good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this monday the 28th of june monday is for us if it's dry and it is today meadow monday and i've come into the walled garden which it seems only a few weeks ago in fact it was a bit longer than that that we were in it together as a garden congregation and it was bare earth with that we were about to seed i'm sitting beside the hens here and you see how fruitful the earth has been in the growth of wildflowers so now flowering here we have linseed and we have feverfew we have cornflowers and we have eccum and corn cockle and a host of other things which are ready to come up this is just the beginning and the predominant colors actually are canterbury colors blue and white and you see also the patch of nettles and thistles which we've deliberately kept for the thistles for the finches when they seed and the nettles for the butterflies already the small tortoise shells have hatched and were flying around but it's it was very stormy yesterday and and it rained very hard and right into the night and so they will be taking shelter somewhere but they've been around on sunny days and today we take delivery of the um swallowtail uh caterpillars so that we can have those but they won't be released here they will be released in the orchard because there is the right kind of atmosphere for them and the food that they will take so we're hoping that we've hatched the swallowtails before but we're hoping to release some which will be around and we give thanks for the fruitfulness of the earth on this particular morning it's nice to be sitting here with the hens making their quiet noises as they begin their day this is a day in the church's calendar when we remember irenaeus the bishop of lyon in southern france in the second century he'd come from smyrna and the amazing thing is that he had had polycarp preaching in old age and polycarp had had st john the evangelist preaching in old age so this is a a real step back into the reality of the early church but irenaeus in southern france what is now southern france became a champion of the uh fight against a heresy which was denying the total humanity of christ insisting of course on his divinity but saying he was rather more than human in his humanity and irenaeus was determined to be the one who would champion the full humanity of christ with the limitations that we know and that causes him to be son of man as well as son of god irenaeus championed both and of course that made him a great champion of the doctrine of the holy trinity when that was formulated uh properly speaking in three two five at the council of nicea long after he himself had died so we give thanks for irenaeus on this particular day and the truth he insisted on so let's begin our prayers on this day and we begin as always with an acclamation of christ at the dawning of the day oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the day star dawn in our hearts and triumph over the shades of night blessed are you creator of all to you be praise 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 are men our psalm on this 28th morning of the month is psalm 132 it's a psalm about the royal house of david in whose line and of whose line the anointed one will be born 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 jar 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 strengths let your priests be clothed with righteousness and your faithful ones sing with joy and 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 testimony is 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 clothe them with shame but on him shall his crown be bright david of course didn't build the temple of the lord it was said by the prophet nathan because of his own shortcomings it was left to his son solomon to build that temple and we know that checkered history of the human line of the house of david but the promise stood that from the line of the house of david the royal line of david the anointed one would be born and tomorrow in uh our own the next day tomorrow is sin peter and ball's day so we'll have special readings but the next day we shall hear two blind men crying out son of david son of david to the anointed one jesus crying out for sight in their faith but for the moment we give thanks for that psalm and we noticed that the psalmist was already knowing that they could walk into the house of the lord at that time because the psalms were of course the hymn book of the second temple let's uh read our lesson for today now and we're turning back to sin matthew having had a special lesson for sunday we have another special lesson tomorrow because as i say it's the feast of saint peter and saint paul we're in matthew chapter 20 as we were on saturday morning but now we're coming to verse 17 and the atmosphere changes we've had the long parable about the owner of the vineyard ending with the sentence in verse 16 so the last will be first and the first last verse 17 and as jesus was going up to jerusalem he took the 12 disciples aside and on the way he said to them see we are going up to jerusalem and the son of man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified and he will be raised on the third day then the mother of the sons of zebedee came up to jesus with her sons and kneeling before him she asked him for something and he said to her what do you want she said to him say that these two sons of mine are to sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your kingdom jesus answered you do not know what you are asking are you able to drink the cup that i am to drink they said to him we are able he said to them you will drink my cup but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my father and when the ten heard it they were indignant at the two brothers but jesus called them to him and said you know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them and their great ones exercise authority over them it shall not be so among you but whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be your slave even as the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many a few days ago we were thinking of a story by josephine tay if you remember the detective writer and this story was more than just detective fiction it it gave her thought in many different directions and she called that story which was about the reputation and life of richard and we'll come back to in a bit but for the moment it's not that that i want it's the title of her book the daughter of time and you remember that i referred to the ancient uh proverb truth is the daughter of time meaning that those who come after can shape the story to their own liking and oftentimes people's reputations depend on that and who comes next and who tells their story well here is matthew writing some years after mark and if you read the story in mark's gospel then there's a difference and it is more compelling but one sees why matthew has chosen to write it for his own christian greek speaking community of jewish people in this particular way it's because the reputation of the 12 or the 11 plus matthias has grown to be so respected that his hand cannot bring him to write the fact that james and john john whom polycarp who heard preaching and then irenaeus had polycarp john in that human line could not bring himself to say that the sons of zebedee those of the twelve the first martyr amongst the twelve james and the great evangelist john the servant of the eternal word could come with so much misunderstanding about what jesus has just said we're actually used to it in the story that mark tells and even in the story that matthew tells how can their humanity before they have been through certain experiences beyond that receive what jesus is saying without protest or receive it without certain acts of human intention to what glory and honor and authority and power mean so that in mark it's the two sons of zebedee who come up and say we want you to grant us a favor we want to sit one on your right and one unto your left when we come to your glory are they mistaking what's going to happen in jerusalem are they still filled with some kind of political intention we don't know we simply know that they got it wrong and on this occasion matthew puts the the favor in the mouth of their mother it begins almost immediately not to make sense because jesus turns to the two of them and asks the questions as they're set out in mark's gospel and the ones who answer are the two boys they don't say we it wasn't us who said this it was our mother though in fact there's a long tradition of blaming mother for things and uh on this occasion poor uh mrs zebedee is having uh uh the blame cast on to her for this misunderstanding of the lord's prophecy of what the vocation of the anointed one the son of man the son of david the son of god what that vocation means in human terms in terms of suffering and the offering up of life and what glory means in earthly terms and also in heavenly terms i when i am lifted up will draw all nations to myself all of that is there in this and first of all jesus taking them aside on the way and trying to share his own vocation which will stretch his humanity to the limits luke pictures him kneeling in gethsemane with great drops of sweat like blood falling to the ground in the stress of knowing he must drink the cup that is set before him and that image is used here when he turns to the two boys and says you do not know what you're asking are you able to drink the cup the time to drink and they say we are able in all their optimism and their intentional strengths and he more in sorrow really at the knowing what will be the fate of so many of the 12 in human terms before the kingdom is accomplished says you will drink my cup but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my father always the will of the creator whom jesus calls father the will of the creator coming through in the humanity of the anointed eternal word in his total humanity going back to irenaeus who insisted on that and it's a great strength to us to have that insisted upon for we ourselves are human beings who have the capacity to embrace the gift of the divine and the imagination and gift of eternal life but for the moment we live within the fruitfulness which this meadow displays and also within the music of god's creation i say it's a nice thing to have the hens beside us these are egg laying noises going on the same time very often my bedroom window looks out onto this direction and uh with it open in these warmer nights first thing i hear in the morning is not just the hens or the thrash singing but also or the music and these are instrumental things of the choristers practicing their instruments next door sometimes beautiful sounds and sometimes an early attempt at a trumpet or a violin uh and that music is very much part of the morning from i don't know about uh half past six quarter to seven onwards after the the silence of the morning is is broken and uh excuse me it's a lovely thing to hear the different sounds of creativity going on but the sound of the meadow growing and flowering is not something one hears it's just something one perceives in all this greenery these gifts are ours in creation but they come in joy and sorrow in pain and also in healing in this life and the expectation of that totality of healing in the life beyond and as we pray for one another all those things are in mind but jesus is talking about his own vocation and realizing that for the moment his 12 that he has around him are not quite able to share it they've got more of the journey to make before they're able to embrace that what it means to drink the cup is more than they at the moment could possibly imagine and it won't be the glory that they're thinking of but it will be glory given from heaven to earth in the totality of the creator giving himself to us in the person of his christ so let's on this day as we think of what true vocation means think of some of the ways in which this date has been important and they are quite interesting dates today we think first of the crowning of edward iv a monarch of england born in the middle of the wars of the roses which was a civil war which went on between the house of lancaster and the house of york for years and years and years splitting the nation and edward iv was crowned sorry edward iv was crowned king in westminster abbey on this day in 1461. he died in 1483 having been king for most of that time but his kingship was broken again by the wars of the roses going on yet nevertheless 22 years as king was quite a stable period and he is well remembered there's a window of him in the cathedral a stained glass window with his queen edward woodville i'm sorry elizabeth woodville the white queen as she's known and we have an early copy of that in stained glass in our window in the deanery which looks out onto the garden here and also kneeling by him are his sons and daughters and they're important too for different reasons edward v and his brother richard who was duke of york both murdered in the tower as little boys the blame as we saw pushed on to richard iii and that story about the demonizing of richard iii we looked at last week on a particular date on this day uh in 1491 henry viii was born now henry viii uh is probably one of our most famous kings for all sorts of different reasons and we can because of truth being the daughter of time we can have him in three different ways if you would like it the first way is that he was born and was never given any public sharing because his brother arthur was the elder brother and was going to be the king so henry vii he would only become king in 1485 so just two years after the death of edward iv henry vii showed his son arthur off to the nation with all the the energy that that that the king wanted to unite his nation and get rid of these civil wars he wanted a strong nation and so arthur was was then married to catherine of aragon uniting spain and england in that match but 20 weeks after that he died and henry at that time his younger brother was only 10 and suddenly he was brought out of the limelight he was a clever clever boy and had learned many many things in different languages but he then was suddenly thrust into the position of being the heir to the throne and henry vii then had to make much of him because on him the unity and power of the nation lay and he organized with isabella the queen of the spanish kingdom with ferdinand the king he organized uh that catherine of aragon the widow of arsa would be betrothed to henry henry had no choice in this he was 10 years old so we could talk about that and and uh say this image of somebody like charles the first who was never going to be king but the elder brother died or we could talk about henry as the renaissance prince active energetic in sports in hunting in scholarship looking utterly wonderful and all the portraits of that time became the the image of the king men but it's not the image we have in our mind because as i say truth is the daughter of time so it's been worked at since then and after that he became and this in truth he did become somebody who uh was was um very uh corpulent uh and at the same time was terrified of his mortality meaning that he didn't have an heir he had two uh well first of all one daughter from catherine of aragon she'd born a son but he died and then elizabeth from his second wife and berlin but we see why he was so terrified of the nation going into a civil war again and that terror and the person he became in terms of being a complete despot is the image we have probably the most famous thing about him is that he has six wives and we used to remember how these went on divorced beheaded died divorced beheaded survived catherine of aragon his long-term wife and then ann berlin who bore not a son but a daughter and was beheaded jane seymour who bore him a son who became edward the six whom he loved her but she died of sickness divorce beheaded died divorced and of cleaves a marriage which was arranged and he never took to it so she was quietly divorced or perhaps not so quietly and then uh the next one um who was beheaded was catherine howard of the famous howard family and finally the one who survived catherine parr but only the sickly edward vi survived who wasn't going to reign for very long and uh in following that mary the daughter of catherine of aragon and then the reign of elizabeth and here are the two demonics we remember henry viii and elizabeth henry viii caused mayhem every chief minister he had practically when they failed him was executed well woolsey happily died before that could happen but thomas moore and thomas cromwell great servants of the king both were beheaded and all of that we remember as earthly power insisting on something for the state and welfare of the people very complicated decisions but at the same time it caused the english reformation when before that uh henry was a very loyal son of the catholic church and had been given the title defender of the faith by uh the pope but then his his displeasure with clement vii grew i'm saying all this because decisions are complicated and reputations are complicated and historians have a life's work and so many theses of scholars are written about things so that as we say truth becomes the daughter of time at the same time um on this day we remember that jean jacques rousseau the great 18th century philosopher was born in 1712 now we could spend a lot of time on russo what i wanted to say was that he was someone who sort of moved on the age of enlightenment into the age of um at a time when feelings and romanticism became acceptable and he almost did that more by his book which was published after he died the confessions of jean-jacques rousseau confessions of that sort autobiographies what weren't common in those days at all and he based himself on the confessions of sin augustine which is probably the most influential book that saint augustine of hippo uh wrote even though his great treaties the city of god is much much longer the confessions are to our taste these days because it tells about personal details who so did that and if we think of other things as we go through the the 19th century you think of of um cardinal newman writing his apologia for his life or oscar wilde writing his de profundis in prison details of their own life writing their own story just as portrait painters painted self-portraits and now of course autobiographies are two a penny but you're interpreting your own story unless someone else gets hold of the truth as you wouldn't want it told and that's happening all the time so i'll leave you with that thought who tells your story who tells my story all of those things become a grist to the mill this day as we think of matthew causing the mother of james and john to be the one who asked that awkward question but then going on to show us the full vocation of what drinking that cup might mean and then um lastly two other kinds of dates beginnings and telling a story on this day in 1918 sorry in 1914 the archduke franz ferdinand the heir to the throne of the austro-hungarian empire and his wife sophie were assassinated in sarajevo by terrorists no one could believe how the thing then unfolded and if we trace it back we see how the great war began from that bullet fired in sarajevo that is something we could spend a long time on but it's interesting always to think in history where do you go back to a beginning of things and here's the beginning you might say it came to a temporary conclusion um five years later in 1919 because on this day in versailles the peace treaty was finally signed but that peace treaty didn't hold for all that long and many believe that in the peace treaty were the seeds of the second great conflict where do stories begin and how do we look at them and how do we find truth it's a constant human endeavor and then finally this is much more cheerful as well on this day in 1902 the composer richard rogers was born he's probably the most famous american composer of the 20th century because we know him from his musicals and his songs some with lauren's heart to begin with but mostly with oscar hammerstein ii so that we trace his life and our knowledge of him through the musicals and the songs that he wrote and are in our minds in the musical oklahoma in 1943 first in broadway and then all of these made famous by being created into films carousel in 1945 with the not so not so famous as a musical but very famous from the song you will never walk alone south pacific in 1949 all the songs of that tend to be famous and the score sits on our piano constantly as does oklahoma say that we can sing with people when they're here the king and i in 1951 and perhaps most famous of all and i've only just sketched the list 1959 the sound of music and there are many songs and tunes that richard rogers gave us so that we have the words of of uh hammerstein and the the music of richard rogers in our heads in that way different kind of flower meadow different kind of creativity different kind of music from the music we have in the cathedral but the same way that hymn tunes and folk songs cause words to stay in our heads so you'll never walk alone when you walk through a storm hold your head up high and don't be afraid all of that is in our heads because of the tune of richard rogers so let's give thanks for that a lot of things to think of on this particular day but then there are an awful lot of flowering plants in the meadow here and we don't choose one we see the total picture and give thanks for creation's fruitfulness and the way in which christ's humanity and divinity walks beside us every step of the way as we read the story set down to her for us by others and told us by others but speaking from christ's own words when we hear them into our hearts day by day so let's say our prayers on this 28th of the month and we are praying today in the anglican communion for the diocese of cochin in the united church of south india and we're praying also for the parish of ramsgate saint george and paul world in his ministry there in this diocese we pray of course for archbishop justin and for bishop rose of dover for bishop tim atlantis this will be a day when this community needs your prayers because today and tomorrow we are having interviews to appoint a new director of music following the retirement of david flood um at christmas time and we've waited until the the choirs could all sing and take part in all that we shall be asking of candidates so pray for us as we take care of the music the wonderful music of this place in all its dimensions and its outreach today bring your own intentions your own prayers as we say together the collect for this week oh god the protector of all who trust in you without whom nothing is strong nothing is holy increase and multiply upon us your mercy that with you as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not our hold on things eternal grant this heavenly father for our lord jesus christ's sake amen so we say each in our own language the prayer our lord has 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 amen limit of silence now for our own prayers on this day foreign [Music] here the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and if 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 are men well thank you for the idea of this lovely wildflower garden which came from our garden congregation and we shall enjoy seeing the wildflowers come each one so distinct and so many different colors so you