good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this monday the 25th of january it's deep mid-winter but the morning sun is melting the frost off this last brave rose as it still continues to flower a sign of the summer and autumn which have gone but also a sign of hope for flowering in the new season and we come together here from all over the world so wherever you are please feel welcome i said yesterday how much gratitude we feel for your encouragement because this is a ministry of mutual encouragement and i would say that there are many throughout the world who are joining in but some are finding it difficult on some mornings to find us if you're watching on the website then then fine you you generally find us but some are having difficulties on youtube the best if you're watching on youtube the best thing to do is to subscribe to youtube it costs you nothing and once you've done that you can click on the subscription button and then come straight to canterbury cathedral and begin to see the services as they're laid out if you're on the website of course you can join in with all the things which are shown there and see all aspects of our life that becomes very important but some of you like to look back i know to services which have happened which maybe you've missed and you can do that on youtube as a subscriber if you've got friends who you feel might be encouraged by this ministry please tell them about it and show them how to join in and connect with us bring your own prayers today this is the feast of the conversion of saint paul it's also the last day of the week of prayer for christian unity and we've come to sit here with these flowering mimosas who are coming to their time at this time of year but we're frightened a little bit of very heavy frosts with them but at the moment they're still doing very well let's begin our prayers on this day o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your faithful servants bless you they make known the glory of your kingdom blessed are you sovereign god ruler and judge of all to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of this age that is passing away may the light of your presence which the saints enjoy surround our steps as we journey on may we reflect your glory this day and so be made ready to see your face in the heavenly city where night shall be no more 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 amen our psalm this morning is a portion of psalm 119 we start at verse 33 and read that section 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 turn away my eyes let's say 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 so on this day a special lesson because it's the feast day of the apostle saint paul and the feast day of his conversion on the damascus road now last night i found myself at evensong reading the account of that which is given when paul stands on the steps as the tribune in the temple has saved him from the crowd who are angry with him and he makes his defense by telling his story in the acts of the apostles that story is told three times but this morning i'm telling it from chapter nine of the acts of the apostles which is the way saint luke sets it out for us in the the account of of saul himself going to damascus chapter 9 verse 1 of the acts of the apostles but saul still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the lord went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at damascus so that if he found any belonging to the way men or women he might bring them bound to jerusalem now as he went on his way he approached damascus and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him and falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him saul saul why are you persecuting me and saul said who are you lord and he said i am jesus whom you are persecuting but rise and enter the city and you will be told what you are to do the men who were traveling with him stood speechless hearing the voice but seeing no one saul rose from the ground and although his eyes were opened he saw nothing so they led him by the hand and brought him into damascus and for three days he was without sight and neither at nor drank now there was a disciple at damascus named ananias the lord said to him in a vision ananias and he said here i am lord and the lord said to him rise and go to the street called straight and at the house of judas look for a man of tarsus named saul for behold he is praying and he has seen in a vision a man named ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight but ananias on said lord i have heard from many about this man how much evil he has done to your saints in jerusalem and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name but the lord said to him go for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the gentiles and kings and the children of israel for i will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name so ananias departed and entered the house and laying his hands on him he said brother saul the lord jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the holy spirit and immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight and then he rose and was baptized and taking food he was strengthened it's a story that luke must have heard paul as he became tell many times for whenever paul was telling the good news and things became difficult or he wanted to testify to his faith in jesus or also provide credence credentials of his eyewitness apostleship he would go back to this story on the damascus road and as i've said it appears three times in the acts of the apostles once told by luke in the account as we've just read it chapter 9 once on the steps of the barracks to the side of the temple as the tribune rescues him from the people and saul as he then is paul talks to the people with the tribune's permission and that's in chapter 22 and then later on in chapter 26 paul's defense before herod agrippa and then he tells the story himself again but in a slightly different way as one would remembering back and also helping different styles of people to understand in in all this um luke has has said right at the beginning that paul is going to testify before his own people and luke describes that then in chapter 22 on the steps of the barracks and with a crowd of the of his own people standing in front of him and in front of kings and gentiles and that happens of course when the king agrippa comes and uh the roman governor is there also kings and gentiles but much more no doubt he told that story so many times when he was talking to the christian churches that he formed in his ministry as sin paul the apostle the lovely thing is that when ananias comes into the the picture and the courage ananias was showing and going to someone who had the authority to arrest to bind him to take him back to jerusalem where he may have faced death as so many christians had at paul's hands and this accountants in luke's gospel was taken straight after the stoning of stephen at which paul was a witness all of those things cause us to believe in the courage of ananias here i am lord it's rather like little samuel going hearing the voice of the lord in a vision here i am and now here we are with here i am with ananias what do you want me to do and the lord tells ananias not only what he will do but what saul will accomplish the when when ananias goes in that lovely almost intimate brother saul and in the greek the the word uh saul is given a an extra oh to give it as saul and make it more hebrew that happens on two occasions the account we've just read and also the account in the temple when one gets to the account before uh um king agrippa that's not there but it's interesting that it's plugging into his own people and then beginning to proclaim the prophecy fulfilled in the anointed one jesus and the vision jesus over arches all of this i am jesus in one of the later accounts as paul described it i am jesus of nazareth and this is the foundation stone of paul's whole ministry to which he returns again and again a damascus road experience is something we ourselves might mention when somebody has a complete change of heart because they have realized something of massive importance not only do we use it sometimes for religious experiences but someone having a change of attitude in particular ways a damascus road experience it becomes almost and the the things we've been talking about it becomes almost a parable uh a figurative expression for an experience and enjoyed or are undergone by someone which makes them in some way a changed person from then on well we today will be celebrating that conversion of saint paul and his apostleship in our worship and we have many things which help us with that in the gospels i got here though a hymn which we would normally sing which tells that story it's written by john ellerton and it acts as a poem and here it is we sing the glorious conquest before damascus gate when saul the church's spoiler came breathing threats and hate the raveling wolf rushed forward full early to the prey but lo the shepherd met him and bound him fast today oh glory most excelling that smote across his path o light that pierced and blinded the zealot in his ross a voice that spake within him the calm reproving word o love that sought and held him the bond man of the lord a wisdom ordering all things in order strong and sweet what spoil was ever cast at the victor's feet what wiser master builder air wrought at thine employ than he till now so furious by building to destroy lord teach thy church this lesson still in her darkest hour of weakness and of danger to trust thy hidden power thy grace by ways mysterious the wrath of man can bind and in thy boldest foeman thy chosen saint can find it's a great lesson never to judge someone as totally beyond recall for watch the christians the followers of the way must have been thinking of soul before this experience and how much courage it needed for them over the years to come to trust him is a part of the story of the early church but it can be also part of our story with one another on these particular days i look back on the things which have happened today in history january the 25th and we we find in 1327 the long reign of king edward the third beginning 50 years and uh he transformed medieval england into a force to be reckoned with in those 50 years 1533 interesting event the bishop of litchfield secretly married king henry viii to anne boleyn who ten days before had discovered that she was pregnant and that too a significant event but around that time the troublesome tudor era of one king or queen after another in quick succession in 1554 in a rebellion against queen mary who just become queen sir thomas wyatt gathered an army of four thousand men of kent and began his rebellion which failed and he was executed later in april political upheavals but some nice things too in 1858 um mendelssohn's wedding march was first performed and played at a wedding of princess victoria queen victoria's eldest daughter and crown prince frederick of prussia he was the crown prince of what was then prussia and which became before ever he became the emperor became the new germany set up by bismarck after the franco-prussian war in 1870 and the first emperor william was this man's father what would have happened if uh frederick the emperor frederick had actually um not died early of a cancer in his face i think and uh his son the kaiser had not become the emperor william ii but his father had stayed and and was married to queen victoria's eldest daughter who can say but then the course of history changes uh in in most unexpected ways and we remember to this day three um writers really in 1855 dorothy wordsworth died william wordsworth's sister i've no doubt we shall come back to her but what we shall say this morning is that she was the most wonderfully descriptive writer in her grasmere journals and we remember that with thanksgiving because so much of what she described becomes later wordsworth poetry we shall return to that in days to come and then again in 1874 somerset morm the writer and playwright was born important to us here because he was brought up on the death of both his parents he came over from paris where he had been born and was set to live with his rather severe uncle who was a vicar in whitstable and sent to the kings school here but she found that he was unhappy here people made fun of him because of his stammer because of english was his second language because he'd been brought up in paris even though he was english and he was very unhappy and later he wrote about all kinds of things in terms of his own life and made it into fiction telling his story just as sin paul told his story again and again to give a kind of color to what was being written and he he wrote later fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now looking back on it i can hardly distinguish one from the other sometimes people in his novels are very much um aspects of the character of somerset morm i think of philip carey in the novel of human bondage and then talking about his own personal life he said i have most loved people who cared little or nothing for me and when people have loved me i have been embarrassed well at the end of his life he ordered that his ashes be brought back here and his library be given to the king's school so the ashes of somerset maum who was the most popular and certainly the most profitable to himself novelist in the 1930s his ashes lie outside the gate of the morm library here and we give thanks for that his portrait is in the the shirley hall the big hall of our cathedral school our king school and lastly let's just think of virginia woolf she was born on the 25th of january in 1882 great writer of the bloomsbury set a modernist and a pioneer of stream of consciousness writing once again quarrying within oneself for one story to help other people understand their own story and we give thanks for her and so uh and her writings this is also burns night so we pray for the people of scotland as they celebrate burns night and we also pray for the unity of christ church on this last day of the week of prayer for christian unity and we remember in our prayers all those facing particular situations i meant mentioned yesterday the heat of adelaide and our friends there in fact is cooled a little and the fires which had started have for the moment been extinguished but we think of all those who evacuated their homes and brought even their pets and even farm animals to the outdoor cinema there and think of people the world over facing all kinds of dangers in these days so let's say our prayers together and we shall start with the prayer for this day the conversion of saint paul and then the prayer for unity of the church almighty god who calls the light of the gospel to shine throughout the world through the preaching of your servants in paul grant that we who celebrate his wonderful conversion may follow him in bearing witness to your truth through jesus christ our lord amen 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 then the prayer that our savior taught us to pray 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 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 for our own prayers before the blessing we were interested to see in the list of things which were important when we clicked it on this day 25th of january that um in 2014 we made history here for this place by the first even song sung by our girls choir it happened in the middle of the most amazing thunderstorm but people had packed into the choir area and were sitting up and down right up beyond the throne of sint augustin as the 16 girls from local schools who had been in training and recruited by david newsham who is now our acting organist um and they they sang the most wonderful even song being an official cathedral choir of uh girls for the first time in history our school had sung girls choirs of course before and there have been choirs invisible women in visiting choirs but this was a first now it seems so natural that they are so much part of our life and there's a link you can look onto which will come out immediately after this to to see them in action now and we give thanks for them on this particular day and are sorry that with the lockdown at the moment we can't have them singing live for us neither girls nor boys at present so 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 so the sun has risen above the wall and is now actually shining on me and uh thinking of sin paul if i turn my eyes to it i'm blinded by the night