good morning and welcome to canterbury cathedral i'm robert willis the dean here and i wanted to begin this morning by speaking particularly to those who live in the united kingdom to back the government's push that all those who are in the vulnerable categories for coronavirus covid19 now go forward for vaccination because the evidence that those vaccines are working after yesterday's briefing from the medical authorities and the government statistics being being given is absolutely evident and so that the the perceived risk of of blood clots which have been um itemized is is so tiny compared with the risk of really fatalities from coronavirus that it is essential that everyone goes forward for vaccination and you will be invited if you're in that vulnerable category we see that the risk from pfizer 22 people out of 11 million and 37 out of 17 million that's naught point naught naught naught risk which is lower than normal when vaccines aren't being used and the vaccines themselves are proved not only to save our lives but also to save the lives of those who we are living with because the risk is instantly diminished we can give you percentages of that kind but the essence of all this is to take courage and go forward the 30 percent less likely of passing it on to those you live with and 80 percent less likely i'm talking about vulnerable categories after one jab of having the coronavirus and it proves not only hospitalization fatal these vaccines really are working so please take courage encourage one another and the people i myself have had the astra zenica vaccine i had no ill effects at all but the people there when you go the medical authorities and those who are are vaccinating are very kindly and answer one's questions and and make you feel utterly safe and confident so please do go forward so that this great rollout of vaccines can continue and we ourselves should feel so blessed to be living in a society which has the resources to not only to have investigated these created the vaccines but also have them there for us to save our lives and now can be shared with the whole world it's the way for humankind to go forward well there used to be a a phrase in the second world war digging for victory we are actually jabbing for victory over this pandemic so this morning take courage and go forward if you're invited through and if you're not and you're in a vulnerable category or an age group that is receiving the vaccines now then get in touch and and with the national health authority and put yourself forward for a vaccine and sorry for this announcement at the beginning but it is really important let's say our morning prayers we're here this morning on the 18th of march uh a windyish garden gray sky and uh a hint of rain in the air but not much and the daffodils around us give a luminosity to things a brightness in the background so wherever you are feel welcome to morning prayer and uh bring your own concerns and the concerns of wherever you are in the world because you'll all have different problems completely and so bring those to our morning prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise hear our voice so lord according to your faithful love according to your judgments give us life blessed are you god of compassion and mercy to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of our sin your light breaks forth like the dawn and your healing springs up for deliverance as we rejoice in the gift of your saving help sustain us with your bountiful spirit and open our lips to sing your 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 say 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 18th morning of the month is psalm 91 whoever dwells in the shelter of the most high and abides under the shadow of the almighty shall say to the lord my refuge and my stronghold my god in whom i put my trust for he shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence he shall cover you with his wings and you shall be safe under his feathers his faithfulness shall be your shield and buckler you shall not be afraid of any terror by night nor of the arrow that flies by day of the pestilence that stalks in darkness nor of the sickness that destroys at noonday there are a thousand fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand yet it shall not come near you your eyes have only to behold to see the reward of the wicked because you have made the lord your refuge and the most high your stronghold there shall no evil happen to you neither shall any plague come near your tent for he shall give his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways they shall bear you in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone you shall tread upon the lion and the adder the young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot because they have set their love upon me therefore will i deliver them i will lift them up because they know my name they will call upon me and i will answer them i am with them in trouble i will deliver them and bring them to honor with long life will i satisfy them and show them my salvation so we turn again to the gospel of saint john where we left off yesterday in chapter 10 with jesus in the temple yesterday and today begins at a different point in his ministry but he is again in the temple in jerusalem and we're even told what time of year it is at that time the feast of dedication took place in jerusalem it was winter and jesus was walking in the temple in the colonnade of solomon so the jews gathered around him and said to him how long will you keep us in suspense if you are the christ tell us plainly jesus answered them i told you and you do not believe the works that i do in my father's name bear witness about me but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep my sheep hear my voice and i know them and they follow me i give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand my father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand i and the father are one the jews picked up stones again to stone him jesus answered them i have shown you many good works from the father for which of them are you going to stone me the jews answered him it is not for a good work that we're going to stone you but for blasphemy because you being a man make yourself god [Music] jesus answered them but is it not written in your law i said you are gods if the law calls them gods to whom the word of god came and scripture cannot be broken do you say of him whom the father consecrated and sent into the world you are blaspheming because i said i am the son of god if i am not doing the works of my father then do not believe me but if i do them even though you do not believe me believe the works that you may know and understand that the father is in me and i am in the father and again they sought to arrest him but he escaped from their hands jesus went away again across the jordan to the place where john the baptist had been baptizing at first and there he remained and many came to him now and they said john did no sign but everything that john said about this man was true and many believed in him there it's a passage of interest because it shows jesus once again attending one of the great festivals in the temple this is the festival of hanukkah the lighting of lights on the great menorah a festival of eight days and the menorah had nine lights and from the great central one each day a new light was lit and that festival which happens in winter as it was in winter that the original rededication of the temple took place and that festival is a festival of light giving light to a winter world it took place on 164 bc on november the 21st but it changes uh year by year according to the way the date falls and it's a wonderful winter festival but jesus is showing both his devotion to the temple and his rhythmic life of worship within the context of his own faith the faith of the jewish people in which he had been brought up and to which he was totally faithful he mentions that that the scriptures have the prophecy you are god's when you are filled with the lord's work doing god's work anointed with the vocation to do god's work he's talking about psalm 82 verse 6 and as we've said before the psalms the book of psalms was the hymn book of the second temple and jesus knew those psalms both from synagogue in galilee the regularity of worship there but also the regularity of which we see mary and joseph going up to the temple with him as a as a boy and at the same time jesus attending temple festivals with a regularity his brothers going up to the feast in st john's gospel all those things the temple of focus of worship which jesus called my father's house and zeal for that house another quotation from the psalms would consume him because the honor of that house and the fruitfulness of that house in good works and faithfulness and worship is absolutely central to what he believes but at the same time as he says to the woman at the well in samaria the time will come and he prophesies that when worship will not take place there anymore nor in on mount jerison where the samaritans worshipped but those who worship god can worship shall we say anywhere in spirit and in truth and we think of jesus walking through the villages of galilee and at the end of this lesson removing himself and crossing the jordan to a place that he knew from before and one can imagine him there with the twelve is many of his own people come to him let's stress again as we go through saint john's gospel oftentimes when the evangelist writes the jews when they're confronting him he's meaning the jewish authorities who are protecting the status quo and protecting the interpretation of the law as they see it and also are nervous about this person jesus who is in their mind stirring up the people he's not talking about the totality of the jewish nation because so everyone standing around jesus and all his friends and relations and he himself belonged to that jewish faith and that nation this is a an interesting development of all that is going on for once again one has the conversation between jesus and the jewish authorities and but in the beginning it seems that the people themselves are saying why don't you say plainly that you are the christ and jesus goes back once again to all that he has told them all that he's shared with them and the influence is you're not getting it and the images the i am images i am the light of the world a good image for this time of hanukkah where we find him this morning in the winter festival but also i am the good shepherd i am the door of the sheepfold but also the good shepherd whose voice and whose message and whose gift people recognize and he continues the metaphor in figurative languages and saying you're not understanding because you've not yet become my sheep who are recognizing the voice of the shepherd again an image of the psalmist used over and over again particularly of the anointed one david and from the house of david jesus comes all of those things are there but also the tendency of those who are scared to want to destroy what is scaring them and the picking up stones to destroy and jesus saying why are you stoning me for doing good works and the answers come thick and fast but jesus goes away again as we've seen before in this gospel and in the other gospels he has to hide himself and be at a place where those who seek him can find him but for the moment here again a theme of the fourth gospel his hour has not yet come but it's drawing very near just as for us passion tied and holy week and the way of the cross are drawing very near let's look as we do at the um various things that have happened in the past on this particular day march the 18th the on in 1960 um i'm starting here because the last and you'll see why i'm starting in a moment the last steam locomotive ever to be built by british rail for active service was named on this day in 1960 it was named evening star and had been made at the swindon workshops and it already had a preservation order on it when it was made for the writing was on the wall for steam locomotives now this is you'll see the connection in a moment in 978 king edward the martyr a good and and holy man was murdered at the orders of uh the mother of ethel red the unready who became king after him he was murdered at court castle and the ruins of cough castle endorse it and fletcher can now see where i'm going the ruins of cough castle in dorset are fine castle ruins in a beautiful place but we had the opportunity and it was a wonderful opportunity because the travel agent that we were using at the time of going down to whereum and driving a steam locomotive on the railway a large scale steam locomotive on the railway which is open there which goes up through from where past cough castle it was a beautiful autumn morning and i had the chance of driving it away from whereum and up and uh fletcher was stoking the boiler and the engineer was with us and the driver just showing me what to do but i felt so so wonderful it took me back to to boyhood and outings on the train from bristol to western super mario as the white puffs of steam went past the the window and the green fields around of the autumn were there and i i i had my arm on the outside there was the outside world there and in front of me the the the train line the great engine an amazing experience on the way back uh the uh it was fletcher's turn to to to drive the engine and i think he thought i'd have to stoke the boiler and so did i um so picked up the shovel that the engineer said to me oh no you mustn't do that sir i'll i'll i'll do that so i had a very easy ride back and all the little stations there it's run by a local society who loves steam trains and we had the advantage of doing all of that so those journeys through different parts of england and the blessing of transport and the railways which cross the world and now not steam anymore but nevertheless crossing the world in a way that that one can use and see the countryside going by we remember and it causes us so much to want to travel again and be with friends and that i know because of the way the vaccines are rolling out and the way in which the pandemic is being fought worldwide with encouragement from nation to nation and community to community will eventually unroll for us again into what we might call a new normal and god bless that day when it comes while i'm still in dorset on 1834 six tol puddle martyrs farm workers who were joined together into what nowadays would be called a trade union it was a collective which was going to negotiate fair wages and for that joining together into a collective at that time they were sentenced to seven years of transportation to australia and there was such an outcry about that sentence that it was quashed in two years and they were brought home again and now have been um made into tol puddle marches and if you go through the the village of toll puddle in dorset again down on the the south coast along from here to the west uh you will find a a memorial there to the toll puddle martyrs on this day in 1869 neville chamberlain was born a leader who had been a good leader as chancellor of the exchequer from a political family and and the the nation's health was very much that families concerned through and his concern as a minister but he's remembered now only for believing he could appease a dictator and coming back with his piece of paper after the munich agreement saying this paper means peace in our time but a signature on a page of someone whose word is not to be trusted is of no use at all and uh sadly neville chamberlain is now remembered for that appeasement before the war the inevitable war began in 1922 mahatma gandhi was sentenced to six years imprisonment for say encouraging public disorder once again in two years the sentence was was quashed and and uh gandhi was released it's the way that society moves forward and sometimes there is as with jesus an attempt by the authorities to stop something and then they begin to realize that it's bigger than they are but all of those things we see acted out both in scripture and in present day and in historical dates 1967 the disastrous torrey canyon incident when a huge oil tanker bearing a hundred thousand gallons of crude oil ran onto rocks between land's end in cornwall and the city islands and spilled all that hundred thousand gallons of crude oil into the sea and it then began to infect and and and desecrate the the beaches of england and france right up through the channel and one sees what an eco disaster that kind of thing can be and once again we're back to our responsibility for the planet which is god's gift to us in these days and the looking after and in encouragement of of one another and then um lastly this is also a personal memory in 1988 percy thrower died and percy thrower was one of the nation's television gardeners but i knew him before that because he was the park's superintendent of shrewsbury where i was a curator and the park keeper's house was opposites in chad's church where i was the curator and down below was the great park which was oddly called the quarry but it's lovely green park going down to lime trees along the river seven and in the middle of all that a beautiful garden called the dingle where the seasons would unfold in the flowers you're seeing around us and take one through and percy thrower had a great way of speaking and presenting gardens and and the bbc found him and he became very much mr gardner on the bbc teaching the nation and encouraging them to do creative things with their gardens well all of that on this day when our lesson gives us winter and in areas of the world uh in the southern hemisphere then uh europe in autumn and we're in almost spring 21st of march is that the uh the beginning of spring or that sunday coming and so the year is beginning to change but for this morning we think of each other wherever we are in the world and our fight against this cruel pandemic and also those who so much need encouragement in their own homes and we pray that this because of all the efforts of the world will soon begin to help us open out again let some say our prayers for this morning therefore and on this day we pray for each other totally throughout the world and give encouragement to receive those vaccines which will bring us safety and make us safe for one another and pray for this diocese here in kent and pray for justin our archbishop and for rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambeth and say our own prayers for our communities this morning here's the prayer for today merciful lord absolve your people from their offenses that through your bountiful goodness we may all be delivered from the chains of those sins which by our frailty we have committed grant this heavenly father for jesus christ's sake our blessed lord and savior amen we say the our father together in whatever language you like to use 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 when this morning i suggest we give thanks in our hearts for those in health authorities and brave volunteers who are looking after us at this time christ give you grace to grow in holiness to deny yourself take up your cross daily and follow him and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those who you love and those whom you would pray for today and always are men hello you've arrived leo it's not really all sort of morning it's a windy day for you and a cold one at that you're really better in front of the fire nice to see you here okay little chat oops want something to eat it's a biscuit anyone