good morning and welcome to the dinery garden in canterbury cathedral on this morning of wednesday the 25th of august we've come out near the greenhouses and we find ourselves with this enormous collection of leaves from pumpkins and squashes which are rooted behind the shed here on the large compost heap and taking benefit from that but we're taking benefit this morning from their flowers although within the leaves huge fruits of pumpkins and squashes are now forming some of them very large but we're looking at two yellow flowers brightening a rather cloudy gray morning though without any kind of rain as we come to say our morning prayers the the two flowers are interesting because they're from different stems and when we finish the broadcast we can trace them back because at the moment we can't tell which is which but probably one is a pumpkin and the other one of the squashes but the little one on the right as you look at them has the most delicious smell of the finest orchid in the greenhouse which is extraordinary for a little flower like that and we noticed as if we walked by and suddenly smelling the fragrance it reminded us of one of our best orchids uh in terms of scenting so one is forever surprised by the way in which plants declare themselves and that certainly happened this morning we've come to say our prayers from across the world and you will as we've said day after day have many really desperate scenes in your minds from areas of flood and fire and earthquake and war and pandemic and all those are showing how fragile our humankind is on this planet and also how with some of them it's a situation which we ourselves have caused so as we say our prayers have those images in mind have in mind those most threatened by them those who have been bereaved by them or made homeless and those who today will attempt to save life and help people into areas of safety at a cost to their own safety in all those circumstances but let's also remember the people of tokyo hosting the paralympics which are well underway as a sign of creative endeavor uniting the world across national boundaries so we come to say our prayers this morning and i'm sitting in front of the most lovely rose it grows right up over the shed it's one of our longest flowering roses and was planted early on it's not a david austin rose so i shall be talking about a david austin rose in one of our reflections and also about roses themselves but here is this beautiful rose and fletcher planted it but so long ago now and the label has fallen off it that we can't actually remember the name of this rose so this nameless rose which is one of our finest in lengthy flowering and reaches up to the sky and gives us great beauty right through to the beginning of winter and some last beyond that we again give thanks for the flowering and creativity of the natural world let's say our prayers o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the true the only light banish all darkness from our hearts and minds blessed are you sovereign god creator of all to you be glory and praise forever you founded the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands in the fullness of time you made us in your image and in these last days you have spoken to us in your son jesus christ the word made flesh as we rejoice in the gift of your presence among us let the light of your love always shine in our hearts your spirit ever renew our lives and your praises ever be on our lips 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 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 this morning is part of psalm 119 for the 25th morning of the month and i'm reading verses 33 to 40. teach me o lord the way of your statutes and i shall keep it to the end give me understanding and i shall keep your law i shall keep it with my whole heart lead me in the path of your commandments for therein is my delight incline my heart to your testimonies and not to unjust gain away my eyes lest they gaze on vanities oh give me life in your ways confirm to your servant your promise which stands for all who fear you turn away the reproach which i dread because your judgments are good behold i long for your commandments in your righteousness give me life part of that long psalm which in its sections will carry us through tomorrow but it is a hymn of praise for god's perfect law and all kinds of images of lanterns and light and sweetness of honey are used on the way through this sound to expl express our wonder at the perfect law when rightly interpreted by humankind so we turn to our reading we're back with the book of genesis after keeping sin bartholomew's day yesterday and we are reading today chapter 21 verses 1 to 21. the lord visited sarah as he had said and the lord did to sarah as he had promised and sarah conceived and bore abraham a son in his old age at the time of which god had spoken to him and abraham called the name of his son who was born to him whom sarah bore him isaac and abraham circumcised his son isaac when he was eight days old as god had commanded him abraham was a hundred years old when his son isaac was born to him and sarah said god has made laughter for me everyone who hears will laugh over me and she said who would have said to abraham that sarah would nurse children yet i have borne him a son in his old age and the child isaac grew and was weaned and abraham made a great feast on the day that isaac was weaned but sarah saw the son of hagar the egyptian whom she had born to abraham laughing so she said to abraham cast out this slave woman with her son for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son isaac and this thing was very displeasing to abraham on account of his son but god said to abraham be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman whatever sarah says to you do as she tells you for through isaac shall your offspring be named but i will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also because he is your offspring so abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to hagar putting it on her shoulder along with the child and sent her away and she departed and wandered in the wilderness of beersheba when the water in the skin was gone she put the child under one of the bushes then she went and sat down opposite him but a good way off about the distance of a bow shot for she said let me not look on the death of the child and as she sat opposite him she lifted up her voice and wept and god heard the voice of the boy and the angel of god called to hagar from heaven and said to her what troubles you hagar fear not for god has heard the voice of the boy where he is up lift up the boy hold him fast with your hand for i will make him into a great nation then god opened her eyes and she saw a well of water and hagar went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy ishmael a drink and god was with the boy and he grew up he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow he lived in the wilderness of paran and his mother took a wife for him from the land of egypt two completely different destinies isaac and ishmael both sons of abraham but born out of seras thinking that everything was impossible and the phrase all things are possible to god words of the angel gabriel to mary when speaking of elizabeth her cousin's pregnancy and at the same time words spoken to abraham but sarah hearing them do you remember had laughed because she thought this was totally impossible but now she laughs again because her son whom abraham is told to name isaac and in obedience he has the child circumcised according to the first covenant and she laughs but this is different she also acknowledges that people also will laugh but laughing with her is quite different from laughing at her and on this occasion the first time laughter is mentioned today it's about the fulfillment of the promise and abraham and sarah in their old age have borne a son and sarah laughs at the ridiculous concept of what has happened and how she seeing herself physically well beyond that age bear a son and now she holds isaac in her arms and abraham rejoicing that god's promise has been fulfilled throws the great feast and at the feast i'm sure there is much laughter but there's one kind of laughter that sarah still can't stand and that is the laughter of her maidservant hagar whom she originally had caused to bear a son for abraham because she thought that the line would become extinct from abraham because she couldn't bear a son and now the tables are turned but sarah still can't find it in her heart to hear the laughter of hagar and rejoice and so cruel words follow hagar's laughter and enjoyment at the feast and abraham is down-hearted of course by sarah's command that he'd drive hagar away with her child so sarah doesn't have to hear that laughter and doesn't have to look at them and abraham is troubled and in trouble lays everything before god and here we come again to the the i won't call it confusion but certainly we can't ever tell whether the angel of the lord is god's voice or the voice of an angelic messenger we don't need to know those things are heard as the voice of the lord god to the one receiving in faith and obedience and we can never tell where they're coming from and that's true even to this day but at the same time the consciousness and intuition and here we're back yesterday with nathanael and the voice of jesus knowing him through and through and nathaniel then having the insight to know whose voice this is speaking to him rabbi you are the son of god you are king of israel jesus saying because i said i saw you under the fig tree you know that you will see much greater things than that and the voice of the angel of the lord or the voice of the lord god are almost one and the same as this story proceeds it's the way of expressing it the way for our imagination and the voice of the lord god says to abraham don't worry i have a destiny for ishmael don't be afraid to let pagar leave this i will look after her so abraham gives what provisions he can and obeys the voice of sarah in sending her away having that confirmed by god himself that he will care for hagar now and ishmael and so we read this beautiful story of the mother not wanting to hear the crying of the baby that she can no longer help because she's run out of resources and placing him under the bush and at the same time withdrawing a bow shot significant when you think of ishmael's destiny later with the bow a bow shot which is quite a distance and yet the voice of the child is still heard and it's heard not only by hagar but by the angel of the lord who comes now and says let hagar see that there is a well here with you is the well of life says one of the verses of our psalms the well of life and sometimes those waters spring in places and cause the dark places to become a living well that too is very much part of the psalmist's song that in the darkest places suddenly wellsprings rather like this little flower with its scent can spring up which we wouldn't have known about at all in our lives if we hadn't gone through that valley of shadow or going through the veil of misery find it to be a well and the pools are filled with water so it is with hagar and the promise of god for her and for ishmael her son a different destiny but nevertheless one that god takes care of let's look at some dates for today and the first is a really joyful date from 1944 25th of august 1944 the liberation of paris and the three french forces walked in to the city and what joy in that city that day the other allies had planned it that the three french forces among them would enter that city for this is if you like an iconic event in the second world war after all those years following the darkest days of 1940. here we are four years later and paris is liberated when others come they instantly find their favorite spots in paris i mean the armies of the allies who then join and begin to defend that ground that they have made for the war is by no means over but this is a significant moment of liberation and the new beginning so that we remember that with great thanksgiving as an anniversary on this august the 25th i want next to talk about two people who were born on this day and the first is both or was a conductor a composer a pianist an educator a lecturer whom people found it easy to listen to easy to understand who energized them an author and a humanitarian who campaigned for others who needed him throughout his life i'm talking about leonard bernstein who was born on this 25th of august in 1918 just before the end of the great war he was above all else an american but he was in heart and mind also a member of the jewish nation which we are rooting ourselves in our old testament stories and carried a flame high for that too but he was also a person who hated any kind of boundaries of division and to speak of leonard bernstein is to speak of someone who absolutely loved the freedom to experiment the freedom to use all his creative skills every aspect of his creative humanity in completely different ways i suppose he's best known for his musical west side story and that too taking its inspiration from shakespeare's story of romeo and juliet the division and hatred between two families and the way in which the love for romeo and romeo for juliet and juliet for romeo in all that way began to cause the two families though it ends in tragedy to realize that it's their division which has caused this tragedy well of course it's not set in uh renaissance italy nor is it set in the time of um fighting in italian states is actually set in new york itself and it's set amongst two gangs who have a great hatred well i don't have to talk about west side story because you will know that very well i want to talk about other things which have become iconic from bernstein's music and most of all his chichester psalms which our own choir have been singing and performing in concerts at the moment as part of this lockdown and chitisha psalms were created for a cathedral for chichester cathedral and for a great cathedral festival where the choirs of salisbury cathedral and winchester cathedral and chichester cathedral would come together at the southern cathedrals festival which is an annual event rotating between the three cathedrals and in 1965 at the chichester festival this piece was performed i won't say first performed for the dean of chichester walter hussey having commissioned it from bernstein bernstein gave the first performance in his own america and here was a a use of the hebrew psalms this hebrew language there of rhythms from his own background in in that particular culture and also of all kinds of other rhythms of and and lyrical tunes which really are catchy and others which show the desperate nature of the psalms as well and to hear them is to feel your body shaking with rhythms and also your mind and heart tuning to the melodies but for him it was a gathering together of all kinds of threads of his own i would say genius so he'd be the last to have said that he was just someone who needed all the time to be creative and to conduct that in uh his own america and then the when it was performed in chichester in 1965 the organist and conductor john burch conducted the first performance there with the three cathedral choirs singing those psalms and still those psalms make our choristers girls and boys tap their feet when the rhythms get very strong and when you're singing them yourselves as some of you will have done you get the same kind of flavor it brings out the life of those psalms but it also calls back into their history the rhythms of the culture that rate them and the the way in which the psalms are sung and the voices given by bernstein are really i think meaningful still and fresh after his death he died in 1990 but after his death on the 7th of april 1994 pope john paul ii called together in the great hall at the vatican the battalion president and the chief rabbi to come and have an act of both reconciliation and memorial for the holocaust and this was a hugely significant moment and what did they reach for in terms of music why the whole of bernstein's chichester psalms and his kaddish symphony which reached back into that culture other music of course was performed at that time but it was a very significant moment but for bernstein his great last significant moment was the conducting in berlin of beethoven's ninth symphony which was televised and broadcast right across the world on christmas day 1989 as a celebration of the berlin wall coming down and a sign of division here we are again with bernstein a sign of division being eradicated so we give thanks for all of that but i thought it's significant when last weekend when new york came together at uh in central park in in in their thousands to celebrate the ability to come together again after lockdown and we talked about that because it was an occasion that was disturbed by the the warnings of the arrival of hurricane henry but right at the beginning how did they begin with the overture to bernstein's condeed full of rhythms to give the life of that city a new beginning and those kinds of of uh of creative endeavors we give thanks for today as we remember leonard bernstein and give thanks here for the ability of binding all our choirs together to sing the chichester psalms which i hope will be recorded probably it was a a part of the the uh jam on the marsh festival at st leonard's at highs and so at some stage i hope we can give that to you properly and then the other person i want to remember is a name that i knew first by the name of a rose and this is a david austin rose it's called fonta la tour that's an f-a-n-t-i-n-l-a-t-o-u-r and it's a romantic sort of name but it's just called that the rose and it was one of the two roses that were transported here from hereford the other madame de gras saint-germain is flowering beautifully in the garden here but i'm afraid fontan le tour which took off strongly here never survived a move later in life it's always difficult to transplant a rose and yet one remembers that rose as a sign of um my first connection with the david austin rose and it's a rose i i um will value and i think we must get again but i'm reminded of it this morning simply because the name fontan lachor is the name of an artist a french artist ari fontan latur who was born in granable in 1836 and died on this day the 25th of august 1904 so here i am sitting in front of a rose an old rose here and a lovely flowering rose but vontellator was a wonderful portrait artist he could paint people with enormous sensitivity singly but was also gifted in painting groups of people together and he catches the atmosphere of what it means to come together in a group he's mentioned in post's works as someone who paints in that particular way but what he wanted to do most of all and what he enjoyed most of all and what he's best known for and his works hang in practically every great gallery throughout the world he loved to paint still life with flowers and fruit and bread even and a carafe of wine but flowers most of all so that many of his paintings are simply called white roses or peonies or flowers and fruit his wife who is also an artist victoria her family had the most lovely estate in normandy and he would go there with her to spend the summer months and there he had time to find the blooms he wanted to paint and also to put together the scenes of still life that he wanted to exult in and if it's even something like a loaf of bread or an orange or an apricot um he seems to catch the blush and character and even the flavor of that in his painting and i can see why david austin called his rose fontan la tour because that too with its fragrance and its strength spoke of the way in which ari fontan latour wanted to express his wonder at the creation and its life so many images this morning but images of particular gifts of different locations and different vocations of different centuries and different cultures and different kinds of creativity whether in music or in art or in words but creativity is catching as we've always said when we're praying together in our reflections in the garden and the way in which the planet creates is also an inspiration to us but something much deeper than that can happen with each other and with all aspects of the planet that in them we can hear the voice of the lord god speaking to us about our own condition too intuitively difficult to put into words and sometimes one reaches instead for music or landscape or any other kind of artistic creation to sometimes catch not that experience again for these come to us in time probably once but the memory of it and we keep little iconic things reminding of us reminding us of that around us so let's say our prayers on this particular morning in front of this lovely rose we're praying today in the anglican communion for the diocese of egbu in the church of nigeria this one in the owerri province there and we pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover for tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parish of shepherds lees and for peter newell in his ministry there and the school there selling church of england primary school within that parish of shepherd's leaves so let's say our own prayers as we use the collect the special prayer for this week and bring your own intentions your own memories your own insights the way in which god has spoken to you in the past and open our hearts for him to do so again today in all sorts of ways and in the voices and scenes that we shall come across as we try to give encouragement to one another almighty and everlasting god you are always more ready to hear than we to pray and to give more than either we desire or deserve pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy for giving us those things of which our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask but through the merits and mediation of jesus christ your son our lord amen so we say each in our own language the prayer that jesus taught us 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 for ever and ever amen moment of silence now for our own prayers on this particular morning uh the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds and 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