you with good things so that your youth is renewed like an eagle and we find ourselves crowned by the lord with faithful love and compassion that's what that hymn that jan struther was writing for young people in songs of praise that's what it was really about for people of all age groups and i still feel the thrill of singing that him reaching back but the the dragons of anger and the ogres of greed are all around us we use their vocabulary we listen to their advice and then in our dreams and in our pondering of the silence of creation our reading of the scriptures we realize what god's true vision is and that we are still involved in daily adventure and warfare not with the steel and and and of the breastplate and sword but with the spiritual gifts that ephesians 6 listed for us in the lesson i read yesterday on st george's day so let's give thanks for that on this day as the cherry trees are set to bloom and we are rejoicing in this gift of the new day perhaps i should say jan struther is best known of course for her hymn which goes right through the day lord of all hopefulness lord of all joy and be with us in the morning in the noon tide as we go home in the evening and when we go to sleep and you'll you'll know that but you can you can look that him up for yourselves so let's see uh where we go with this oh i wanted also actually to mention because i i was just preparing something to say in the prayers at wendy's funeral and i came across the fact that she on the 12th of july 2012 was invited by a great friend of hers a younger friend marcus robertson who runs steam dreams and he was running a steam train which was going to go the cathedrals express from canterbury to salisbury to cathedral cities and it was it would pass through ashford and it was uh wendy's 80th birthday at that time and he arranged for the train to stop so that at y where she lived uh and wendy as the honored guest of the day at her 80th birthday would step on board and when he was interviewed he said oh yes i've known wendy for years she's 80 years old going on 16 and that's exactly how we knew her she never lost that sense of youth and the fulfillment for each of us can be exactly the same sorry let me say our prayers for today um 24th of april we're praying of course for archbishop justin but when the communion for the diocese of brandon in the anglican church of canada and the province of rupert's land the far north and then we are once again with our diocese listening and discerning on the way with the way is a good word for us because it speaks not only of journeying and what we learn on the way but it speaks of the first name given to the earliest christians followers of the way and we pray of course for bishop rose of dover and bishop tim at lambeth for the parishes of this diocese and the faith communities where you are yourselves and would want to pray for so let's use the colic for easter tide on this day this is the third sunday of easter's collect which has seen us through this week almighty father who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples with the sight of the risen lord give us such knowledge and of his presence with us that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life and serve you continually in righteousness and truth through jesus christ our lord amen so we use the prayer our savior taught us in whatever language you would like to use this morning 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 wherever you are for your own prayers the god of peace who brought again from the dead our lord jesus christ that great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you would pray for today and always are men well we've been surrounded by many friends and we can give them some of tiger breakfast i think you are are hens come on come on come on come on russell come on ducky here good boy here we are nice loud crow in the morning good all right you're enjoying enjoying the wet grass ducky aren't you don't worry tiger coming up here a little bit alarming russell good boy i think it's time we give you your proper breakfast actually tiger before matins come on so well there we are have a good day