good morning and welcome to the deanery garden here on the morning of thursday september the 17th as we say our morning prayers together feel welcome wherever you are in the world this day is the day on which we keep a memory of and a thanksgiving for the life of one of the most extraordinary saints of the middle ages i'm meaning saint hildegard of bingham she was born in 1098 in the holy roman empire and she was a member of the order of saint benedict later in life and abbess at the abbey at bingham that is on the river rhine and we are giving thanks for all her many many gifts she was beatified in the 14th century but in 2012 was canonized and made a doctor of the church and no one deserved it more than she as we shall see in our reflections later but at the same time this is a day when the acts of the apostles gives us the story of the council of jerusalem the precursor for all councils synods and decision-making bodies of the church so perhaps a pointer as we prepare for a lambast conference now said to be in 2022 and also give thanks for and pray for the way in which the church makes its decisions so let's begin our prayers on this day oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise visit us with your salvation and sustain us with your gracious spirit oh come let us sing to the lord let us heartily rejoice in the rock of our salvation let us come into his presence with thanksgiving and be glad in him with sounds for the lord is a great god and a great king above all gods come let us worship and bow down and kneel before the lord our maker for he is our god we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand 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 oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this 17th morning of the month is psalm 87 her foundation is on the holy mountain the lord loves the gates of zion more than all the dwellings of jacob glorious things are spoken of you zion city of our god i record egypt and babylon as those who know me behold philistia tyre and ethiopia in zion were they born and of zion it shall be said each one was born in her and the most high himself has established her the lord will record as he writes up the peoples this one also was born and as they dance they shall sing all my fresh springs are in you so we turn to chapter 15 of the acts of the apostles remember that paul and barnabas are sharing the life of the christians as they're now called in antioch following the completion of their first minute missionary journey they've been received home and there is some time of teaching and telling of stories and a glad acceptance of them back now chapter 15 begins but some men came down from judea and were teaching the brothers unless you are circumcised according to the custom of moses you cannot be saved and after paul and barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them paul and barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question so being sent on their way by the church they passed through both phoenicia and samaria describing in detail the conversion of the gentiles and they brought great joy to all the brothers and sisters there when they came to jerusalem they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders and they declared all that god had done with them but some believers who belonged to the party of the pharisees rose up and said it is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of moses so the apostles and the elders gather together to consider this matter and after there had been much debate peter stood up and said to them you know that in the early days god made a choice among you that by my mouth the gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe and god who knows the heart bore witness to them by giving them the holy spirit just as he did to us and he made no distinction between us and them having cleansed their hearts by faith now therefore why are you putting god to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our forefathers nor we have been able to bear that we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the lord jesus just as they will and all the assembly fell silent and they listened to barnabas and paul as they related what signs and wonders god had done through them among the gentiles after they finished speaking james replied brothers listen to me simeon has related how god first visited the gentiles to take from them a people for his name and with this the words of the prophets agree just as it is written after this i will return and i will rebuild the tent of david that has fallen i will rebuild its ruins and i will restore it that the remnant of humanity may seek the lord and all the gentiles who are called by my name says the lord who makes these things known from of old therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the gentiles who turn to god but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood for from ancient generations moses has had in every city those who proclaim him for he has read every sabbath in the synagogues it's a very significant moment in the life of the early church they are dealing with a very contentious issue and they fall into two groups one is very certain that circumcision the law of moses and the customs that they have known must be kept by the new gentiles and greeks who are beginning to accept the gospel and give thanks just as we saw the lycaonians beginning to do so yesterday and the other communities that paul and barnabas have been through people who knew nothing of the law and the prophets so we saw that paul had to begin by pointing out to god's goodness in creation which the whole of humanity shares and now they've come together and the church for the first time sits in council there'll be many times in the next 2000 years when christians sit in council in sharp division sometimes with a resolution sometimes not sometimes resulting in a compromise which helped sometimes resulting in a division which lasts for years and years but here we have also the ordering of the church in apostles and elders sitting together to listen and luke cloaks the very heated discussions i am absolutely sure with the words after much debate peter stood up peter has had experience of this in the very lands that paul and barnabas have just crossed to come from antioch to jerusalem phoenicia syria and here is peter explaining his own experience and asking that this heavy burden be not laid on the backs of those who are receiving the gospel in freedom and then a silence fell followed by paul and barnabas telling the story of their missionary journey to the apostles and the elders and at the end this is all very much conflating what i'm sure was a heated and lengthy council the chair of the whole council stands and speaks it's james the just the brother of jesus carrying a very special authority and now the leader of the church in jerusalem which has should we call it a primacy of honor at that time and james has weighed in his mind what all this means and makes a balanced decision that these things which they're asking for of the gentiles should not be insisted on but what they should insist on is the the regularity and sexual morality that is expected of those who by grace receive the holy spirit and at the same time some suggestions may be of rulings which enable both those who keep to the old custom and the new gentiles to share food together at the eucharist and after and this will be communicated to the communities and tomorrow we'll see how but for the moment we see what difficult decisions the early church is having to make and how heated is the exchange so that this is a morning to pray for wisdom and grace in any council that is attempting to make a hard decision it's also a morning when we give thanks for the jerusalem council the first of many setting the life of the church in some kind of order and validating and giving authority to creative missionary activity which has been brought back for that validation and authentication well this is a day as i said when we give enormous thanks september the 17th for saint hildegard of bingham she died on this day in 1179 the very decade of the martyrdom of thomas beckett who was martyred on in 1170 and she was 81 when she died and her creative life and visionary life still astound us when we view it i first came across her on a journey to oberamagao in 1980 when i found myself at bingham at the convent there which is still there it has survived the centuries it has new buildings it's had times in its life when its worship was stopped and even in the second world war when the nuns were evicted and then brought back to the abbey there at ibingan and to share the life of that abby is to share the life of music intellectual and spiritual creativity and community life and the rhythms of that life which hildegard of bingham established nothing could really be more beautiful for there in the abbey is now a beautiful hand-painted copy of one of her works which is normally called the shivias and where that's a conflation of the words she diaz domini know the ways of the lord she was given grace to write so much of her theology down her spirituality down and her vision of god down she said that she received visions of that kind from her youth onwards not in dreams but in waking hours perceptible to her in a strange way by her five senses and therefore communicated with great clarity but her mind was ever active her writings contain works on medicine and the way in which herbs could be used about plants and all kinds of botany and about mystical theology and philosophy the list really is endless because her imagination and intellect know no bounds and had great respect from the benedictine world so that she traveled in a way a bit later on with the blessing of the pope to give lectures and came back always to the stabilitas the stability of her community which is still there but we remember her too and yesterday i was saying that so many of the psalms which she would have recited and sung daily so many of the psalms whatever the atmosphere and uh and this morning's little psalm a very beautiful psalm is no different from this the last verse speaks about singing and dancing and fresh springs and hildegard was one for whom music was a natural language it filled heaven and earth in her heart and mind but it also filled the community for she wrote music she played the ten string saltery and was able therefore to accompany her singing she was one of those who could write both the words and the music and so much has survived sadly the copy the original copy which is so beautifully illustrated under her direction of the shiva says has gone it was sent in 1945 to dresden for safe keeping and somehow was lost but the perfect hand-painted copy is still there so we see something in art form and feel something mentally and spiritually in her words and by the memories of others of what she thought in her visions and how her reading of the scriptures and her perceptions of creation blossomed in so many dimensions and then always sought authentication and validity from the overarching structures of the church itself she sought the blessing of the pope and received it in her creative work and then went on and on so that when she died she was a natural person for the consideration first of all of the continued study of her works and the continued work and life of the benedictine community on the river rhine there but also for her beatification in the 14th century and in more recent years when her work has been appreciated more and more her musical abilities at the foundation of so much of our singing of the psalms and so much of our singing music and also her creation of the first morality play with music and words and actions performed there in the community for all these things and one could say so much more this morning we give great thanks but in 2012 in may of 2012 she was canonized and even better in october on october the 7th the feast of the holy rosary and the rosary itself with all its beads full of pictures because every bead every time you tell the rosary tells a gospel story with a picture and all of that is commemorated by her being made a doctor of the church for so many good reasons on that day so let's give thanks today not only for the way the church makes its decisions hard decisions and attempts to cope with dissension in its ranks and really hard-won beliefs facing each other in conflict but also for the abundant creative life of the holy spirit and let's use hildegard as our image of that for that needs also regulation within the life of the church but sometimes those missionary journeys of paul and barnabas are working outside the boundaries of validation and the acceptance of the church comes years and years after so we remember all that today as we say our prayers here in the midst of god's creation which hildegard would have enjoyed today we are praying in the anglican communion for the diocese of oxford in england and for stephen croft the bishop and his people the diocese of the central gulf coast in the episcopal church of the united states and for russell kendrick the bishop there and his people and the diocese of central melanesia in the pacific and leonard de wae the primate as well as the bishop there and all his people a real spread of of our world in um england at the episcopal church on the gulf coast and the pacific and here in this diocese as we pray for archbishop justin and for bishop rose of dover and bishop tim at lambus we are today praying for the east bridge deanery of our diocese now that contains many tiny but perfect and beautiful places for those of you who know them i'm going quickly to read the list because each of those names will conjure up visions of beautiful valleys and and green places we're talking about in no particular order stoddmarsh preston elmstone wickenbrew ickham littleborn wingham ash beaksborn patricksborn gunston chilandon women's world nackington bridge bishops born kingston barham and lower hearts all of those to those of us who know them are beautiful green areas with little communities which we pray for this morning and we pray for stephen thomas the area dean of that area and all the clergy who work there and the people who worship that so let's say the prayer which is of course this morning the special prayer for this commemoration of hildegard of bingen most glorious and holy god whose servant hildegard strong in the face was caught up in the vision of your heavenly courts by the breath of your spirit open our eyes to glimpse your glory and our lips to sing your praises with all the angels through jesus christ our lord amen so in whatever language and in whichever way you like to say it we say the prayer our savior 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 amen moment of silence for our own prayers on this morning [Music] [Music] and 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 amen you