good morning and welcome to canterbury cathedral to the dinery garden on this morning of the 27th of august as we gather for morning prayer wherever you are in the world please feel welcome i'm sitting inside the temporary shelter of this marquee which has been put up to give us shelter as not only broadcast but can also have property distance outdoor meetings at this time of pandemic but i on two days ago i was using it for shelter against driving rain this morning i'm using it as a visual aid as you will see when we come to the reflection as we say our prayers we remember that recently we've prayed for those in beirut and we shall be thinking of them again in our reflection this morning we've been praying for those in california and fighting fires and and and that continues but this morning we are praying with urgency for those on the gulf coast of the southern states of the united states as they await the enormous 20-foot storm surge of the hurricane laura and say we pray particularly for the state of texas and louisiana and those who will suffer from this enormous storm which is approaching the the coast uh as we do that we ourselves in canterbury have very special connections with the church in houston uh and we pray for our friends there but you will yourselves maybe have friends that you would want to pray for and wherever in the world you want to pray for them please bring that to our prayers this morning let's begin our morning prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise visit us with your salvation and sustain us with your gracious spirit oh come let us sing to the lord let us heartily rejoice in the rock of our salvation let us come into his presence with thanksgiving and be glad in him with psalms for the lord is a great god and a great king above all gods come let us worship and bow down and kneel before the lord our maker for he is our god we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand 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 27th morning of the month is psalm 121. i lift up my eyes to the hills from where is my help to come my help comes from the lord the maker of heaven and earth he will not suffer your foot to stumble he who watches over you will not sleep behold he who keeps watch over israel shall neither slumber nor sleep the lord himself watches over you the lord is your shade at your right hand so that the sun shall not strike you by day neither the moon by night the lord shall keep you from all evil it is he who shall keep your soul the lord shall keep watch over your going out and your coming in from this time forth forevermore so we turn to acts chapter 7 and we continue with since stephen's speech before the members of the jewish council the high priest and all his family of the party of the sadducees the various pharisees there the lawyers the scribes who are listening to him as he makes an impassioned resume of their own history told in his own particular way i'm starting at verse 44 of chapter seven stephen continued our ancestors had a tent of witness in the wilderness just as he who spoke to moses directed him to make it according to the pattern he had seen our ancestors in turn brought it in with joshua when they dispossessed the nations that god drove out before them so it was until the days of david who found favor in the sight of god and asked to find a dwelling place for the god of jacob but it was solomon who built a house for him yet the most high does not dwell in houses made by hands as the prophet says heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool what kind of house will you build for me says the lord or what is the place of my rest did not my hand make all these things you stiff-necked people uncircumcised in heart and ears you always resist the holy spirit as your fathers did so did you which of the prophets did they not persecute and they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one whom you have now betrayed and murdered you who receive the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it tomorrow we shall find out the angry reaction of that from the members of the council for in truth it was an attack it seemed on their holy place the temple and that temple was still in its stage of being reconstructed finished there was work going on at that time to make it one of the most glorious buildings in the ancient world and stephen was attacking it but was he or was he attacking the way in which they themselves were using it and the exclusive way in which they were using it stephen is saying all the way through his speech that god's people are a pilgrim people and as they wandered through the wilderness they had with them a tent a temporary shelter which in their years in the wilderness they've formed according to the pattern which moses showed them and they used in particular ways and they brought that with the ark of the covenant they brought that into their occupation of first of all the land of palestine and then the city of jerusalem itself and here is the recollection which oddly by total coincidence was the first lesson this morning at matins of david wanting to build a house for god and nathan the prophet coming and saying to him you have always relied wherever you were the king on god being with you there and will you david build a house god's promise is that he will remain with your royal line forever a prophecy which luke sees fulfilled in the royal line of david from the very beginning of his gospel but the place of worship in jerusalem which was insisted on that people came to well those of the dispersion as we shall call it and maybe stephen was one of those certainly he spoke like one has had really a a less involved connection with the temple for they could not always be traveling there and so their own holy places had to be created where they were and now stephen is saying to those in front of him you're actually using this temple really as a weapon that angers them intensely and yet i suppose it's a warning to all of us for we are god's pilgrim people and wherever we are we create places of prayer places of worship places that we beautify and that is good and wonderful for our worship in community and when people come to them they sense the life of prayer that has gone on there through the centuries and the beautiful things that people have created for them to to to have but they are even somewhere like canterbury cathedral in terms of human history all the way through temporary places of shelter and in those temporary places of shelter we can say our prayers and around them our communities build up but stephen was by his action almost throwing a stone into a greenhouse about to unleash as we shall say tomorrow as we shall see tomorrow anger which caused the dispersion of the church in jerusalem and to the great benefit of the mediterranean world barriers were broken down as people began to set up holy places of prayer all over the mediterranean region and then beyond and right across the world it's a wonderful thing to have a place of beauty because it shows the community that's been before and also it points to us being creative in body mind and spirit but perhaps we would want to ask ourselves this morning in our own lives what is it that's utterly essential in our equipment not only as a pilgrim person but as pilgrim people as we go forward i have a habit of writing lists when i travel and travelers stopped for the moment and so there's a great stability in this place of worship with its benedictine roots honoring body mind and soul and at the same time living in community which is given to hospitality all those things when one travels one tends to take with one what one needs at the moment and as i look back on those lists and i do write them down in a daily journal and think this is what i was taking then this is what i felt necessary in what i was reading this is what i really was interested in but that seems a long time ago and i've moved on since then my list then two years later was different on my list here two years after that some of the equipment as we keep saying is in our heads and if it's not there then we find it difficult to shape our prayers certainly if you think of jesus think of him now and if i do i see him traveling traveling and always the guest and going into the synagogue regularly going into the temple regularly but he himself utterly free of that but with his mind absolutely stocked with the words of the law and the psalms and the prophets which he can quote at a moment's notice particularly the ones he feels are fulfilled in his own vocation as the lord's suffering servant and our messiah only one occasion do i see him being the host and that's at the supper for his disciples when he is about to hand on that vocation to them to the twelve but for the moment we think of him traveling traveling around the meeting people looking him in the eye valuing humanity in all sorts of ways i said we'd think of beirut and we do think of beirut today because of the desperate situation after the tragic explosion but the bbc recently showed the most wonderful film of maya husseini who had spent all her time since 1990 as an expert stained glass artist recreating beirut after the civil war and in the surc museum and the saint louis capuchin cathedral she replaced all the stained glass painstakingly and in many other projects too and then just a week or two ago all her work was destroyed and she was interviewed and said but we'll do it all again i'll do the same drawings everything it will be like it was it will take time we will rebuild beirut i have hope i have strength and i have a will i will die one day but my work will still be there creativity held him helping people to study in the museums helping people to pray in the cathedral of st louie and also encouraging people physically to be creative so that the community itself will have hope and strength and a will those things are the stuff of holy communities but we can pitch that tent for however long a time don't forget when we were talking about the huguenots in the crypt of canterbury cathedral they were given temporary permission to worship here in the middle of the 16th century and they're still here worshiping with that temporary permission all those hundreds of years later and their french hymns and songs are songs of pilgrimage for them think today what equipment do you need for your pilgrim travel inside you for body mind and spirit and around you but don't make that the absolute stability of everything because life keeps changing situations keep changing and the need for that equipment is only temporary that will change too the only thing that is permanent is our lord's call and as we travel the sense of him traveling with us with our individual vocations protected and encouraged by the community we find ourselves in wherever we are in the world and in whatever situation pitch a tent temporarily and temporary can mean a very very long time certainly the cathedral i'm looking at now wouldn't have been recognized by land frank and it certainly wouldn't have been recognized by sin augustine of canterbury but here it is for now and it's glorious and inspires and we furnish it with all kinds of things in honor of the one who calls us individually and gives us the equipment for body mind and spirit to go on so let's say our prayers and as we do so think of all our friends in desperate situations in beirut and give thanks for the encouragement of people like maya in california thinking of the firefighters in the the the gulf coast in houston in louisiana and texas and the path of the hurricane then on and in so many places right across the world bring them to your heart and mind as we pray here this morning in canterbury today we remember in our anglican communion the diocese of omu aran in nigeria and philip adhiemo the bishop there and his people the diocese of bhutari in rwanda and nathan gassatura and his people the diocese of bhuteri in kenya and timothy wambuna and his people and here in canterbury as we pray for justin our archbishop and for rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambeth we pray today for the parish of saint george the martyr in deal and pray for sheila porter and chris spencer in their ministry oh god you declare your almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace that we running the way of your commandments may receive your gracious promises and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure through jesus christ our lord amen so as we offer ourselves in body mind and spirit and pray for the communities around us and those whom we would pray for today we say the words our lord taught us in whatever language we normally 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 in our silence we give thanks for our own holy places as we have created them as communities and give thanks for the encouragement they give us as we come to worship in our daily life 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 you