good morning and welcome to the dinery garden in canterbury cathedral on this saturday the 21st of august as we come to say our morning prayers of course our prayers are full of intention for areas of the world where people are endangered and there are many of them haiti with earthquake areas of the world with fire which is burning uncontrolled in so many woodland and forest areas areas of flood where people are needing to be rescued from flash floods and also areas of the pandemic areas of war and of course our thoughts are still very much with the people of afghanistan and the citizens of kabul and the situation at kabul airport all of those things are foremost in our hearts and prayers as we hold the world in prayer on this saturday morning we've come in the normal way to the front of the deanery and we're sharing breakfast here with our friends but we will say our prayers together and i invite you to bring your own intentions and prayers and concerns and pictures in your minds and hearts which have moved you in the last day or two because there are so many of them oh 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 does 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 sound this morning on this 21st morning of the month is the long historical psalm 105 and as we normally do we'll read parts of that now oh give thanks to the lord and call upon his name make known his deeds among the peoples sing to him sing praises and tell of all his marvelous works rejoice in the praise of his holy name let the hearts of them rejoice who seek the lord seek the lord and his strength seek his face continually remember the marvels he has done his wonders and the judgments of his mouth he brought his people out from egypt with silver and gold there was not one of them among their tribes that stumbled egypt was glad at their departing for a dread of them had fallen upon them he spread out a cloud for a covering and a fire to light up the night they asked and he brought them quails he satisfied them with the bread of heaven he opened the rock and the waters gushed out and ran in the dry places like a river for he remembered his holy word and abraham his servant so he brought forth his people with joy his chosen ones with singing he gave them the lands of the nations and they took possession of the fruit of their toil that they might keep his statutes and faithfully observe his laws alleluia we return to the book of genesis and to chapter 18 yesterday we read the story of the three guests who came to abraham today they depart from him and abraham begins what we might call a dialogue with god i'm starting from verse 16 of chapter 18 then the men set out from there and they looked down towards sodom and abraham went with them to set them on their way the lord said shall i hide from abraham what i am about to do seeing that abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him for i have chosen him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the lord may bring to abraham what he has promised him then the lord said because the outcry against sodom and gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave i will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me and if not i will know so the men turned from there and went towards sodom but abraham still stood before the lord then abraham drew near and said will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked suppose there are fifty righteous within the city will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it far be it from you to do such a thing to put the righteous to death with the wicked so that the righteous fair as the wicked far be that from you shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just and the lord said if i find it sodom 50 righteous in the city i will spare the whole place for their sake abraham answered and said behold i have undertaken to speak to the lord i who am but dust and ashes suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking will you destroy the whole city for lack of five and god said i will not destroy it if i find 45 there again abraham spoke to him and said suppose forty are found there the lord answered for the sake of forty i will not do it then he said oh let not the lord be angry and i will speak suppose 30 are found there the lord answered i will not do it if i find 30 there abraham said behold i have undertaken to speak to the lord suppose twenty are found there the lord answered for the sake of 20 i will not destroy it then abraham said oh let not the lord be angry and i will speak again but this once suppose ten are found there abraham on said for the sake of ten i will not destroy it and the lord went his way when he had finished speaking to abraham and abraham returned to his place abraham didn't dare to go to one but the new covenant goes all the way to one and god provides himself in human form as that one that must overarch all our thinking about all these stories and this morning there are certain lessons to be learned from this dialogue we shall go on tomorrow with the story of the cities of the plain which become a symbol rather like vanity fair in the pilgrim's progress the symbol of all the disobedience of which humankind is capable and at the same time a symbol of all this morning in this dialogue that the righteous and those who are hearing and receiving the gifts of god can effect in terms of humankind so here we are and we begin to learn some lessons from this particular story before we go on tomorrow abraham is brave in his prayers he is opening his heart with courage to the reality of all he is feeling his nephew lot is in the city of sodom and we shall find that tomorrow and so abraham has a personal interest but also a heartfelt compassion towards the people of the cities of the plain and he opens his heart therefore to god in that particular way i think that there's no more moving dialogue in all of this than what we have between abraham and god this morning and there is a a definite likeness to everything in our own hearts of compassion for those who absolutely um without fault of their own but often with the forest fires and with all that is happening to the planet bearing the burden of what humankind has done to natural creation and this dialogue is a lesson to us to come to the lord in honesty whatever our feelings are it's no good trying to think well we have to be very careful with what we're doing um and uh what we're saying we don't god wants us to come to him in total reality and all our thoughts intentions feelings care of others and yearnings to be shall we say thrown into his lap and this dialogue is very much part of that we're in the middle of a virtual conversation but there's a danger that something virtual might get in the way because i see that i've left my telephone on loud no longer the symbols of earthly life and sins apart from god have consequences too they're not just symbols and tomorrow we shall look at that not only with the cities of the plain but in the psalm we read on the 22nd morning of the month psalm 107 and we will dwell on that very much sorry uh tomorrow morning the psalm will be very much that we shall not be with the book of genesis because of course it's a sunday morning so we shall have special lessons what we have though is the image of abraham looking down at that fertile land as far as the book of genesis was concerned and now it's the area known as the dead sea and again on monday morning we shall think of that to the sense of what it means to be in that area many of you would have been there in pilgrimages to the holy land many of you like me will have entered the waters of the dead sea but let's think about all of that tomorrow i want to think of some dates and i want also to think of what those those dates mean in terms of reality of our human condition they're a complete mixture should we call it a popori a kaleidoscope of dates on this day the 21st of august let's start in 2017. uh in 2017 on this day the great clock on the houses of parliament symbol of london so many films begin if they're set in london or when they go to london by showing the clock tower now the elizabeth tower as it's called the clock tower of the houses of parliament and on the top the clock with the very famous sound of big ben which is the almost the earliest sound one recognizes because the bbc have used it in all their time keeping and big ben is deep within our hearts it's a totally recognizable sound on this day big ben's chimes were stopped of course recordings are still played to mark the time virtually shall we say but at the same time the clock is being completely refurbished restored and much more damage was found to have happened to the tower when the houses of parliament were bombed in the second world war than had first been expected and also the kind of things which have come from corrosion of its metals and all of that but we miss the sound and look forward to our told 2022 that when that was sound again our own cathedral club which signs the canterbury chimes which i've said in the past are the chimes of a gregorian chant striking out the quarters and being the full chance at the hour as the clock strikes is not striking at the moment because of the restoration of our towers but the clock face is back restored and waiting to go up and i think our clock will be sounding well before big ben chimes again we give thanks for that symbol but also i wanted to mention augustus pujin who was the one who designed that clock tower it was the last design he did the age of 40 pujin's mental health completely broke down and he was unable to to do anything else again he died at the age of 40 here in ramsgate in this part of the country in kent but pugin made that wonderful design and he designed so much of the houses of parliament but was not able to be given credit for it because of his ardent roman catholicism now there's a lesson for us because that kind of um should we say prejudice at that time from one part of a christian communion to another was still very prevalent and so poor pugin had to give the credit for the building to charles barry but charles barry knew that pugin's skill in design and interior design were far superior to his and continued very much to use him and went to him though he knew pugin was very ill for that design of the clock tower which has become a complete icon but it's worth remembering the frailty of human of humankind with pujin in his mental distress as well as his physical distress just before his death putting in the designs of this icon of our nation the clock tower the elizabeth tower and the striking sound the big ben marking the time the same time this is and the the the way i'm doing this is just mixing them all up lady mary worthley montague who was the wife of the ambassador to the sultan in constantinople and she died on this day in 1762 she had long said her husband had long since come home from that but she had shall we say a colorful life all around europe and not necessarily a happy life but she was a poetess and also her letters have been published in beautiful prose with wonderful descriptiveness and it shows as with our new testament that epistles letters can tell their own story and give wonderful clues but she too was inhibited by first being a woman and also by the way in which her life was unfolding in europe at that time and as we remember her we give thanks for all her gifts and skills in writings and the wonderful pictures she gives of life at that time in her letters also she was not only a standard up of women's rights and that's a very important feature in the afghanistan picture at the moment but also someone who discovered that she herself had had small top smallpox in inoculation against smallpox was beginning to be prevalent and she was a champion of that and then i want to come next to the fact that on this day in 1940 leon trotsky was assassinated in his exile in mexico how different the life of the soviet union which developed under stalin would have been if trotsky had been the one who won that battle of the two giants at the death of lenin but trotsky didn't win and was in the end forced into exile and even in exile in in mexico stalin was frightened of trotsky's influence and after other attempts at assassination on this day he was assassinated in his exile in mexico so we remember that and we remember as we sit here with our friends of course that in george orwell's uh animal farm that we mentioned quite recently then trotsky is represented by snowball who's chased out by napoleon and the other pigs having himself lost the battle and we see him racing down the road a sign of trotsky's exile and then on this day uh in 1930 princess margaret was born in glam's castle the second daughter of the one who was to become george vi after the abdication crisis which happened in 1936 six years after princess margaret was born glam's castle or glams a name made famous in macbeth but very much part of the family home of the queen mother as she became but i wanted to point out princess margaret is one of those who in her life had to cope with being the one who was not the uh to the throne but was the uh sister of queen elizabeth they they loved each other very deeply and her death i know moved we all saw that as a nation moved queen elizabeth was the second our monarch very very much indeed it happened too near also the death of her own mother queen elizabeth the queen mother so we remember with with thanksgiving uh princess margaret on this day and all the gifts artistic gifts and and uh gifts of character that she brought to that role which she portrayed for so many many and lived out for so many charities and then i want to say that on this day in united states theaters in 1942 walt disney's film bambi was released now i remember seeing that as a child and being massively affected by the sadness of what happens to bambi's mother and also the dangers of the hunters and the fires in the forest caused by the hunters camps and all of that cheered of course by the loving companionship the cheerful companionship of thumper the rabbit and of of flower the skunk uh and the little trio growing up but at the same time it's one of disney's most realistic films in that he doesn't shield us from death and also what humanity can do to the planet and the habitat of those deer and the other creatures there so i give thanks for that film of bambi some find it so difficult that they they can't even watch it because of all the the sadness uh and flesh is putting his hand up as one of those who finds it too painful a film to watch but that realism takes us back to the realism with which we must address our prayers and that dialogue that abraham has with god as the figures count down down down but he cannot go as far at that time as the generosity of god with the giving of one human life for the redemption of all and then um the last one actually perhaps i should say walt disney's films are always always accompanied by wonderful songs and the great song in in bambi has a lovely first line love is a song that never ends well saint paul could have written that too in 1 corinthians 13 and the never means in that which is eternal as well as now love is a song that never ends sin francis de sal was born on this day we've dealt with him uh recently but he too had sadness as bishop of geneva because he could not enter that city it was in the hands very much of john calvin at that time and so his beautiful writings and his introduction to the devout life and the way he writes with such humanity has made him the patron saint of all who write and journalists and many journalists could take lessons from saint francis de sao in his extreme charity and understanding of the human condition and many do so um i want lastly to mention uh someone who i think should be more famous than they are a metaphysical poet of the 17th century as so many medical physics physical parrots were and one whose christian verse is full of wonderful wonderful themes in imagination he was moved by george herbert a great friend of nicolas ferrer and so many of the other metaphysical poets grew up in a strictly puritan household but his father and his mother had died and left him an orphan early and his education at cambridge and then his fellowship at peter house caused him to move from that puritanism into a a a a different kind of expression of the faith within the church of england at that time and nicolas ferrer at little gidding and george herbert with his poetry uh and all those those mystical verses of of others at that time moved him greatly but of course it made him a target for the puritans so that when they came to cambridge cromwell took over cambridge in 1643 then richard crushaw as his name was was cast out and he had in the end to leave the country in total poverty and his verses grew i think more and more deeply moving he found himself in poverty in europe and lived from hand to mouth with little to live on until friends came across when the queen henrietta maria came into exile in france some of those who came with her found richard krashor at that time and asked the queen to care for him and she then made provision by that time being always in europe crash or had converted to roman catholicism and was sent still in poverty he made a pilgrimage with the queen's letter to rome and was given certain little jobs to do there and ended his life only at the age of uh 37 in loreto that serving in a minor capacity at the holy house uh in laresho but his poems i think moved me greatly and i would recommend them to you um many of them are little epigrams about the parables and life of christ here's one where he is considering just in four lines the miracle of the water turned into wine and he says thou to christ thou water turnst to wine fair friend of life thy foe to cross the sweethearts of thy rain distills from thence the tears of roth and strife and so turns wine to water back again and then his there are so many of those there's there's one for the the pharisee and the public and the tax collector coming to pray in the temple and the prayers of those but you can go through all of those but i love his song of the shepherds when they are coming back from bethlehem it's a long song but i'm a song and it's a joyful song and it speaks of heaven and earth and even the role of the angels in this but the role of humanity being much much greater now that their god has taken human form and um here's the shepherd's shepherd's song as it goes back just a little bit of it the chorus we saw thee in thy balmy nest young dawn of our eternal day we saw thine eyes break from their east and chase the trembling shades away we saw we saw thee and we blessed the sight we saw thee by thine own sweet light i think the sense of the infant in the manger opening his eyes and it being to the shepherd singing here like a sunrise better than a sunrise because the sunrise brought light and dawn to the very heart and soul of that shepherd and gave new impetus to earthly life as well crusher always looks for parallels between the physical beauties of nature and the spiritual significance of existence that's what the metaphor metaphysical poets do but i would want to give thanks for him and remember all that he suffered physically in those years of poverty which caused the weakening of his body and his very early death there in loresha but he's left us a real treasury of his spiritual thinking so let's uh take us our theme today love is a song that never dies and also the desire for um comfort and uh the sense of presence never dies here with these little chaps but it it actually feels right like the prodigal son to be here uh with the pigs having their breakfast because it was in the pigsty that the prodigal son like crusher learned in his poverty and dejection when no one was caring for him the the absolute love of the father and the uh willing giving of himself in the human in the humanity of jesus to be the one who would redeem the uh human kind throughout the whole world whatever was was uh going on in this world so let's give thanks for all of that we're thinking today on this particular day of the diocese of edmondsbury and ipswich in our church of england canterbury province and also with the diocese were asked to pray together today and i would want to pray not only for all those um church of england parishes anglican parishes throughout the diocese of canterbury but every christian community of every kind as we've up see a little bit of trouble going on behind me um i would want to remember that prejudice i mentioned at the beginning and the way in which we've looked at one another and our prayer now is constantly for the unity of christ church as a physical sign to the whole of creation that love is a song that never dies so then let's say the prayer together that the uh book gives us on the last day of this week before we start another one tomorrow 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 we say the prayer our savior taught us in whatever language you 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 as we say our own prayers on this day so so oh my hope is that the prodigal son was given as much comfort and companionship by the pigs around him as these chaps are determined to give me here on this particular morning 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 so here we all are and you've got some nice times here ahead but we'll give you just a little bit more comfort there we are there's plenty of breakfast left but i think cuddles have become much more important than breakfast at the moment with all of you okay you're all growing big