good morning and welcome to the dinery garden on this thursday the 24th of december though the date is really immaterial it's christmas eve and we're on the very verge of christmas itself we're out in the garden today it's it's it's chilly it's it's windy but this is the morning when we'll gather ivy and holly to decorate the deanery and christmas then tomorrow can begin but for the moment we've come to say our prayers pausing in our work and we are thinking very much of the anticipation of christmas i'm sitting here in front of the nandina which is the chinese bamboo simply because it has a host of lovely red berries and also even little white flowers at this time of year and so it's giving us that sort of foretaste of of christmas decorations and all those things so let's say our prayers and then we've many things to think about when we come to our reflection o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise reveal among us the light of your presence that we may behold your power and glory blessed are you sovereign god of all to you be praise and glory forever in your tender compassion the dawn from on high is breaking upon us to dispel the lingering shadows of night as we look for your coming among us this day 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 psalm on this 24th morning of the month is psalm 118 and i'll read some of the verses of that long song now oh give thanks to the lord for he is good his mercy endures forever let israel now proclaim his mercy endures forever let the house of aaron now proclaim his mercy endures forever let those who fear the lord proclaim his mercy endures forever the lord is my strength and my song and he has become my salvation joyful shouts of salvation sound from the tents of the righteous the right hand of the lord does mighty deeds the right hand of the lord raises up the right hand of the lord does mighty deeds i shall not die but live and declare the works of the lord the lord has punished me sorry but he has not given me over to death open to me the gates of righteousness that i may enter and give thanks to the lord this is the gate of the lord the righteous shall enter through it i will give thanks to you for you have answered me and have become my salvation the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone this is the lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes this is the day that the lord has made we will rejoice and be glad in it so we come to the end of our reading of the second letter of saint peter and we're reading this morning the whole of chapter three this is now the second letter that i am writing to you beloved in both of them i am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the lord and savior through your apostles knowing this first of all that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing following their own sinful desires they will say where is the promise of his coming for ever since our ancestors died all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation for they deliberately overlook this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of god and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished but by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly but do not overlook this one fact beloved that with the lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day the lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness but is patient towards you not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance but the day of the lord will come like a thief and then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth's and the works that are done on it will be exposed since all these things are thus to be dissolved what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of god because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn but according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness will be at home therefore beloved since you are waiting for these be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace and count the patience of our lord as salvation just as our beloved brother paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters there are some things in his letters that are hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures you therefore beloved knowing this beforehand take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless peaceful people and lose your own stability but grow in grace and knowledge of our lord and savior jesus christ to him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity amen this actually is i think that the best part of this second letter but it does actually point to the letter being much later and it's also saying that the letters of our beloved paul are well known to the writer of this letter writing in the tradition of peter and giving the voice of peter to those who are tempted in some way to disbelieve because ordinary life is continuing and people are dying and the day of the lord isn't coming as they imagined it to come but see the advice given first of all know that you must reflect on the words of the prophets about the coming of the lord and trust in the words of the apostles and at the same time wait with patience for and here he quotes psalm 90 in god's eyes a thousand years are but as yesterday as the psalm says they pass like a watch in the night but this delay is the lord's patience inviting all all still to repentance and notice too how he gives advice as to how they should be during the ordinary course of life whatever is going on around them to be at peace and not to listen to scoffers but to hold on to their stability it's a very important word in this place which was for almost a thousand years a benedictine foundation and one of the great vows of the benedictine order not only of poverty chastity and obedience but is of stability and stability means the rhythm of life in worship in thinking in work physical work because that was the way in which the monastery and the community at that time ordered itself and in the same way that the daily offices very much the stability of this place it's what we're doing now reflecting on the scriptures in our prayers saying the psalms together or at coral even song hearing them sung and all of that is part of our stability as we wait for the lord's will these things are so crucially important and the lord coming in bethlehem all those years ago as prophesied by the prophets and also gathering things up at the end of time our time and the time of the universe all of those things become important and this very late letter actually is giving us signs of that as we read the end of it this morning on christmas eve now christmas eve is above all else a day of anticipation how slow its hours passed when we were children waiting and waiting for the next day when we could open the presents and longing to have the gift now but being told to be patient and wait and all of those things become part of christmas eve but the way in which uh the prophet's message is unwrapped is very much part of a traditional part of christmas eve i'm talking about the nine lessons and carols which will be broadcast by the bbc this afternoon as it always is from king's college cambridge but it's been done in so many ways in our churches and cathedrals and even online as we've done this year the nine lessons lead us through the paths of prophecy pointing forward forward forward with the prophets isaiah speaking of the people who walk in darkness who see a great light and micah talking about the role of little bethlehem amongst all the nations and then we come to the writings of the evangelists themselves and the wonderful stories of the angel gabriel coming to the blessed virgin mary in the gospel of saint luke or the angel appearing to joseph in his dream in the gospel of saint matthew saying you will call his name jesus emmanuel god with us fulfilling the prophecy of isaiah and then the telling of the story of the shepherds from luke and the story of the magi the wise men from from matthew all of that but also the climax which is hinted at here in the epistle we've read this morning the first part of the first chapter of the gospel of sin john in the beginning was the word and that beginning is not talking about bethlehem it's talking about the creative act for as we read here by his word god created all things a thousand years in your sight is but as yesterday seeing as is past in the watch in the night it's also a time when people love to tell stories and remember christmas eve is a great memory for all of us and you can count back the years and this year we shall spend a lot of our time remembering those that we can't be with and getting in touch with them encouragingly somehow or another but nevertheless we remember in the uh way in which we sang carols or went out carol's singing all of that the stories that are told like a christmas carol which we've we've put online for you just to remind you of the story that dickens told about christmas eve once upon a time he says in the first chapter of a christmas carol of all good days of the year on christmas eve and it gives christmas eve a special flavor on this day in 1754 george crabbe spelt c-r-a-b-b-e was born who was both trained as a surgeon but then became a parish priest and finished his life in show bridge in wiltshire but he was a great poet and he was a poet of rural life although he wrote in what's called heroic couplets he spares us nothing in the details of rural life in the village and in the borough he was born at albra and we thank him for the the power of peter grimes which later benjamin britain would turn into an opera with uh the the lyrics based on crabbe's poetry but crab became a friend of all kinds of poets and is still deeply respected by the the poets that that uh write of him and speak of him he's not so well known but he's rather like to me thomas hardy who in the same way and i was very aware of hardy's influence in dorset when i was the the vicar of shervan hardy speaks of country life with all of its difficulties and tragedies as well as its joys but his stories of melstock the village of melstock because he made his own names up for the county of dorset at that time and uh the story of millstock in under the greenwood tree is a wonderful story which begins with with christmas and the melstock choir were not only the choir singing but in those days when there were no church organs instrumentalists who would go round and sing to the village on christmas eve and one of hardy's poems which i remember learning at school was called the pathion ball and it tells the story of the village instrumentalist the choir of melstock going around to the village houses on a freezing night and uh singing their carols it starts uh being told by the the tenor vile michael male he says we went our christmas rounds once more with choir and vials as their two four our path was near by rushy pond where egged and heath stretched out beyond there stood a figure against the moon tall spare and humming a weird some tune you quiet you tire of christian carols he said come and loot at a ball instead well they're tempted by as it happens the devil with a handful of golden guineas to leave their carol singing and go with him blindfold to when the blindfolds are taken off a huge ballroom with chandeliers and laughing and dancing and all kinds of and they they bow old country tunes but in front of them is the table with the golden guineas tempting them to go on at this kind of satanic ball which is going on in front of them instead of playing to the village they are christian carols and then one of the verses says drowsy at last in lieu of dance while shepherds watched they bowed by chance and in a moment at a blink a change came on air they could think the whole ballroom vanishes because of the christian carol and they're standing as the sun is about to rise on egdon heath in the snow having not sung their carols as they should have done to each village house so they troop to church on christmas day and on christmas day they're expecting the villagers to say what on earth happened to you you let us down and instead all the villagers say we've never heard you play so well it was as if angels were playing at our door last night and the say the thing ends read the poem it's it's very amusing indeed and uh there's this sort of shame face thing but heaven takes over where earth fails and perhaps that's a good message for christmas eve that we're waiting for the time when in bethlehem heaven takes over when earth fails with the coming of the christ child so let's say our prayers on this morning of expectation christmas eve and wherever you are in the world bring your own expectations but also bring your prayers for one another because this is going to be a very strange christmas because of all the restrictions of the pandemic in the anglican communion today we're praying for the diocese of ezo in south sudan and john kerreboro zawo the bishop there and all his people the diocese of faisalabad in pakistan and john samuel the bishop and all his people and also the diocese of the falkland islands where the diocesan bishop is our own tim thornton who's also bishop at lambus and therefore prayed by us daily because lambeth's palace is of course in the diocese of canterbury we pray at this time also for justin our archbishop and we remember and we put on a link below the appeal which justin and caroline have started for the whole anglican communion for the needs of vulnerable communities across our anglican family who are badly affected by the pandemic it's called the together in unity appeal and you will find the link for it below it's already raised 33 million pounds which is a wonderful total and encourage us to be generous as an anglican family to one another and also as we are with each other here with our families at christmas time however we managed to do that and within the diocese as we pray for all the parishes and not only justin but also bishop tim and bishop rose of dover we pray for all those who will spend christmas in loneliness and remember our own responsibility to seek them out in some way even remotely to give a word or a gesture of encouragement so bring your own prayers as we say first of all the prayer for christmas eve almighty god you make us glad with the yearly remembrance of the coming of your son jesus christ at christmas time grant that as we joyfully receive him as our redeemer so we shall with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our judge through the same jesus christ our lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever amen so we say together 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 amen moment of silence now for our own prayers for those whom we love those who are working at christmas and any who are in our minds and hearts today christ the son of righteousness shine upon you scatter the darkness from before your path and make you ready to meet him when he comes in glory 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 are amen