good morning and a warm welcome to the dinery garden in canterbury cathedral as we come together on this wednesday the 25th of november to say our morning prayers together wherever you are in the world bring your own intentions and your own concerns as we share in morning prayer oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your faithful servants bless you they make known the glory of your kingdom blessed are you sovereign god ruler and judge of all to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of this age that is passing away may the light of your presence which the saints enjoy surround our steps as we journey on may we reflect your glory this day and so be made ready to see your face in the heavenly city where night shall be no more blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind and as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm this morning on this 25th morning of the month is a section of psalm 119 i'm beginning to read from verse 33. teach me o lord the way of your statutes and i shall keep it to the end give me understanding and i shall keep your law i shall keep it with my whole heart lead me in the path of your commandments for therein is my delight incline my heart to your testimonies and not to unjust gain turn away my eyes let's say gaze on vanities oh give me life in your ways confirm to your servant your promise which stands for all who fear you turn away the reproach which i dread because your judgments are good behold i long for your commandments in your righteousness give me life let your faithful love come unto me o lord even your salvation according to your promise then shall i answer those who taunt me for my trust is in your word oh take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth for my hope is in your judgments so shall i always keep your law i shall keep it forever and ever i will walk at liberty because i study your commandments i will tell of your testimonies even before kings and will not be ashamed my delight shall be in your commandments which i have greatly loved my hands will i lift up to your commandments which i love and i will meditate on your statutes i've left going back on november the 25th india has gone by for a very good reason because so many of the dates are reflecting the kind of natural plagues which happened during this particular part of the revelation to john it's not a cheerful passage and in it john is using images from the exodus of the plagues in egypt which caused pharaoh to send the people that israel away on their journey into the wilderness and beyond to the forest land to the promised land so here is the set of plagues which is sending the new israel forward and so many of the images come from not only the old testament but events in john's life and the kind of nervousness that john of patmos is feeling about the catastrophes which happen in natural terms but also in political terms in the roman empire so we get two days of these but here is today's reading we're starting at uh chapter 16 and verse one and i'm reading up to the end of verse 11. then i heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of god so the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth and harmful and painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshipped its image the second angel poured out his bowl into the sea and it became like the blood of a corpse and every living thing died that was in the sea the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water and they became blood and i heard the angel in charge of the waters say just are you a holy one who is and who was for you brought these judgments for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets and you have given them blood to drink it is what they deserve and i heard the altar saying yes lord god the almighty true and just are your judgments the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun and it was allowed to scorch people with fire they were scorched by the fierce heat and they cursed the name of god who had power over these plagues they did not repent and give him glory the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast and its kingdom was plunged into darkness people gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the god of heaven for their pain and sores they did not repent of their deeds so we read that passage and if i go to the list of things which in human history just a few of them really have happened on this november the 25th over the years i come to the fact that in 1343 a tsunami caused by earthquake in the turanian sea destroys naples and amalfi in 1667 an earthquake in the caucasus kills 80 000 people in 1759 an earthquake in the mediterranean destroys beirut and damascus killing forty thousand in 1839 a cyclone in southeast india drove a 40-foot high wave inland killing 300 000 people in 2008 cyclone nisha strikes north sri lanka killing or displacing 90 000 in 2009 jeddah floods in saudi arabia and 122 are killed and 350 missing i could go on in sumatra with tsunamis in other areas in typhoons and cyclones and earthquakes and in 1950 the storm of the century struck the eastern united states killing hundreds of people a bitter winter storm driving huge amounts of snow into the appalachians well this is uh the kind of landscape that we grow used to and we look around and see the the weather behaving in particular ways and the the earth behaving in particular ways but in a measure it's always been so and john and patmos sees these as signs but also in all of this the real message is that whatever the situation whatever the signs then endurance and encouragement for one another and strong offers of help which nowadays come from nation to nation in disasters like this are the most necessary response some biblical scholars in old time when they were looking at archbishop usher's dates for creation and everything happened assessed that noah's flood happened on the 25th of november 2348 bc well it just put something else onto this particular date and we remember that we remember what humanity has to deal with but also john of patmos is giving us political plagues as well and everything in that um perhaps goes to that verse in ecclesiastes in chapter 13 which says uh if you touch pitch your hand is defiled and that is john's message for any who have dealings with as far as he is concerned the blasphemous imperial cult he has seen on the year that that or in the year that that nero committed suicide complete mayhem in rome itself and it was as though the powers of the roman empire were beginning to topple because no one was there as a leader and everyone was fearing that this was the end of life as they had known it and always as we've said before there's that sense of the passion empire well away to the east who are already beginning even in john's time to attack the peace of the roman empire and sometimes to be very successful as our lord said there will be wars and rumors of wars there will be earthquakes there will be famine there will be plagues but the end is not yet this is our working canvas but also thank god the beauty and stillness of creation is our working canvas and in that people can do good for each other and spread the eternal gospel but at the same time in john's time and since throughout the ages the blood of the martyrs has run free when earthly fart powers find their own intentions conflicting with those who would stand against them and stand for what they know is the will of god there are some lovely things which have happened on this day in 1984 you may remember that sir bob geldorf who formed band-aid to assist famine-stricken ethiopia they recorded on this day november 25th do they know it's christmas and that wonderful song raised so much to assist in famine stricken ethiopia yeah bob gilda lives quite near here and i think the locality is very proud of the efforts of of of uh band-aid and everything else that he he put his mind and his heart and resources to on this day also um in 1835 25th of november andrew carnegie was born in dunfermline he too in the united states made enormous sums of money and resources but that was spent on wonderful libraries and educational institutions and probably most iconic of all the carnegie hall where so many wonderful performances take place and at present of course performances like that for the creative arts are few and far between it's a mixed picture in which we do our work but day by day the rhythms of our prayer life and those sentences that we pick out from the scriptures and those images that we pick out from the scriptures strike us in so many different ways i find that i could have read a passage through the whole of my life and then suddenly one morning a sentence just leaps out at me and i think i never really realized the import of that sentence for me but i do today it's a case of new every morning as the lamentation said his nurses are new every morning and there's one particular thing which happened today which which causes me to remember this way that we can hear the gospel in particular ways that we're able to remember on this day in 1748 isaac watts died he's in our calendar for today and isaac watts is known as the godfather of english hymnady his hymns are like a foundation stone of a great movement of him writing from then on he was an independent minister and therefore in those days he could not go to oxford or cambridge despite his extremely intelligent uh mind but he went to stoke newington and was educated there in an independent college you had to be an anglican to go to oxford or cambridge in in the days that he was living following the civil war and in stoke newington he made friends with a family and lived with them in abney hall for most of his life and it was there that he wrote and developed hymns which stay in our mind now he was someone who would search the old testament scriptures and write out the psalms in metrical form so that they would read like poetry with a rhythm that we could would use ourselves but he was someone who would interpret the old testament imagery and place it in our grasp for now it's what we've seen john of patmos doing so many of those terrible and glorious images have come from the prophets sections of the prophets that sometimes we don't even read but what was full of biblical knowledge and at the same time full of rhymes and rhythm sometimes psalms and one of his most famous metrical psalms is a metrical version of psalm 90 oh god our help in ages past our hope for years to come our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home it's a hymn that is deep in the hearts of those who know it because it stays in our mind and we sing it very often at troubled times and times of remembrance it helps us remember psalm 90 lord that has been our refuge through all generations the old version went but that wasn't in rhythm so to have it set to music and to sing it in what we call common meter oh god our help in ages past our hope for years to come eight six eight six the rhythm goes then it stays in the head and in other ways watts would use old testament rhythms for that to give our minds pictures of the scriptures one of my favorite is there is a land of pure delight where saints immortal rain infinite day excludes the night and pleasures banish pain their everlasting spring abides and never withering flowers death like a narrow stream divides that heavenly land from ours and in the end do you remember the last verse imagines us standing where moses stood it begins could we but stand where moses stood and view the landscape all well that is a wonderful image of moses looking across to the promised land it's what the whole book of revelation does it's what john bunyan's pilgrim's progress does looking across through many many dangerous and horrible times when pilgrims faces apollyon straggling the road demonic images and painful times when pilgrim has wandered off the road and christian has to be set back on the road again but always at the end is the sense the gleam of the holy city and what gives us that with old testament images of the old israel's pilgrimages which began with all the plagues and rivers turning to blood and then went through the wilderness and through the red sea and so on and up to the river jordan and beyond so all of those images we remember we remember his christmas hymn joy to the world the lord has come let earth receive her king let every heart prepare him room and heaven and nature sing the sense of chorus nature singing is very much in watts but probably my favorite line in all his hymns is in the hymn jesus shall reign where the sun and the line is let every creature rise and bring peculiar honors to their king well the word peculiar means specific absolutely that creature's own character and behavior and it would apply to us as well not just to the creatures of god's world the peculiar honours specific to their own breed and culture but to us with the gifts that god has given us uniquely so that you and i can bring peculiar honors to our king not peculiar because they're odd but peculiar because they are specific thank god your character each one of you individually is like no other character that god has ever created in the whole of humanity so you have peculiar gifts to bring and that we remember we remember too our unity with creation for we are relying on a vaccine and the oxford vaccine is relying on a vaccine which is based on the kind of flu that chimpanzees had inculcated in inside themselves and and that has that been taken and is being used as the building block to help us chimpanzees are an endangered species because of human activity but at the same time we rely on the plant life and the animal life and the life in the sea in plants and fish and everything else for our healing and help in these times through the absolute skill of science let every creature rise and bring peculiar honours to their king angels descend with songs again and earth repeat the loud are men isaac watts we give great thanks but most of all because his verses are so easy to remember because he set them in rhyme and set them to tunes so let's say our prayers on this morning of the month and we see that on this day the 25th of november we're praying for the diocese of sapele in nigeria and dr blessing eryther the bishop there and his people and community and the diocese of east kerala in south india and the bishop vs francis and his people there here we pray for the whole area of the north towns in kent and the area dinner is john corbin and we pray for him in his ministry across that beautiful area and all the communities of that area that we should be praying for in the days ahead so let's bring our own concerns to the prayers for today and we remember particularly the people that we know to be in need and danger and any kind of trouble at presence say the well-remembered prayer for this week stir up oh lord we beseech you the wills of your faithful people that they plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works may of you be plenteously rewarded through jesus christ our lord amen so each in our own language now we say the prayer that our savior 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 so a moment of silence now for our own prayers [Music] 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 amen so [Music]