hmm good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this friday the 28th of may welcome wherever you are in the world as we say morning prayer together it's rather a special day for canterbury because uh today is the day on which in 1089 archbishop landfrank died and he had been brought across here in 1070 by the new norman king who had won the battle of hastings in 1066 and william the conquerors he's now well known as uh brought his norman abbott of kong who had been a monkey the benedictine abbey of beck before that of the prior of the beck and uh those communities as you know we're still very much connected with and pray for each thursday as they pray for us landfrank came here in the year 1070 and was archbishop until 1089 19 years of massive energy and building and a rewriting of the constitution for the monks so that everything was so say put in order architecturally made safe in stone and much of his cathedrals especially the crypt still survives and at the same time rewrote the benedictine constitution and perhaps it's a good thing that we're having a chapter meeting for most of today because landfrank will be an inspiration in that so let's say our prayers are many more things of course to think about this morning and it is the most lovely morning and it's the beginning of what we'll call a bank holiday weekend for monday following this trinity sunday on sunday is a public holiday and so we give thanks for that sign of rest and relaxation for the nation let's begin our prayers o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise visit us with your salvation and sustain us with your gracious spirit blessed are you creator of all do you be praised 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 son is psalm 132 on this 28th morning of the month it's a song about david and it takes us back to the question that the crowds were asking and matthew seemed to be asking of us in his gospel over the last day or two can this be the son of david with the crowds looking at jesus and matthew wanting to give us to give and his own community of christians wanting to give the answer yes of course it is the expected one the anointed one of the royal line of david here's psalm 132 lord remember for david all the hardships he endured oh 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 eyelids 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 drink 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 while 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 a psalm of david 132 for this 28th morning of the month so let's turn to the gospel of saint matthew and today we are ending chapter 12 before beginning the new discourse the third that we would have had but we're in narrative for the moment of the second discourse and here is chapter 12 beginning at verse 38 just from where we left off yesterday jesus is surrounded by the crowd and they are the ones who've been asking can this be the son of david and the scribes and the pharisees who are irritated to the point of violence by that question and their answer is no of course not and the crowds are being given the answer by jesus himself of course it's the one that we're expecting and matthew wants us and his own community of christians to have the same kind of conviction here's verse 38 of chapter 12. then some of the scribes and pharisees answered jesus saying teacher we wish to see a sign from you but jesus answered them an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign but no sign will be given except the sign of the prophet jonah for justice jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth the men of nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it for they repented at the preaching of jonah and behold something greater than jonah is here the queen of the south will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of solomon and behold something greater than solomon is here when the unclean spirit has gone out of a person it passes through waterless places seeking rest but finds none then it says i will return to my house from which i came and when it comes it finds the house empty swept and put in order then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself and they enter and dwell there and the last state of that person is worse than the first so also will it be with this evil generation while he was still speaking to the people behold his mother and his brothers stood outside asking to speak to him but jesus replied to the man who told him who is my mother and who are my brothers and stretching out his hand towards his disciples he said here are my mother and my brothers for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother there are three sections to that fairly short reading and they're really quite different one of them if you like is a parable it's just a short parable set into this narrative just as matthew sets the very short parable of the person building the house on sand and the person building the house on rock in the sermon on the mount we're just about to start a chapter chapter 13 full of parables but there's one here so first we come to the discussion between jesus and the scribes and pharisees then the little parable and then the extraordinary paragraph about his own family his mother and his brothers so let's start in the order that they come to us because jesus is still astonished by the fact that uh he is uh he's astonished by the fact that he's being questioned by pharisees and sadducees and scribes who are quizzing him this is still if we're to go along with mark the galilean ministry still and uh it is actually taken from mark we'll come to that in a moment because certain things have been changed and we shall see how they go as we end this chapter but then we have jesus answering their question we want to see a sign a sign of proof jesus doesn't say you've had enough signs he's as with john the baptist when the question comes are you the one or are we to wait for someone else jesus says to his disciples who are really asking a question deep from the heart of john jesus says to them go and tell john what you hear and see and then the blind receive their sight and the poor are given give good news to them prisoners are released it's the fulfilling of what we call the nazareth manifesto that prophecy from isaiah that's that's the real answer signs are going on in teaching and inactivity all around them but they're not wanting to receive they want the answer to be no i can't give a sign and jesus says the only sign that you will be given is the sign first of all of jonah it shows us how important it is to have these old testament stories in our minds and hearts to understand what jesus is saying and jonah in the story do you remember is swallowed by the great fish when he's trying to escape his own vacation and uh the storm tries to stop the ship they throw him overboard and he thinks that's the end of that and then he's swallowed by the whale and then he is spewed up onto the dry land and still he's being told go to nineveh so that the two images in this are one in the same because jonah was there three days and nights in the whale's belly and jesus in his prophecy here and matthew's certainly taking hold of that talks about being in the belly of the earth the heart of the earth for three days before being revealed that will be the sign and all these christians who are listening to matthew teaching in his own community and we now are nodding at the metaphor of jonah being used for what will happen later through passion tide and resurrection in the vocation of the anointed one and then we come to the fact that the queen of the south the queen of sheba we normally call her and handel wrote a a good entry for her in orchestral terms the arrival of the queen of sheba she came from the south in great state you can read all about that again in the old testament important to know those stories came to question the wisdom of solomon can this be when she got there she found yes and solomon of course the son of david the one who was chosen to build the temple in jerusalem for the ark before had been at places like shiloh but when david captured jerusalem he knew that that would be the place the sign of the holy city both eternal and in this mortal life but it was solomon the son of david who built that first temple and like this place it was burned down and rebuilt and burned down and destroyed and rebuilt until the time of the anointed one coming and then jesus talking to the one at the well in the fourth gospel says the time will come when the the those who worship will worship in spirit and in truth so these holy buildings become signs in themselves of faithfulness of people but time claims them and time had claimed canterbury cathedral in the hundreds of years before ever landfrank came and began to build in good stone and his crypt i've just celebrated the eucharist in before later on the chapter meeting will happen not in the crypt but in the chapter room on the other side of the cathedral when decisions will be made as land frank set for this community of monks which was here at the time okay so part two of this is a wonderful little parable and it's one that i ought to take to heart because i always feel that the prayer i ought to say daily is the prayer based on the sentences of sir francis drake who talked about it's not the beginning of a work but the continuing of it until it be thoroughly finished which yields the true glory and that prayer is one that so often i and others don't fulfill we start a work and leave it half done and then in the end the work is left there and it quite often becomes worse than it was before you ever started it because you haven't completed it and he's talking here about a person's life having started by casting out everything that was evil in it and then leaving it and when the spirit returns they find it much much better to inhabit and go and find seven spirits much more evil than themselves and come back and inhabit it that's that's the parable and one could one could translate that into the cleaning of a room the cleaning of the kitchen and then letting the thing get worse because you haven't finished the job off or the weeding of a garden my work with the thistles in the uh the the green garden that the green meadow that we are creating together because if once if one leaves that then the garden becomes worse than it was before and this is simply an image that jesus is using to help people see that work is both negative casting out the evil and positive then embracing the good news that the anointed one has given and finally the extraordinary sentences about jesus's own family and to get the real story of that we have to go to mark for it's mark who says that the neighbors in nazareth when jesus is having crowds and arguments and everything else at the sea of galilee the neighbors say to his mother and his family he's out of his mind and you can imagine james the elder brother who later on becomes of course a very important character in the acts of the apostles the leader of the church in jerusalem and himself dies a martyr's death and these brothers whom i always take to be the sons of joseph by another marriage as with the sisters but we don't know that um and so they are jesus blood relatives in some way or another and they set out to see what on earth is help happening i don't think they set out with any evil intention they set out to to see if they can help with this if if jesus is indeed out of his mind and when they get there in saint mark's gospel the crowds are so thick that they have to stand outside and the message comes and then jesus redefines what family means and it's that that matthew takes hold of looking at the people around him he says who is my mother who are my brothers stretching out his hand towards his disciples he says here are my mother and my brothers for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother i like to think that that's a beginning of the pilgrimage of the eldest brother james towards being a leader of the church early in the acts of the apostles it's certainly part of the path of mary in knowing what the prophecy of simeon a sword shall pierce your heart also is meaning in her life and the way in which she has to share her son and she began to find that pain in the temple when he said didn't you know i needed to be about my father's business and sharing in that way when you have owned is a really difficult thing and so mary begins i think her journey at the to towards the cross with this sentence and jesus certainly redefines family embracing all those around him in an extended family so if we look at this particular day i would say that that kind of reinvention recreation which you find with the the temple and that was still being built at that time when jesus was there but he of course prophesies that the temple will be destroyed because of the violence that he can already feel that violence around him and then on this day i wanted to talk about two people who were born on the 28th of may the first one in 1908 was ian fleming who by his character james bond has entertained people in an exciting way ever since mostly by the films that have been made 26 films of one kind or another and most of the books he's important to us here because he had a a house from 1952 onwards in st margaret's bay he bought it from nell coward and was an ardent member of the royal st george golf club and was the captain when he died of a heart attack in the canterbury hospital here but there's a lovely english pub that pet bottom called the duck and there in the garden he began to write his his uh his novel you only live twice and there's a plaque on the chair there in the garden that was his favorite chair we think of the way in which that creative spirit wrote not only james bond books but and gave us characters played by so many different from sean connery to daniel craig all the way through but at the same time chitty chitty bang bang which was his story for children as well we're told that uh his should we call it sang foie his coolness as a a gentleman in the style that he wanted james bond to be and he'd created certain little catch phrases for james bond bond james bond when he introduces himself or shaken not stirred with his martini all of those things just gives colour to what goes on and people are waiting for those catchphrases but in the ambulance when he'd had the heart attack on the way to canterbury hospital his last words were i'm sorry to give you chap's trouble i admire the way that you drive so fast when the traffic is so bad on the roads at the moment and here's the duck ducky who has come to remind us of uh the duck at pet bottom you probably can't see her because of the plants there but she's just arrived to sit by me so then he died in 1964 but the next person that was born on this day that i want to remember is still very much alive and we wish her a happy birthday i'm talking about kylie minogue who was born on this day 28th of may in 1968 and she is a model of how to take life and reinvent it and keep utterly positive in all ways um she was best known and well i remember it because in the 1980s when i was the vicar of sherman part of my duties with the curates of sherman abbey was with the girls of shelby school for girls and every day they had to be permission to watch the soap opera neighbors which came from australia and in that of course kylie played charlene and she had the longest running affair it was on it was off with scott who was played by jason donovan but when they eventually got married then the event became the biggest global audience on screen of all time because the whole world were waiting for the wedding of charlene and scott well both those characters uh kylie minogue and jason donovan reinvented themselves but first they they gave us a song together especially for you and then after that kylie took off by herself and reinvented herself as an icon of music and of fashion and different styles of music on the way she relocated to england and now in paris and her sister danny back home was in the other soap opera home in a way and is still very much australian but kylie was australia's gift to the rest of the world and songs like i should be so lucky and shouldn't say papaka are well known to all and she was variously known as the decades went on as the pop princess or the disco diva and then in 2005 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and her own phrase at that point was the fact that it's like the earth had kind of slipped off its axis you see everything differently and those phrases caused some dewy eyes amongst many who who've felt for her at that time as she embraced that and and fletcher says that he was working in parliament at the time and and and the various uh mps and staff of parliament all were feeling sad for kylie on that day in a way they needn't have been because she was about to embrace life and take it by the the the the uh what should we say lift it again into a completely new dimension and became an an icon for those suffering in many different ways but at the same time with different music so on this day we wish her a very happy birthday and give thanks for all the pleasure that she has given and also the optimism that have been created so many uh in lockdown have made their their life bearable by joining in with other soap operas and families on the way through and so we give thanks for people who can give that kind of inspiration but i also give thanks for lan frank who reinvented the cathedral and set it on its course and reinvented it both in stone much of which survives and also in its ordering of life according to the rule of sin benedict he was strict he was energetic and he was fearless as a statesman as well as an archbishop so on this day we give thanks for anne frank and there's the stone in the north transept set where his uh remains once lay so here we say our prayers on this particular day of land frank and so many other things of which you'll be thinking as we meet in the garden here it's a day when we are praying for the diocese of cameroon in the anglican communion and that is in the church of the province of west africa we pray for that whole province but especially the diocese of cameroon and its people and here of course we are praying for the villages of the reculver area dinery and continue to pray for the ministry of the area dean carol smith pray for archbishop dustin bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambeth and you for the leaders of your own communities on this day here's our colleague for this week god who at this time taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your holy spirit grant us by the same spirit to have a right judgment in all things and ever more to rejoice in his holy comfort who lives and reigns with you and the same spirit through jesus christ our lord amen so we hold our silence now after we have said the father in whichever language you like to say it 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 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 we have a moment of silence now as we say our own prayers the spirit of truth lead us into all truth and give you grace to confess that jesus christ is lord and strengthen you to proclaim the word and works of god 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 got competing loyalties all over the place here we've got tiger with darcy and russell and ducky in front of me and leo here who's not much liking the arrival of tiger so uh in some way we're going to have to give our own loyalty to each of them and try and balance any controversy which is going to occur here in the garden this morning