good morning and welcome on this lovely sunny morning monday morning july the 5th here at canterbury cathedral in the deanery garden the sun has come out after early morning rain the sky is absolutely blue and there's warmth in the air which we've not had for a while so welcome wherever you are in the world to the meadow monday morning shot of our wildflower garden the garden congregation's flower garden which we planted as a wild garden watch about three months ago or something of that sort in bare earth as you will remember and now all the wildflowers have sprung up and there are many more to come but you can see what a wonderful colorful site it is there's a blue sea in front of me and a blue sky above me the blue sea is sprinkled with white and the sky just a few white clouds as the sun shines down on this morning our theme is is very much a theme of health and healing of the whole person of a human being or a community today and let's begin by saying that this is the 73rd birthday of the national health service 1948 on this day it began we'll think about that later but what i wanted to say was they were thrilled for the fact that the queen for only the third time in its history has awarded the george cross that's the highest award which is not military is on a level with the victoria cross and it's awarded for courage and steadfastness and the third time in its history that it's been given to a community of people not just to individuals the first time uh coincidentally was to the citizens of malta and the at the end of the the second world war for all their steadfastness there and this time is for our national health service for the staff's courage and dedication and we applaud that hugely as we give thanks for the national health service in the united kingdom we're remembering also the the the pope his holiness pope francis as he recovers in hospital in rome uh and we we wish him a a a good recovery and we're thinking also of the crisis in indonesia the oxygen crisis and the worsening kovid's surge there and praying for all their health services there and for help any help that can be given internationally to that oxygen crisis we remember with sadness the air crash in the philippines and then if we come to the the sense of what's happening here today um england is and the united kingdom full of football and uh and uh tennis feelings and wimbledon the fourth round singles uh young emma radukanu is playing this afternoon and she's an 18 year old who's still waiting for her a level results and is herself mightily surprised and we're all thrilled that she's got so far in the wimbledon tennis championships at this time so all kinds of things to think about but mostly of health and healing today let's begin our prayers oh 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 creator of all to you be praise and glory forever as your dawn renews the face of the earth bringing light and life to all creation may we rejoice in this day you have made and as we wake refreshed from the depths of sleep 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 and as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence so god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this fifth morning of the month is psalm 24. the earth is the lord's and all that fills it the compass of the world and all who dwell therein for he has founded it upon the seas and set it firm upon the rivers of the deep who shall ascend the hill of the lord or who can rise up in his holy place those who have clean hands and a pure heart who have not lifted up their soul to an idol nor sworn an oath to a lie they shall receive a blessing from the lord a just reward from the god of their salvation such is the company of those who seek him of those who seek your faith so god of jacob lift up your heads though gates be lifted up you everlasting doors and the king of glory shall come in who is the king of glory the lord strong and mighty the lord who is mighty in battle lift up your heads though gates be lifted up you everlasting doors and the king of glory shall come in who is this king of glory the lord of hosts he is the king of glory remember that question who is the king of glory remember the psalmist's answer in terms of battle and warfare and might and power and the question is then asked again who is the king of glory and all four evangelists set about answering that question and we are seeing how matthew answers it as we go through the gospel of matthew day by day we're now in chapter 21 where we left off i think it was last friday wasn't it since we read there because of st thomas's day and sunday giving us special lessons and i'm coming on from verse 18 of chapter 21 you'll remember in matthew's gospel having cleansed the temple and said that the children who are shouting hosanna are are giving perfect praise to the king of glory in matthew's words he's answering this question who is the king of glory and then jesus and his disciples went back to bethany and here we are verse 18 taking up from there in the morning as jesus was returning to the city of jerusalem he became hungry and seeing a fig tree by the wayside he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves and he said to it may no fruit ever come from you again and the fig tree withered at once when the disciples saw it they marveled saying how did the fig tree wither at once and jesus answered them truly i say to you if you have faith and do not doubt you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree but even if you say to this mountain be taken up and thrown into the sea it will happen and whatever you ask in prayer you will receive if you have faith and when jesus entered the temple the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching and said by what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority jesus answered them i also will ask you one question and if you tell me the answer then i also will tell you by what authority i do these things the baptism of john from where did it come from heaven or from man and they discussed it among themselves saying if we say from heaven he will say to us why then did you not believe him if we say it was of human origin we were afraid of the crowd for they all held that john was a prophet so they answered jesus we do not know and he said to them neither then will i tell you by what authority i do these things what do you think a man had two sons and he went to the first and said my son go and work in the vineyard and he answered i will not but afterwards he changed his mind and went he went to the other son and said the same and he answered i go sir but he did not go which of the two did the will of his father they said the first jesus said to them truly i say to you the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of god before you for john came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him and even when you saw it you did not afterwards change your minds and believe him matthew gives us an amalgam of stories and the source is mark but the order is rather different for if you look at the way in which mark the earlier version tells the story this story happens as they're coming back in from bethany and the temple has not yet been so say cleansed by jesus matthew had all that happening the moment jesus went into the temple that the overthrowing of the seats of the money changes are driving out all of that it's not like that in mark the shall we say the time sequence is different jesus comes into jerusalem with the triumphal procession in mark and the palms and the hosannas and the the donkey yes into the city and goes into the temple and which when he had seen all that was there then they went back to bethany and then a new day began and as they came in from bethany on that second day of the week for the um entry into jerusalem happened on the first day of the week which we will call sunday on the second day of the week monday jesus and his disciples come back in sin mark's gospel and on the way there is a story of the fig tree very differently told and one has in mind the fact that in jesus's heart and mind was what had he come to the temple expecting to find and the answer is fruitfulness in the house of his father fruitfulness in the fruits of the spirit given from heaven fruitfulness in the way humanity is capable of giving fruitfulness all of that that is playing out so how does he begin to approach the temple which he had sensed the day before was not being fruitful in the vocation that it had been given all of that and here the fig tree which in sin mark's gospel is already fruitless and is withering away matthew makes it a miracle story so that the fig tree because it hasn't provided fruit for jesus withers at once it's in mark's gospel it's different and i see it as very much an emblem of the temple and all that jesus expects in terms of fruitfulness and then he goes into the temple and it's it's then that he gets rid in the outer courtyard where everyone can come everyone can come the inner courtyards were reserved sequentially for special categories of people but everyone can come into the azure courtyard and yet it's filled with all the money changing desks to prevent uh roman or greek money coming into the temple it all had to be transferred into temple money and then with that that the the um beasts and birds for sacrifices were bought and jesus gets rid of all that because he says in mark's gospel it is written my house shall be a house of prayer for all nations and you're getting in the way and not being faithful to that fruitfulness and vocation of god's chosen people and the gift that they bear to give to all nations and then later on the next day in sin mark's gospel they go past the fig tree again which is withered further and is clearly dying and that emblem of the temple as jesus looks at it at that time and his longing for fruitfulness and his his desire for to remember his desire for jerusalem is is in another place in the evangelists like him saying how often have i longed to gather you like a hen with plenty of hens noises this morning here in the meadow garden a hen gathering her chicks under her feathers for protection gentle soft protection and you would not hence the story of the two sons and what true obedience looks like sometimes it takes a while for the realization of acceptance of the gift but that's all right in god's time and jesus is hoping for that for the city of jerusalem but as he spends his time there in the temple what he sees doesn't fill him with hope we think of all those things in the way that matthew sets out his gospel because above all else he is trying to answer that question which the psalmist gives us who is the king of glory and the answer given first mighty in battle is not the answer matthew wants to give triumphant yes courageous yes all those things yes but in worldly terms seen by the end of this week to be something of a failure arrested sentenced killed dead and entombed by the end of the friday of that week and yet the lord of glory the king of glory the gift given for fruitfulness all of those things in the way in which matthew shapes his chronology but also shapes the story of the fig tree and places it in a different kind of chronology with regard to the cleansing of the temple and the days of the week and it's trying to teach a different lesson and you see how important it is to compare the stories in the gospel of each evangelist so let's think what we ourselves are going to remember on this particular day from the dates given let's start then with the national health service because that was born on this day in 1948 73 years ago and i have particular reason to be grateful for that my state of health as a child in very early years would have bankrupted my parents if the amount of hospital treatment that was given to me and medical treatment from constant visits from the doctor had still to be paid for as those visits happened and instead by the grace of this national health service i was eventually put into the hands with a very weak chest indeed put into the hands of a wonderfully imaginative consultant and pediatrician he was called dr john and at the time of course i this was 1955 so the autumn of of 54 and then winter into 54 in uh early right through the winter months of 1955 and then through the summer months of 1955 beginning to heal properly and my mother was sure that i had consumption and would die and that had that had given them enormous anxiety and at the time of course the medicines that were being used in fact it turned out to be a case of of acute bronchitis which would just not go away because of what was happening to my lungs and this man john apley saw all this but he had an imaginative way and a vision for how children could be healed and i found myself blessed and i didn't know that at the time to be in the hands of this marvellous man and my mother also who was the person who came with me most to see him while father was working though both of them in their prayers must have held me constantly as they knelt by their bed at night and said their prayers faithfully held me constantly in prayer for there had been really really dramatic times and um i was taken into the bristol hospital for sick children the royal bristol hospital for sick children on st michaels hill at that time and consumption treatment at that time was to be out in the open air but bronchial treatment also in removing fluids on one's lungs was rigid physiotherapy this was dr apley's prescription and also to lie and it was quite exciting really in a bed where your head was down there and your feet were up there so everything was draining off and the next morning physiotherapy would cough off the phlegm to give childish lungs a chance to grow all of that but much more than that because john apley believed that healing was something that happened mentally physically and in a sense of vision of creativity in the child's life and the family around at that time the rules meant mother can only come half an hour every day in the months i was in hospital just half an hour and for the rest i was with without visits and parents from from home and john apley was beginning to see and a vision for this that children needed to be in a place where they were happy not frightened and parents also were calmed and in an atmosphere of of of helping to heal the child simply by their presence and their understanding now i could go on with all of this but i won't because i discovered that on the online there's a youtube in the 1950s and we'll put that at that link of the bristol in in in in hospital for sick children for you and uh show you some of that and show you uh dr aptly speaking about his vision for children if he could see the bristol children's hospital now the new one opened in 2001 so much of his vision has been accomplished and his totality of health and healing i read online again that he was a brave man and and went off to saigon at the the ending of the the the war in vietnam and was was helping in the saigon hospital when war was still going on around helping them to treat children in that way and didn't give up his work even though the military uh struggle outside was was all around him so i give thanks for john apley and for his vision which helped me to realize also uh that that the way in which one treats people must be body mind and spirit within the context of those whom they love and we could all remember that in this lovely flowering meadow where so many complementary things are going on together and how the color and light and the toys that were always around at that point but also he'll he speaks on the thing of on the the the website of of how his intention was that no one should ever be puzzled about where they go next and so the lines of going the way was quite clear and there was someone there to to say which way do i go now it was always the same direction listen to him speak and then at the same time this is a day in 1948 when on july the 5th uh george bernano who was a french writer died and i know of him only because of his diary of a country priest which he wrote in 1936 and was translated by pamela morris into english in 1937 and he is known as in many of his books an original independent roman catholic writer of the first rank but that novel is his best forget uh kilvert's diary or people looking at sections of nature and charting beautiful landscapes and going to their people who are responsive it's not that kind of pastoral image at all it's a young curry just just ordained to the priesthood in charge of the most poverty-stricken and shall we say in landscape ugly and barren community in hard weather and a gritty people who really don't receive his message and are sometimes just plain unpleasant to him and the the story of of his his real struggle and then with his own ill health inside is a story of intense courage while he holds on to the fact that god by grace is working through his priesthood for the the good of this community and so uh if you want a cheerful story it's not that but if you want to see the way in which the lord of glory the king of glory works through those with vocations and what the way of the cross looks like it's certainly that and when i read it i i i read it when i was a a priest in in wiltshire i realized that my lot was a very very lovely one compared with the story that he was describing of the the priest in in that really difficult terrain with with people it's it's certainly worth a read but it speaks of the grace of orders in a very special way and then uh the last thing that i wanted to to talk about was the fact that on this day on the 5th of july 1805 robert fitzroy was born and fitzroy came for a very wealthy aristocratic family but he became a naval officer and an expert cartographer and a pioneering meteorologist a surveyor a hydrographer but he's best known of course for having invited charles darwin onto his ship the beagle when they set off on their five-year journey right down to tierra del fuego and this was going to be a hard journey why did he invite darwin because he knew that he himself had mental issues of loneliness and he'd observed it in other naval officers and in struggle struggling with his own mental health he thought a companion that he could talk to on equal terms but doing some different kind of work in which he believed would be a good thing to have on board the ship the battles as well as the friendship of darwin and fitzroy uh are a wonderful tale to read fitzroy was not only um compassionate and good but he was also irratible and apt to fly off the handle and not be able to control himself and uh darwin said sometimes that the the rose that he would instigate just by a sentence in sharing fitzroy's cabin were so angry that it was bordering on insanity and fitzroy would order him out and say you know i don't want you here again and then by the end of the day things had calmed a bit there was a passage during that time when fitzroy himself lost all confidence and and uh um resigned his commission and it was up to his officers then to to to woo him back to realizing the importance of the gifts he brought again i wish i could tell a happy ending to this tale in in in um at the age of 60 uh and fitzroy committed suicide and uh he had always been terrified of that end though he himself was a faithful and believing christian something his mental health got the better of him and we give thanks for not only all the the diaries left there and our ability now to see the wholeness of a human being in in need of healing and to to look at mental health as as something as as as real as anything i was suffering with my lungs and also to to treat that and give the right kind of atmosphere for treatment all those things but uh fitzroy we remember for the work that he did do and also for the fact that on board ship he knew the rhythm of life was important and he didn't have a chaplain on board so he would call the crew together and do what we're doing in the morning read the morning prayer and then just speak for a little while about a section from the gospel and those services were kept going all the way through until the last one was held when falmouth was in sight so all those things we give thanks for and he's an inspiration for the rhythm of life and the daily office for me as well well many different things but all really about health and healing in this lovely flower garden which we talking about you we have inspired and planted and is now flowering in wonderful ways as a sign of fruitfulness for the king of glory let's send say our prayers on this day and we remember on this 5th of july the diocese of connor in the church of ireland the amar province of the church of ireland and all those who are ministered to by that diocese pray also in this diocese uh for archbishop justin bishop rose of dover and bishop tim at lumbers and today for the parish of westgate on sea and guarding st james and that at the moment is is listed as vacant so we pray for those choosing a new parish priest for that area of our diocese please bring your own prayers and intentions and concerns on this day for the world is full of many many many different concerns and joys as well so make sure that comes with thanksgiving so let's say the prayer for this week almighty and everlasting god by whose spirit the whole body of the church is governed and sanctified hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people that in their vocation and ministry each may serve you in holiness and truth to the glory of your name through our lord and savior jesus christ amen same moment of silence now as we say our own prayers on this monday morning [Music] [Music] great uh [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 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 what we set out to do was two things we wanted to make a building that was attractive and wouldn't frighten children and at the same time one in which the doctors could enjoy themselves doing the job and doing it more efficiently we like to think that the children enjoy coming to the hospital as much as we enjoy looking after them so we brought in several new ideas and try to incorporate them into our scheme if you come up to the hospital from the outside you'll see for instance there are two separate entrances one is for children who have accidents or have to be admitted seriously ill so that they don't mix and frighten the other children who are waiting to be seen as outpatients we then come into the main clinic floor and everything is arranged in a sort of circular tour so that the patients don't get lost and everything is done most efficiently in that way they collect their documents they sit in a very charming gay waiting room with for instance goldfish lit up in a bowl and a delightful frog who bubbles up air at times an artificial frog of course they then separate out and various things like weighing the child and testing specimens are done and then the mother and child wait outside the clinic room for a few minutes and are seen by their own particular doctor and then any other things that need doing like x-rays or tests are done and the whole thing is conducted in a sort of circular tour and if they need another appointment or medicine they collect these on the way out then a child may need of course x-rays or laboratory tests and these are done on the floor below a very fine department indeed with modern equipment that doesn't frighten children we have for example the latest x-ray machines with television and the children enjoy watching this just as much as we do they also have about the biggest teddy bear in the whole country which cheers them up no end on the first floor there's something quite new and very welcome we have a department of mental health with delightful rooms comfortable chairs right sides for children as well as for mothers and fathers and in some of these rooms we can watch children at play doing things behaving naturally on the second floor we have again something which is very welcome and that is the department of child health built by the university in this building with the professor of child health and his staff and this is where a lot of teaching students learn all the time in this hospital and at the same time we have to our great joy laboratories built where all sorts of work is being done to try and sort out some of the difficult problems that still remain to be discovered in childhood [Music] those are the main flaws and then we have simple things that we didn't have before like another floor with filing arrangements documents without which no hospital can run and we really got not as much room as we'd like but much more than we had the benefits of this building well there are lots of them from the children's point of view and the parents point of view i think they'll enjoy it and not be frightened and if we see children who are frightened it's much harder to help them easily from the point of view of the people who work here it's an immense advance things are done much more tidily more systematically without waste of time and there's a great atmosphere of things being modern and up-to-date which makes the young doctors and the older doctors and the nurses and secretarial staff even the porters work much more enthusiastically and with a will you