good morning and welcome on this palm sunday morning the 28th of march our holy week this year the beginning of holy week for christians also equates with the jewish festival of passover so we remember our friends of the jewish faith as they celebrate their festival as do we passover one of the great pilgrim festivals before the temple was destroyed in 70 a.d and that meant journeying three of the festivals through the year meant journeying for jesus and his family and certainly palm sunday shows jesus journeying on a very special journey so we're going to journey this morning and one of the feasts of the journeying year for the jewish people which jesus would have kept would have been the feast of tabernacles the bible tends to call it it's uh such us and that's not this time of year it's a harvest type of feast when people lived in booths and shelters we'll think about that more in our reflection but we have something special also in an artwork to share with you this morning which speaks of the way in which humanity builds shelters for itself in its human journey sometimes they last a very long time but all are temporary and jesus makes that very clear in his teaching especially in the fourth gospel when there's those booths those shelters are made today and they're made in cities and places where those of the jewish faith are living those temporary shelters are woven through with the branches of four types of trees willow and myrtle and palm and citrus and so we're going to journey ourselves around the garden beginning here with willow behind and it's standing our best willow a weeping willow and is beginning now to leaf and show that here in the northern hemisphere spring is arriving and the paschal full moon is almost in place so that easter can be celebrated and today passover itself so we we think of all those things and we also think of our human journey through life and our christian journey through holy week all those themes interweaving like the leaves of those four particular trees weaving in and out of the temporary shelter made for sukhos so we come back to that as we journey in the garden but as with yesterday i'm going to say sections of our morning prayer as we go around and the first section is here by the willow [Music] bring your prayers and your intentions right across the uh miles of the of the globe and uh think of the beginning now of holy week we have birds around us singing and the peregrine falcon is flying above us one of the fastest birds in creation and so that's a a wonderful thing to hear you may you may hear the peregrine screech and behind of course you see the girls whom we were with yesterday and um they are waiting to go on their walk but we're going to say our prayers first this morning and not take them with us o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise let your ways be known upon earth your saving power among the nations blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief your only son was lifted up that he might draw the whole world to himself may we walk this day in the way of the cross and always be ready to share its weight declaring your love for all the world 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 oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm this morning is psalm 132. lord remember for david all the hardships he endured how he swore an oath to the lord and vowed a vow to the mighty one of jacob i will not come within the shelter of my house nor climb up into my bed i will not allow my eyes to sleep nor let my eyelid slumber until i find a place for the lord a dwelling for the mighty one of jacob now we heard of the ark in ephrathah and found it in the fields of jr let us enter his dwelling place and fall low before his footstool arise o lord into your resting place you and the ark of your strength let your priests be clothed with righteousness and your faithful ones sing with joy for your servant david's sake turn not away the face of your anointed the lord has sworn an oath to david a promise from which he will not shrink of the fruit of your body shall i set upon your throne if your children keep my covenant and my testimonies that i shall teach them their children also shall sit upon your throne forevermore for the lord has chosen zion for himself he has desired her for his habitation this shall be my resting place forever here will i dwell for i have longed for her i will abundantly bless her provision her poor will i satisfy with bread i will close her priests with salvation and her faithful ones shall rejoice and sing there will i make a horn to spring up for david i will keep a lantern burning for my anointed as for his enemies i will close them with shame but on him shall his crown be bright our journey begins at the willow but we leave the willow now for the metal so i found myself a natural shelter to read our lesson in um and i'm sitting underneath the tall myrtle tree which is on this side you can see it rising high there the second of the trees that we spoke of i'm sitting on a little stone seat set in the flint wall here by lady baggert the wife of one of my predecessors in the early 19th century and we have the loveliest print painted by her niece of lady bhagat with her daughters and their dog having a picnic just just here on the grass so we think of all that and meals outside and the pilgrim feasts must have been like that for jesus and his family as they traveled from galilee to the temple in jerusalem three times a year those three those pilgrim feasts uh happened and we find that particularly in the gospel of saint john when jesus brothers are saying shall we go up to the feast shall we and they're talking about one or other of the feasts and as i said today is the feast of passover but also uh it's a time when we think of the other two pilgrim feasts the one that we would call pentecost often called the feast of weeks and the autumn one the feast of tabernacles or booze and that's the one we shall think of in our reflection as well but for the moment i'm reading the story of jesus's entry into jerusalem and the lectionary sets that for us this year in sin mark's gospel chapter 11 verses 1 to 11 as i said yesterday through holy week we shall be seeing up a pattern of the four gospels complementing each other and our reflections will be on our human journey our mental journey our spiritual journey as we walk the way of the cross conscious of our place within the family of humanity at this time in our history with so much separation because of the pandemic now when they drew near to jerusalem to bethe and bethany at the mount of olives jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them go into the village in front of you and immediately as you enter it you will find a cult tied on which no one has ever sat untie it and bring it if anyone says to you why are you doing this say the lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately and they went away and found a coat tied at a door outside in the street and they untied it and some of those standing there said to them what are you doing untying the colt and they told them what jesus had said and they let them go and they brought the cult to jesus and threw their cloaks on it and he sat on it and many spread their cloaks on the road and others spread leafy branches that day they had cut from the fields and those who went before and those who followed were shouting hosanna blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord blessed is the coming kingdom of our father david hosanna in the highest and jesus entered jerusalem and went into the temple and when he had looked around at everything as it was already late he went out to bethany with the twelve it's fairly clear that it's bethany from where the coat has come and it was bethany that jesus and his disciples had been in before all this happened and before they went away to prepare themselves or jesus to prepare himself for this entry into jerusalem jesus doesn't want to be waylaid in the village of bethany he has an entry into jerusalem to make for himself on his own physical mental and spiritual journey as our anointed one as the anointed son of david who will enter the holy city and enter the holy place and so the cult and notice saint mark the earliest of the gospels telling us no one has ever sat on this coat before now normally that means real difficulty somebody's sitting on an untried donkey or horse but here all seems to be well as the lord sits on the cult covered with the cloaks of those around and begins to ride on the entry into jerusalem we're going to journey on ourselves now and we have journeyed from willow to myrtle and then on now to palm so here on our third pause on this journey on palm sunday morning we've come to a palm the trachycarpus tree which we planted about 18 years ago or so it shows what a temperate place this is of the herbaceous border but your eye will first be taken by the great newland denodata magnolia behind me here in full bloom as we've seen on other mornings and again we've gratitude to wendy white thompson and her husband ian for planting this and wendy is very ill at the moment and so we're praying for her daily and also praying for her family this morning this kind of mellow atmosphere which the herbaceous border has shows that we can grow bananas here the bananas are not even thinking of showing their leaves yet but it does cause me to say something about what we would normally be doing on palm sunday morning and for two years now we've not been able to and that's having a procession of people burying palm crosses or fronds of palm and the long fronds which the clergy carry but notice that in st mark's gospel it simply says that the crowds took branches from the trees where they were simply to wave in festival throng in their in their procession along and the tradition here in a land where palms don't grow was to use simply branches from the trees and i find that right across the world that on this day people take branches from the tree to shout hosanna hooray the lord is coming to the holy city riding upon the humble beast which has been just lent for the day and will be taken back to bethany that evening i've got fronds which i've seen carried here's actually a banana frond which uh one has seen carriage in lands where bananas grow but generally palms are around there too so they can carry palm leaves here's a palm leaf and there are certainly palm leaves growing here but above me on the tracheocarpus there's a bamboo here which would be something that could be be carried a stem of bamboo and even a stem of wattle or mimosa as we call it because that would be something that people could carry but the english palm which was carried in processions and waved was always the goat willow the willow and i've got fronds of that i've been in processions where those were carried but perhaps i could say to you that many of you will not be able to go to church today and go into a procession of palms so when you're out in your garden or on your walk today just pick a sprig of something and know that that's faithful to the gospel of saint mark which doesn't mention palms it simply mentions taking branches from the trees to hosanna as the anointed one enters the holy city in great humility and within him he knows what this will bring in terms of the violence showed towards his humanity for the moment it's all hosanna and the crowds are cheering him and those who've gathered for the feast of the passover and all that pilgrimaging along the way which jesus would have done with his parents and enjoyed all the festivities all those who are gathering from across the world as it then was coming back to the feast of passover and we know later some some greeks are there who want to see jesus but for the moment all of them are saying who's this who's this and the answers are being given at the moment by friends but jesus is coming right into the place where as a little boy he called his father's house the holy place the great temple which was destroyed in the year 70 a.d by the roman armies and jesus of course during holy week prophesied that destruction because of the sense of violence in the city at that time but jerusalem means so much more than just that city of jerusalem it means the divine and eternal concept of humanity's ability to make communities but on this day we would have to say make temporary shelters and it's that kind of aspect that we're thinking of probably the feast that had been enjoyed most by the younger jesus would have been the feast of booze or tabernacles and as we leave the palms of palm sunday here and go on in our journey and remember this day is a stepping stone to our holy week but we have something special to share with you about not the feast of passover but the feast of what we traditionally in these scriptures call tabernacles and autumn feast of fruitfulness so let's go on and make our fourth stop and that stop is a citrus stop and when we get there you'll see something of that too willow myrtle palm and now citrus at this time of year we've come into the greenhouse to find citrus and the shot may be a bit dark just to begin with um but it will get lighter for you later on we've come into the warmth of the greenhouse to enjoy its shelter not only for the trees but for us but also to think of a particular lesson which jesus is very conscious of that in the journeys that he and his family will have made to jerusalem for the pilgrim feasts each year probably one of the most enjoyable was the feast of tabernacles it used traditionally to be called and it could be called a feast of booths or shelters or tents or dwellings the greek word will take all those meetings even homes but in hebrew times they had to make temporary homes as they went because it was going to be a long feast and as i said before in these shelters the tabernacles the tents the booze that they made would be woven the and still are wherever the jewish faith finds itself woven the leaves of palm and metal and willow and citrus but all this is a sign of our journeying as human beings and our desire to make homes for ourselves now the deanery has been the home of many families and one of the families the duval family for victor de val was here with his wife esther and the the whole family uh in the years from 1976 to about 1986 but we always think of the deanery families like wendy white thompson i was mentioning before as still part of the family of this wonderful dwelling but any dwelling is something temporary and jesus is very firm about that with the woman of samaria in sin john's gospel the time will come he says when neither on this mountain talking about nigeria's him in samaria which was her holy place or in jerusalem will folk worship but god is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth all those things we shall come back to again and again in holy week and particularly on good friday but for this morning there's a gift which edmund has brought to the cathedral to share with us it's an installation of a a piece of sculpture in pottery and glass with gleams of gold in it and it's called the sucker which is the word for a shelter one of the shelters made remember how on the mount of transfiguration peter says to jesus lord it's good that we're here let me make three shelters booths tabernacles four one for you one for moses one for elijah wanting to stay but everything about jesus's development of his vocation in body mind and spirit like us is a story of development and realization until one gets to the point a little later on in holy week when the hour has come at the greeks question we'd like to see jesus and jesus ministry by that time has reached the concept that his arms will embrace the whole world when he's lifted up and the arms are outstretched but that will be at the cost of his humanity in pain and still shall we say nervousness and anxiety we've got the agony in the garden to go through and then we have the painful journey of the cross itself all of that awaits us this week but for the moment let's glory in the fact that humanity can make homes and shelters and surround them with the leaves of creation represented by the willow and the myrtle and the palm and the citrus all biblical plants but as we've said different cultures different parts of our world grow different things at different times and all are signs of our spiritual mental and physical journey i mentioned edmund's mother esther and she has always been a great teacher of the benedictine way well we know this this cathedral church was a benedictine monastery for a thousand years of its life and those strands run deep the strands of valuing humanity in body mind and spirit humanity living in community given to hospitality that's the essence of the rule of sin benedict but it's also the essence of community life the world over at its best and it's the essence of us scattered right across the world in a garden congregation and beginning holy week together holding branches and twigs of different kinds because we're in different places and different leaves are there for us but it's actually the same world that we are taking care of and the same human family in 2021 that we have responsibility for and also the same vocation that we have to journey on and find shelters at the end this morning we've attached a conversation that i had with edmund in the st gabriel's chapel where the light shows through the 12th century glass onto edmund's installation the sukkah which shows little pottery vessels oh so fragile perhaps representing our own humanity and tall vessels of glass reflecting light and reaching up to heaven and gleams of gold and all day long the light is changing for our journey changes according to the light the light we see as our psalm was very clear i have kept a lantern burning for my anointed said the the psalmist this morning and this sukkah comes from a great exhibition which was held in uh venice partly in the in the uh um ghetto there in venice which was a sign of jewish exile but we could have traced that through the scriptures but it's really a sign of the cruelty that has caused so many exiles to be journeying through history and you can look around the world today and we shall do in in the days of holy week and see so much suffering if we look at burma myanmar with all that's going on today and the suffering of that nation and the world looking on in horror and trying to influence that situation as best they can but we can look at one another also in the pandemic and see what we're having to wrestle with at this part of our journey and each of us in our own lives will be developing our thinking developing our physical creativity developing our mental understanding of where we are where the world is and how we've got to this point and what we envision for the future and spiritually too as we reach out to that which is infinite and for us beginning holy week together the journey is led by the man on the donkey the beast that no one's ever sat on before going to meet his destiny in the holy city and so so many of these themes will come back to us but for this morning we've been helped to say our hosanna by willow and myrtle and palm and citrus and the sense of the shelter which all creation enjoys and the warmth and hospitality given here's tiger back to join us so we're going to say our prayers this morning and we're going to remember in our prayers on this palm sunday first of all the people of burma myanmar and as the news unfolds on our screens we think of their vulnerability but vulnerable people the world over and in our anglican communion on this day we are praying for the anglican communion diocese of hong kong shen kung hui with so many friends there and uh we can't name them all but certainly we send out our love and best wishes to st john's cathedral there and dean matthias and felix the organist and all of those and all our friends that live there they know who they are and also to bishop paul kwong the bishop of that diocese who's a great friend here and also a member of our own cathedral council so we give thanks for that aspect of our communion life and then we pray for archbishop justin who will be joining us this afternoon for holy week and for bishop rose and for bishop tim lambeth and today we're praying for the parish church of all saints at bittenden and st michael at smarten and at the moment they are without a parish priest so we pray for those looking after them and also for those choosing a new parish priest for them bring your own intentions and and concerns to the prayer here this morning here is the prayer for holy week almighty and everlasting god who in your tender love towards the human race sent your son our savior jesus christ to take upon him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility and also be made partakers of his resurrection through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language the prayer that jesus 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 a moment of silence now on this palm sunday morning as we enter holy week christ crucified draw you to himself to find in him a sure ground for faith a firm support for hope and the assurance of sins forgiven 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 edmond it's wonderful to welcome you to the country again always a welcome visitor but we're here for a very special occasion and we've this morning seen your installation of the sucker brought here into canterbury cathedral can you say a little bit about the insulation to begin with yes first of all it's just as you can imagine incredibly moving and special for me to be back here in canterbury and to be in this particular place so this um installation is it's called sukkah i made it originally for um the special room high up above one of the synagogues the oldest synagogue in the ghetto invents the sukkot is a place where you [Music] celebrate the festival of sukkot which is the festival of the tavern it's celebrating very interesting festival as you know it celebrates wonderful things it's sort of harvest festival really for the jewish faith but it's also a reflection on on a moment of pause after the years of of traveling so it's it's it's got lots of interesting um um connections um to things that matter to us and i made this installation for that particular place that beautiful high up and um with your blessing i brought it to the gabriel's chapel in the cathedral so in a way the the the situation it is enshrining and showing us is a look back into history and also a fact of the present for jewish people as well and the history is one of wandering and sheltering themselves in the wilderness and then keeping that memory going year by year at harvest time yes what it what it does is to talk about the vulnerability yes for us all of where we are is only temporary but that we are all really migratory yes we're really in transit you know in our lives and in the spaces that we inhabit briefly and it's the briefness of that moment that it's so kind of in special to that particular festival and and here you know this is very simple well this is this is porcelain vessels i'm a potter yes and it's it's leaning pieces of gold gilded aluminium and these towers these these structures so it's really kind of making making real a representation of of transients of the temporary and and a circuit would would have been made and still is made of materials that were to hand quite fragile materials and also would include symbols of fruitfulness and vegetation and things of that kind to remember reminders of creation absolutely and then the festival itself would be full of noise yes actually one of the reasons is that this this particular place has got one of the most oh most enlivening um bits of romanesque sculpture anywhere in europe um of the animals playing this playing instruments and it's got that feeling of celebration and and release as well this is all around this beautiful decorated pillar and the instruments they're playing are so varied but all of them are making a loud noise and one's reminded of the psalmist who constantly is expressing joy by mentioning instruments but i called the whole um exhibition of installation in venice in in the ghetto psalm yes and you know the psalms are what are really at the heart of both of the great all the abrahamic traditions and the psalms are extraordinary you know they are we live them day by day but but they are of course the great song songs of exile yes of of remembering jerusalem but they're also you know as you suggest for the full of happiness and noise as well as as as ellen and sadness so so the psalms you know and this whole cathedral is built in the science yes indeed and rhythmically each day we say or sing them here and the psalms don't shy away from any human emotion you have rage and sadness and pain and joy and love and all kinds of and wonder in a great measure and because that they it's one and then there's another it's the part it's the passing of of one day into another and one emotion to another which is so extraordinary and and part of this installation part of what i'm trying to to bring here is of course that everything everything changes it's about mutability so you know the shadows change and these great windows bring light in and then the sun comes and goes currently you know some yeah some five minutes yeah yes yes and so it's that sort of sense of sort of in some ways letting letting one moment go and then another moment comes and that goes as well and the science do that they managed to measure those days for us very much so you were saying earlier that you've you've known this place for 42 years or something of that kind and and loved it and when we walked around together a week or two ago and i i was saying to you where do you want this i've i felt you already had the idea in your head where you wanted it to be but we did explore other places why here in the crypt and why is in gabriel well for southern's a very powerful pool for me from being high up in the ghetto the highest place in the ghetto very extraordinary poignant and painful place right up to being really down almost below ground here you know in canterbury so it was that sort of from the heights to the depths which of course takes us into the suns yes but but this particular chapel partly i mean it is it is 1976 it's it's 46 years yeah yeah and um and it's always meant a lot to me this particular chapel um partly from childhood from just the total joy of the carvings yes and then beginning to understand what some of these wall paintings might mean and of course we have anselm i think it's anselm here uh writing awareness behind me um so it's always had that kind of echo and also you know i was a survey here as a child and i remember i'm saying to you earlier um being here with donald coghan for two years you know early morning community so it's got a very powerful sense and it's also in brief um a very enclosed space it is a sort of tabernacle it's it's a it's a a beautiful enclosed intimate space to bring this particular station yes this crypt has always been a sign of protection um we have the huguenot chapel yeah and and they fled from violence and were given temporary shelter which is continued to this day their french service on sunday afternoons but i remember when i came here first in 2001 i came in july and in september i witnessed the archbishop saying prayers for so many americans who were poured into here after 9 11 from cruise ships that are coming from dover and it felt as though we were giving shelter an emotional shelter to people who were completely shocked by this this act of violence so unexpected on an awesome morning in new york which had not known this before so the crypt always speaks to me when i come in here as the praying harsh of the cathedral it really is a holy place i mean no you know that's that's that's the heart of this yes but that that image of shelter is is is such a such a strong and powerful enduring one it's just that um shelters don't have to be ground to have an impact they don't have to and actually some of these particular chapels have very particular resonances in that in that way we've watched as this was put together this morning and made into the complete installation we watched the light change and there's been wonder the reflections that were happening here you were feeling that too you were very busy putting it together but i know that we were feeling very much that this was wondrous as the light came through and also sean even on the the top here and and now we've come to the middle of the afternoon and the night is quite different again uh so there's this changing activity of creation is very present it's it's there's a wonderful poem by our atomics called the bright field as you know i've grown up in this place yeah and it is that that um the feeling that that you you look up you just look up and something's changed yes you know and that's it yeah that's the moment of yes of of um to not hold on to just just but just just acknowledge and i suppose what i'm trying to do with my pots and my installations yes is not make something kind of grand and enduring and blah blah blah at all but just simply briefly put something in someone's hands or let the light change and and catch it just briefly you have a different a different feeling yes that's kind of enough in this in this tabernacle what should we call this or really a series of tabernacles you can look at it in in two ways all the busyness is in the lower part and it's as though the tranquility begins as things go higher and there's nothing to interrupt the light except reflections from below is that an intentional way of going forward i'll take it very much i mean the the sort of the architecture of it in the scale yeah the volumes of it kind of come actually out of out actually out of the jewish getaway whereas well as you know jews were not allowed to to to expand from this tiny space yes um and so built higher and higher higher dollars yes so this is this is a kind of that kind of space but actually of course um what's so wonderful about um about an empty latrine about your space yes these may or may not represent people yes volumes but is is the term is is just simply just briefly what you're doing is you're pausing a bit of the world yes you know you're just letting it just be for a little bit to and so yes down below but lots and lots of air and volume and space above us it's a tunnel here now as we come into um passion time in the church's calendar and then into holy week and on to easter when there is always a coming together within a compass of time generally not very far apart of passover and easter and the days leading up to it and i know it was your your desire that this should be here then can you speak a little bit about that absolutely i mean i mean part of my family journey with my family my father of course and my jewish grandfather elizabeth is buried just 300 yards away yes from us here um you know brought up brought up in a jewish household in vienna i'm a refugee like my father um to kent in 1939 but a person who who mixed her her jewish upbringing with huge christian faith um so um so this mixture this this creative model of jewish christian uh a life which i've been writing about and trying to tease out in my in both books and also what i make of course it's kind of extraordinary for me to bring as you say this moment of approaching passover and the approach of approaching easter together in an installation here i didn't know i'm answering your question at all no you are indeed and i i want to say that it's so very easy for christians to forget that the whole of the life of jesus was lived out within the the rhythmic seasons of the jewish year to which he was utterly faithful and that he called that sacred tabernacle on mount zion my father's house and couldn't understand why his parents were puzzled that they they lost him and he was there but that kind of wonder when people say well there's not much teaching of jesus about creationists all the teaching in the world about it because the psalms were his hymnbook and life they were ingrained on him and at the same time his human body becomes that tabernacle of shelter yes fragile and vulnerable yes and and for and and and and both these great festivals of easter have had the meal at the heart of you know to have this extraordinary powerful sense of a meal at the heart of them um and of course and and so you know it seems to me that this well honestly it was such a hope for me that this might actually happen yes at this particular moment yes and now we should be ourselves not only enjoying but finding this place changed has always happens when an installation of imagination and creativity is placed in another significant space and they interact so we are the ones who are going to be benefiting and learning on a journey day by day and our our gift to you is our gratitude for bringing this here to help our thinking and and going forward in in our holy week and that past every time well i mean i the gratitude is so total for me to be allowed to come back into these spaces i never love and to work with you and have and be able to bring this back to this community lineup it's a wonderful gift thank you very much