good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this thursday the 2nd of september as we come to say our morning prayers the great symbols of today which seem to recur again and again are symbols of water and of fire and we have images of both in a very controlled way which are those controlled ways very beneficial to human life and all life and creation i'm sitting on the side of the well here and you hear the sound of the water splashing behind me and we've lit a small september fire and the smell of the wood smoke in the garden as the leaves burn very september smell but at the same time our images across the world are images of uncontrolled water and we remember our friends in new york and up and down the whole of the east coast of the united states where flash floods are causing situations of emergency and governors are issuing warnings and so that one one has the the sense of every part of the new york metropolitan of uh metro being completely flooded and and water rushing in in a way and the recorded rainfall on central park is way above anything that in all the years of recording has ever been recorded is hurricane ida does her worst across there with tornadoes in new jersey and at the same time across on the other side of the united states enormous fires are burning in the forests there and humanity is finding it very difficult to control either the water or the flames we can go across the world and find similar situations and of course we have in our minds not only that but the situations of war and the people in afghanistan and of pandemic so as these images which are so prevalent right throughout scripture and we'll come across one or two of them in the the kind of of uh quotations that we'll use with the story that we're going to tell in the book of genesis right across scripture there is this wonderful image of fire and water as a sign of life right from the beginning of creation warmth and refreshment giving life and growth let's begin our prayers o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the true the only light banish all darkness from our hearts and minds blessed are you sovereign god creator of all to you be glory and praise forever you founded the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands in the fullness of time you made us in your image and in these last days you have spoken to us in your son jesus christ the word made flesh as we rejoice in the gift of your presence among us let the light of your love always shine in our hearts your spirits ever renew our lives and your praises ever be on our lips 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 son this morning is psalm nine sun for the second morning of the month i will give thanks to you lord with my whole heart i will tell of all your marvelous works i will be glad and rejoice in you i will make music to your name almost high when my enemies are driven back they stumble and perish at your presence for you have maintained my right and my cause and sit on your throne in righteous judgment you have rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked and have blotted out their name forever and ever the enemy was utterly laid waste you uprooted their cities their very memory has perished but the lord shall endure forever he has made fast his throne for judgment for he shall rule the world with righteousness and govern the peoples with equity then will the lord be a refuge for the oppressed a refuge in the time of trouble and those who know your name will put their trust in you for you lord have never failed those who seek you sing praises to the lord who dwells in zion declare among the peoples the things he has done the avenger of blood has remembered them he did not forget the cry of the oppressed have mercy upon me o lord consider the trouble i suffer from those who hate me you that lift up lift me up from the gates of death that i may tell all your praises in the gates of the city of zion and rejoice in your salvation the nations shall sink into the pit of their own making and in the snare which they set will their own foot be taken the lord makes himself known by his acts of justice the wicked are snared in the works of their own hands they shall return to the land of darkness all the nations that forget god for the needy shall not always be forgotten and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever arise o lord and let not mortals have the upper hand let the nations be judged before your face put them in fear o lord that the nations may know themselves to be but mortal so we're returning to the book of genesis and to jacob following his dream and his consecration of the stone into a holy place vessel and god's promise that he will be with him as he sets out on his journey again into the unknown but going to seek his mother's brother laban chapter 29 verse 1 then jacob went on his journey and came to the land of the people of the east and as he looked he saw a well in the field and behold three blocks of sheep lying beside the well for out of that well the flocks were watered the stone on the well's mouth was large and when all the flocks were gathered there the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well and water their sheep and put the stone back in its place over the mouth of the well jacob said to the shepherds my brothers where do you come from they said we are from haran he said to them do you know laban the son of nehor they said we know him jacob said to them is it well with him they said it is well and see rachel his daughter is coming with the sheep he said behold it is still high day it is not time for the livestock to be gathered together water the sheep and go pasture them but they said we cannot until all the flocks are gathered together and the stone is rolled from the mouth of the well then we water the sheep while jacob was still speaking with them rachel came with her father's sheep for rachel was a shepherdess now as soon as jacob saw rachel the daughter of laban his mother's brother and the sheep of laban his mother's brother jacob came near and he rolled the stone from the world's mouth then watered the flock of laban his mother's brother then jacob kissed rachel and wept aloud and jacob told rachel that he was her father's kinsmen and that he was rebecca's son and rachel ran and told her father as soon as laban heard the news about jacob his sister's son he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his house jacob told laban all these things and laban said to him surely you are my bone and my flesh and he stayed with him for a month then laban said to jacob because you are my kinsmen should you therefore serve me for nothing tell me what shall your wages be now laban had two daughters the name of the older was leia and the name of the younger was rachel leia was dull eyed but rachel was beautiful in form and appearance jacob loved rachel and he said to laban i will serve you seven years for your younger daughter rachel laban said it is better that i give her to you than that i should give her to any other man stay with me then so jacob served seven years for rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for rachel this is a a true love story and a wonderful love story once again we've come to the gathering place of a well in desert places the wells were absolutely vital jacob had journeyed from the well of the oath at beersheba and now here he was towards haran with this well where rachel has brought her sheep and was one has a similarity with the way in which uh the the well is so important earlier on to the servant of abraham when he goes to seek a wife for isaac and finds rebecca the well and at the same time the deep and burning love that jacob has for rachel which because it is so passionate and strong his devious uncle laiban will use deceitfully against him but for the moment let's concentrate on the passionate love which jacob has for rachel say that seven years of working for laban with the proviso that at the end he must wait and at the end he may marry rachel those seven years seem just like a moment in time because he loved rachel so much it's here i think i want to read and remind you of that wonderful verse in uh the song of songs which was set to an anthem by sir william walton it is often sung at weddings here are the verses you will know them well set me as a seal upon your heart as a seal upon your arm for love is strong as death passion fierce as the grave its flashes are flashes of fire a raging flame many waters cannot quench love neither can floods drown it a poetic image but love so strong that the forces the strongest forces that the poet can think of fire and water cannot either quench or destroy love for it is so strong and here we are enjoying in our old testament story a true love story and the story of patient waiting and serving in hard work knowing that at the end the love will be requited and rachel will be his wife it's a story of a journey from one well to another journeying on footstep by footstep but now jacob becomes static geographically for a while because he is there serving laban his uncle and at the same time his journey in heart and mind towards the moment when rachel will be his wife goes on and it causes us to know that that journeys and pilgrimages in our lives are not always physical ones journeying on foot from place to place they are sometimes mental emotional or spiritual ones which journey through from place to place finding the refreshment of a well from time to time or the warmth of a home blaze for nothing on a winter day is better than coming into one's own house and home i said that the dates of today would give us images in the same way and truly that is so for in the year 1666 the great fire of london broke out it was sunday the 2nd of september and in the early hours of the morning a fire broke out at a baker's shop and it was in the middle of the old city of london within the line of the old roman walls london was a populist city but 80 000 people lived within those roman walls and beyond what other areas of london the borough of southwark and beyond the the westminster and the the population spreading out to east and west and on the other side of the river as well but the fire broke out in the city of london itself and the lord mayor was slow in permitting the kind of things which would have actually broken the fire that the only method they had in those days was the explosion and destruction of houses to to make a fire break and that sir thomas bloodworth the lord there was called uh he was delayed in taking that action he also and this was a result remember 1666 is only six years after the restoration of the monarchy and the city of london had been a center of republicanism and when charles ii from westminster said i'll send royal soldiers to come and help you destroy the houses the lord mayor felt that that would be more incandescent to the population than the fire itself not knowing how the fire was going to take hold but he would not have royal soldiers at that time and so the fire began to blaze and in the end it was totally uncontrolled of the um churches and and houses in the city of london within those walls thirteen thousand two hundred houses were built were burned eighty-seven parish churches and tragically in the midst of it all the huge gossip cathedral saint paul's cathedral caught fire and blazed in the middle of that that intense heat were told from people scientists testing pieces of pottery now from that fire that the blaze in its heat reached 1250 degrees centigrade 2280 degrees fahrenheit that immense heat which nothing could stand before and in the end it was explosions on east and west making fire breaks royal soldiers preventing it going into westminster and the garrison from the tower of london preventing it spreading further to the east and london bridge having already fire breaks in its houses preventing it from crossing the river but that gave it four days to burn the houses of seventy 000 of the 80 000 people who live there truly a catastrophic disaster for the capital city and when everything was over then the ruin was fairly well intense and the city authorities had to begin to think how do we build again it was time for a new beginning which in hindsight of course was a wonderful thing there was not too much loss of life in the fire but in an immense amount of the loss of the city's resources and the buildings that were used in the homes of the inhabitants they had to begin again and the pattern of london you see today with the great monument to the to the the aspect of the fire comes from that and of course the christopher wren called in to rebuild not only saint paul's cathedral but many of the parish churches we remember that fire and the intensity of damage that fire can do and as we remember that date we think of all the aspects of fire across our world at the moment and people risking their lives to fire fight and save the homes of people and the lives of people well i wanted also to come to another love story this is the date in 1973 when the writer j.r.r tolkien died and tolkien is is best known right across the world for his lord of the rings and his book the hobbit it has taken hold of people's imaginations and i remember first passing the three volumes of the lord of the rings in the public library at home and wondering what the patterns on them meant at that time and and not not actually picking them up and then one day i on a saturday evening i did take from the the library the first volume and within a couple of hours of re-reading i was into a completely different land for tolkien had a way of writing which expressed in the shire the woods and the fields and even the wood smoke and the sense of hospitality and fellowship and and uh homeless should we call it uh one needs a word to stress the comfort of being together at home all of that is there in in tolkien and the way in which that has to be defended now humphrey carpenter has written a lovely biography of tolkien but i must say tolkien's life should we say caught fire for me when i saw the 2019 film it is simply called talking about his early life and i watched it on an airplane coming from new york back to england when i got back i found it and watched it again but it's a very powerful film it tells the story first of all of talking losing both parents and tragically his mother whom he loved dearly and she died young from illness and he and his brother hilary were made the wards of one of the fathers at the birmingham oratory father francis who found them a home with some and looked after their education and all that is told on the way through and the way in which tolkien had always had this amazing imagination but also the way in which he found friends and made little companionships in that way as boys and loved to imagine things and bring his creative gifts to that but i wanted to go on because at the age of 16 he fell deeply deeply in love with his wife to be edith who was four years older than he but father francis was very sure that it would get in the way of his studies and so he forbade tolkien to continue that relationship and tolkien was a servant catholic and at the same time he was obedient to father francis so heartbroken that the lovely relationship which he had with edith was was ceased and he had to wait until he was 21 father francis said before he could even contact her by lesser and at 21 after those years of waiting he did he wrote to her she was already engaged to another having thought that she'd been forgotten by tolkien and in fact and the film shows this most beautifully um she writes back and says but you're the one i've always loved and she sets aside the relationship she she has with someone else in she i think she was even engaged to him and tolkien hastens to find her and from that moment onwards that they're married early in the birmingham oratory and edith becomes a catholic to be with her husband in that way but it was such a dimension and importance in her husband's life eventually after his years of study he was a philologist who loved languages and also loved telling stories mythological stories with meaning but at the same time regularly at the sacrament receiving christ in the bread and wine particularly in the bread as a catholic and then he was sent off to war and it tells the story of his desperate days in the somme and all that he endured there in the fire and and and death of the song and being invalided home riddled with lice and trench fever so that his health was broken at that time but it was at that time that she began the writing of stories and we can't tell the whole story today but that love for edith was a flame through his heart but both of them a wonderful marriage right through until edith pre-deceased him and the encouragement she gave for the writing he became because he was a great scholar in philology he became the merton professor of english language and literature and that was the summer of his career but it certainly isn't what he was known for though perhaps merton i might say is the only building that i know which has the canterbury chimes of a gregorian chant which our clock sounds and the presenter from here went to be at merton and establishments there so that gregorian chant was the accompaniment to tolkien's life at merton college all of those things we think of today but we also think of the way in which he told the story of the journey first of all in the hobbit but mostly and the fight against good and evil one from another and finding it in particular areas finding areas of hospitality and comfort there are very strong images of that and it would be tempting to start reading them today because they are so beautiful but the great films that are made full of drama often miss those moments out the moments where the little group of hobbits find hospitality and are freed from the danger of the great willow by tom bombadil and the story of them waking up in the comfort and safety of his house that's missing in the films there's no time to tell that but most of all missing and it's a an image that i treasure is when they're out in the woods and receive the hospitality of the high elves and the sweet taste of the wafer bread given to them which refreshes becomes a sacramental image like none other in the life of talking and the way it goes forward all those images are really deep in my mind from having read that book the first volume of the lord of the rings and then carried on and on and on until the moment when as you'll remember it ends with sam who's been so faithful to frodo all the way through coming home sitting in front of his own fire and saying to his wife well i'm back such ordinary words after forces of good and evil in all kinds of places have been faced and it's the hobbits the ordinary people who carry it through and take the ring of power to cast it into the fire and then frodo passes over the seas and that i think was a a assigned the lovely songs that tolkien writes in those books the sign of in the end in his mind not only the receiving of the sacrament of of that infinity but also of edith passing over the seas to beyond and the way that he would peacefully go tranquilly at the end of his life so let's give thanks for all of that those images which were able to gain from fire from water from the love stories which we've heard from the bravery of those fighting flood and fire throughout the world this morning as we say our prayers here in the safety of these walls this morning where fire and water speak of warmth and refreshment and of good things for us this cathedral in many times has suffered huge fires when it was burnt down by danish invaders and also huge fires in part of it when for example the library was bombed uh in the middle of the second world war and fires all around in the precincts but right back from early times there are stones here which have a pink color which show that they've been burned by heat of an enormous intensity and some of those stones having been taken out find themselves placed in walls around and by the spotting of the pink stone one can see that that's should we call it a firestone which has passed through the blaze and come out and has been used again for a new beginning let's say our prayers on this particular day we are praying today for the diocese of eldoreth in the anglican church of kenya and in this diocese for justin our archbishop and for rose bishop of dover for tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parishes of the sitting born area deanery and the clergy who helped in them and continuing to pray for julian staniforth in his ministry as the area dean before we go on tomorrow to pray perish by parish around that area of our diocese bring your own prayers and intentions your images which have been called up in your minds by anything we've spoken about today and give thanks for them offer them and let's use everything that we have as a new beginning always with the gift of the new day here's the collect for this week almighty god who called your church to bear witness that you were in christ reconciling the world to yourself help us to proclaim the good news of your love that all who hear it may be drawn to you through him who was lifted up on the cross and reigns with you in the unity of the spirit one god now and forever our men say the prayer our savior taught us in whatever language we like to 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 before our silence i think it's worth saying again the verse from the song of songs sets me as a seal upon your heart as a seal upon your arm for love is strong as death passion fierce as the grave its flashes are flashes of fire a raging flame many waters cannot quench love neither can floods drown it the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and of 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 does us good to remember after a meditation on the really the four elements which are surrounding us earth and air or wind or breath and fire and water that all those things are so necessary to our life and new beginnings can come from any of them in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of god was hovering over the face of the waters and god said let there be light and there was light light and darkness separated water parted for earth and in the midst of that we now as human kind stewards of this marvelous creation but we remember too as we think of the the burning of somewhere like the capital city of london that london as we see it today would not be london and possibly the capital city would have had to be removed or like paris knocked down and rebuilt again had the fire not taken place for everything that developed from there became a new beginning assisted by the various elements it's interesting in all these languages that spirit and breath are the same word and when jesus talks about the spirit he talks about the wind blowing where it wants to and and you hear the sound you you feel it and actually the smoke gives us a sense in what seems like a still mourning of the air that we breathe and the light and the warmth that we depend on and the physicality of the earth and the freshness of the water all around us in creation but also the creative activity of humanity in community in capital cities all over the world which have been through times of destruction or times of recreation for every end is a new beginning