good morning and welcome it's a lovely morning here today storm kristoff has passed and the sky is blue and the aconites as you see are beginning to flower flowering gold underneath a bare magnolia tree but the sun has also come out and so i've moved along the garden path and i'm sitting in the sunshine with leo here and we are enjoying there's still a brisk wind but nothing like the very very strong gale that was blowing all day yesterday with driving rain and when we went to bed the noise around the house was extraordinary but we've woken to a rain-washed morning and a morning of great winter beauty and i'm sitting by this border where we've left lots of the heads of the the uh plants because they're still full of little seeds and insects which the birds can come and enjoy and as i said yesterday we're preparing not this weekend but next weekend for the bird watch the great bird watch the royal society of of the uh protection of birds are holding their annual bird watch where all of us are asked either on the 29th 30th or 31st of january to spend an hour noting the birds in any particular place your garden your ball from your balcony or from a walk in the park but just an hour noting down what birds there are if you're somewhere else in the world and want to do that then send the results which will be most interesting to the link here at canterbury cathedral and that will be uh that's shown below and we've several days to prepare ourselves for this before the weekend after next but it's an interesting and lovely thing to do and we in this shall we call it garden congregation enjoy the birds song each morning and this will be noting down which birds are are most common in certain areas let's begin our prayers on this continuing week of prayer for christian unity as a sign for the unity of the whole of humanity during this time of pandemic and and crisis oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your light springs up for the righteous and all the peoples have seen your glory blessed are you sovereign god king of the nations to you be praise and glory forever from the rising of the sun to its setting your name is proclaimed in all the world does the sun of righteousness dawns in our hearts anoint our lips with the seal of your spirit that we may witness to your gospel and sing your praise in all the earth 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 the psalm for this 21st morning of the month is psalm 105 and i'm going to read just some of the verses of that now o 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 of egypt with silver and gold there was not one 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 so we turn to our reading from the gospel of mark another little section this morning taking over from the story yesterday that was set in the synagogue you remember with the man with the withered hand and we ended with that foretaste of violence towards jesus himself from those who had made a political alliance with one another and began to plot to destroy him but now we're different and we've come and i'm starting here at verse seven of chapter three and we follow jesus and his disciples on the next step jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea and a great crowd followed him from galilee and judea and jerusalem and i do maya and from beyond the jordan and from around tyre and sidon when the great crowd heard all that he was doing they came to him and he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd lest they crush him for he had healed many so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him and whenever the unclean spirit saw him they fell down before him and cried out you are the son of god and he strictly ordered them not to make him known so the scene changes yesterday a small congregation in the synagogue on the sabbath day and now jesus following that very strong atmosphere of anger from him at the hardness of heart at those who are standing watching him guarding their interpretation and tradition and then going outside to the party of king herod representatives of the citizens who had an interest in keeping the order just as it was because they were benefiting from it and beginning to plot against him he senses all of this and withdraws we shall see that happening quite a lot now withdrawing withdrawing for various reasons because of course his ministry which he himself is developing and feels compelled to develop is a ministry of proclaiming the good news set out for him in the prophet isaiah and the fulfillment of scriptures and psalms and law and all the things which within him are developing he withdraws to find perhaps space but he's not allowed to find space he goes to the sea we can imagine on the shores of the sea of galilee and now it's not a synagogue a small synagogue congregation now it's a great crowd and they've come from really everywhere crossing political boundaries they are all of the jewish faith at this time but of course they have come up from jerusalem and they've crossed the jordan from the perea beyond and they've come from galilee but even more than that they've come from the communities of tyre and sidon just a bit farther up the coastline and as they come together they want most of all to bring those in need of healing but also to hear the words of jesus for he is proclaiming as he did in sin luke's gospel in the synagogue at nazareth i keep returning to that because he seems to set out his intention by simply reading the prophet isaiah and is embracing that vocation of the lord's suffering servant who will proclaim that good news the anointed one and he begins to teach them but you can see what the crush is like because he says to the disciples who are fishermen please have a boat ready by the shore here this is this is becoming dangerous for for me and for them if the press gets too great and so they put a boat ready that again is a wonderful image of jesus's teaching another occasion he's actually sitting in the boat on the lake and teaching the crowds on the beach but here it seems the boat is simply ready to take him to safety should that be necessary and he don't only teaches but he heals and there is a sense that when he heals the recognition of him as much more than a prophet but as son of god comes from those who are being healed as the spirit cry cry out and and they are brought back to some kind of wholeness and healing there but jesus says to them no this is not to be proclaimed often in mark it's called the messianic secret i just wonder whether jesus himself is still in his mind wondering whether this is what is being proclaimed as his vocation and actually is his vocation because if it is then the prophecies are terrifying to his humanity he as we've seen prefers the title son of man or really representative of our humanity which bears in totality the divine image and later we'll release that spirit to others to bear that image in the same kind of totality and that we shall grow into as we go through this gospel because it moves so speedily along but for the moment jesus simply wants them to hear his message and at the same time through his compassion finds that he can restore body mind or spirit to a wholeness and the crowds from all over come and press near him so it's very difficult to withdraw as we shall continue to see well there are certain aspects of that i wanted to draw out this morning about what he is teaching the crowds but we do it as we quite often do in in dates and times and they're all signs of of things which we look back to and think ah that began there did it and that began there let me begin this morning in the um in 1549. because on this day in 1549 the parliament of england passed its first act of uniformity saying that everyone must use exclusively the 1549 book of common prayer here was the foundation stone of the church of england and in 1549 there was much opposition to that but at the same time the rhythm of that book which established itself in our strand of episcopal anglicanism began its life the saying of the psalms in a particular way the way in which the offices the divine offices which had been used in monastic establishments were conflated into the two offices of morning and evening prayer with the canticles all of these things they began there on this day and we give thanks for the rhythms that we ourselves are using even though the book has gone through many different translations and forms on the way through at times it was abolished and it then it was restored but the attempt to enforce by law a unity has always been doomed to failure because always the spirit has taken people in different directions nevertheless the body of the church remained with those rhythms and we give thanks for both for the rhythms and the uniformity but also the church has great need to give thanks for the diversity as well and that's something to remember in this week of prayer for christian unity as we go through it in 1799 on this day edward jenner's smallpox vaccination was introduced and that was an enormous step forward in combating that disease which was in the end eradicated later parliament granted 30 000 pounds in two different grants one for the first one for vaccination itself and the development of that and secondly jenna's ongoing work in microbiology vast some in those days and yet it it links us with that that search for healing with the work of medicine as well and that too becomes a very important exercise and then when we look at that little crowd and see the personalities i'd wanted to draw attention to the fact that in 1932 litton strachey died he was one of the bloomsbury set but was expert at drawing cameos of people it's sometimes what we long for in the gospel a wider cameo but what it shows is that by doing that strategy could influence the thinking of people as to how they received someone and it wasn't always the way in which people themselves wanted to receive that person when one looks at his portraits of eminent victorians or his book about elizabeth and essex then one sees the limitations of one person writing a cameo picture of another and giving only their own picture in that we have four evangelists they're not biographers but they give us a wonderfully diverse picture of the way in which jesus's vocation develops at that time i want to point out two political events which sort of hang together in 1506 the first swiss guards arrived at the vatican as a a guard for the pope at the vatican and and that little army has stayed right to the present day of uh both a ceremonial and an actual bodyguard there's any other one place in the world which had swiss guards in that way who were recruited from switzerland to a different nation and that was france they were the royal guard of the royal family and in the middle of the french revolution in 1792 on the 10th of august 600 of them were killed or massacred by the crowds trying to protect the king and on this day the 21st of january in 1793 the king himself poor louis xvi was guillotined for treason treason against almost in his own mind himself which was an impossibility to the king but by that stage he was accused of trying to get foreign governments to help him he had come to be king because his father had died young we shall find the same thing with a death causing someone to be a king and nervously so later in the month with charles the first but here is louis xvi and all his his good intentions come to nothing on this particular day so we remember that day and we remember also the swiss guard not any longer in france but certainly still performing their duties at the vatican in uh since 1506 that's gone on now also on this day george orwell died in 1950 well known to us for the book 1984 and the sense of big brother is watching over you you remember that in 1984 when it came was a year that had a sort of resonance about it about what might happen well some people feel many of those things do happen now with the fact that we are watched at every corner of our life and everything is recorded in particular ways but we remember also that he wrote at the end of the second world war a fairy tale he called it animal farm now i remember that being read to me when i was 10 years old i remember the picture of the in my mind of the master sitting on a desk at the front reading it to us and we were spellbound by the allegory i didn't think we understood the allegory properly but orwell's allegory was how uh sometimes revolutions are taken over rather like biographies and shaped by the image of one person an autocrat and orwell was uh pointing his his finger at joseph stalin at the time i'm gonna read the beginning of this because it's it's it's a a wonderful picture of the characters mr jones of the manor farm had locked the hen houses for the night but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop holes with the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side he lurched across the yard kicked off his boots at the back door drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in this gallery and made his way up to bed where mrs jones was already and as soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all through the farm buildings word had gone round during the day that old major the prize middle white boar had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals and so they gather and i'll give you something of a description of the animals gathering the major the the the great um prize boar was at the end of the barn unless the others came in here they are all are here's the community at one end of the big barn on a sort of raised platform major was already ensconced on his bed of straw under a lantern which hung from a beam he was 12 years old and had lately grown rather stout but he was still a majestic looking pig with a wise and benevolent appearance in spite of the fact that his touches had never been cut but before long the other animals began to arrive and make themselves comfortable after their different fashions first came the three dogs bluebell jesse and pincher and then the pigs who settled down in the straw immediately in front of the platform the hens perched themselves on the windowsills the pigeons fluttered up to the rafters the sheep and cows lay down behind the pigs and began to chew the the two cart horses boxer and clover came in together walking very slowly and setting down their vast hairy hoofs with great care thus there should be some small animal concealed in the straw clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life who had never quite got her finger back after her fourth foal boxer was an enormous beast nearly 18 hands high and as strong as any two ordinary horses put together a white stripe down his nose gave him a somewhat stupid appearance and in fact he was not of first-rate intelligence but he was universally respected for his steadiness of character and tremendous powers of work after the horses came muriel the white goat and benjamin the donkey benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm and the worst temper he seldom talked and when he did it was usually to make some cynical remark for instance he would say that god had given him a tale to keep the flies off but he'd sooner have had no tail and no flies alone among the animals on the farm he never laughed if asked why he would say that he saw nothing to laugh at nevertheless without openly admitting it he was devoted to boxer the two of them usually spent their sundays together in the small paddock beyond the orchard grazing side by side last of all came the cat who looked round as usual for the warmest place and finally squeezed herself in between boxer and clover there she purred contentedly throughout the major's speech without listening to a word he was saying we were thrilled by all of this as the story went on and i remember when we got to the song which the major sang them beasts of england greece of ireland beasts of every land and climb hearken to my joyful tidings of the golden coming time soon or late the day is coming tyrant man will be all thrown and the fruitful fields of england will be trod by beasts alone well it was a wonderful image and we ran afterwards said that's the the break into the the playground and and had all kinds of so i'm going to be boxer i'm going to be this i'm going to be that and and then had fights with farmer jones and all the rest but orwell's story is an allegory with power that in the hands of the wrong people golden visions can change after the execution of louis xvi the french revolution took a a bad turn um in 1815 louie's brothers came back but the swiss guard which then was reestablished for a while in 1830 when the crowds in paris attacked the tweeleries again melted away and switzerland made a resolution that that no one should be recruited to foreign armies except the little group in the vatican as the swiss guards golden visions are wonderful but they have to be kept to uh a far point where the vision is going to be reached and jesus himself is beginning to find that far point and it's something from which his humanity is recoiling the son of man as the suffering servant has much to undergo for us and at the end his humanity will struggle against it until he makes the final decision in gethsemane and is sure of that vocation let's then say our prayers for this particular morning and give thanks for the communities in which we live and also for the visions that we in our own beings have of our particular gifts and vocation which god gives to us the prayer today is for the diocese of a coco in the church of nigeria and also as we pray for archbishop dustin and bishop rose and bishop tim at lambeth we pray today for the parish of saint peter and saint paul at borden and pray for robert lane in his ministry there and for the whole life of that parish bring your own prayers now as we say first the prayer for this week almighty god in christ you make all things new transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace and in the renewal of our lives make known your heavenly glory through jesus christ our lord amen and the prayer during this week of prayer for christian unity but we pray also for the unity of humanity the world over heavenly father you have called us in the body of your son jesus christ to continue his work of reconciliation and reveal you to the world forgive us the sins which tear us apart give us the courage to overcome our fears and to seek that unity which is your gift and your will through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language the prayer that jesus 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 moment of silence now for your own prayers on this day [Music] [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 you