good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of friday the 4th of february as we come to say our morning prayers yesterday we were under the shade of the ancient new trees today we've come out into the sunshine and although it's a blustery day it's a lovely day with clouds in a blue sky and a sun rising and shining through the the white of the silver birches here which are still leafless of course but we've come out really to exalt in new beginnings and as you will see there's not only the trees in in with no leaf there's also much flowering going on at a lower level and great color beginning to burst out of the earth we've come on a day in our reflections in one samuel of new beginnings and we shall find ourselves in those very fields of bethlehem where ruth was gleaning when we were doing the book of ruth just a few weeks ago so there's a sense both of continuity looking back and also of looking around us at signs of spring and new beginnings and golden colors beginning to burst out of the ground in great profusion and because of the landscape being leafless around or just the green leaves of the the evergreens then the colours look even more fresh and startling and the golds of the daffodils are even more wonderful we've got all kinds of things around us that we can comment on here but let's really rejoice on this day of new beginnings in our lesson this morning let's begin our prayers on this day as we do so we think of those in particular dangerous dangerous in particularly dangerous situations throughout the world and our hearts go out to the people affected by the desperate mudslides in quito in ecuador and there is a risk of more because of the record rains that have fallen so there will be threats like that climatic threats throughout the world but let's concentrate on ecuador this morning and bring your own present intentions as we begin our prayers on this day oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the day star dawn in our hearts and triumph over the shades of night 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 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 o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this fourth morning of the month is psalm 19. heavens are telling the glory of god and the firmament proclaims his handiwork one day pours out its song to another and one night unfolds knowledge to another they have neither speech nor language and their voices are not heard yet their sound has gone out into all lands and their words to the ends of the world in them has he set a tabernacle for the sun that comes forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber and rejoices as a champion to run its course it goes forth from the end of the heavens and runs to the very end again and there is nothing hidden from its heat the law of the lord is perfect reviving the soul the testimony of the lord is sure and gives wisdom to the simple the statutes of the lord are right and rejoice the heart the commandment of the lord is pure and gives light to the eyes the fear of the lord is clean and endures forever the judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether more to be desired are they than gold more than much fine gold sweeter also than honey dripping from the honeycomb by them also is your servant taught and in keeping them there is great reward who can tell how often they offend oh cleanse me from my secret faults keep your servant also from presumptuous sins lest they get dominion over me so shall i be undefiled and innocent of great offence let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight o lord my strength and my redeemer it's a wonderful song for a morning like this when the sun is rejoicing like a champion to run its course and rising in the east but notice the illustrations that are used about the law of the lord and the the purity of of everything about it more to be desired than gold much fine gold and gold is the color of these springtime flowers the daffodils springing up around us giving that sense of fineness and sweeter also than honey dripping from the honeycomb on a day like this the bees from the hives will be coming out and beginning their work and finding that there are flowers now with pollen in for them and the spring can begin just gently to unfold we mustn't count our chickens before they're hatched because it's only early february but nevertheless it's hard not to be joyful with these lovely flowers around us this morning in the garden here so we're turning to the first book of samuel and we're finding ourselves this morning very much in a new beginning we're at chapter 16 of one samuel and i'm beginning to read at verse one and uh it's a a nice thing that here begins the story of david and i'm sitting quite close here to a davidia tree which is leafless at the moment but will itself begin to put on leaves and flowers in all sorts of ways later in the year the lord said to samuel how long will you grieve over saul since i have rejected him from being king over israel fill your horn with oil and go i will send you to justly the bestiamite for i have provided for myself a king among his sons and samuel said how can i go if saul hears this he will kill me and the lord said take a heifer with you and say i have come to sacrifice to the lord and invite jesse to the sacrifice and i will show you what you shall do and you shall anoint for me him whom i declare to you samuel did what the lord commanded and came to bethlehem the elders of the city came to meet him trembling and said do you come peaceably and samuel said peaceably i have come to sacrifice to the lord consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice and he consecrated jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice when they came samuel looked on eliab and thought surely the lord's anointed is before him [Music] but the lord said to samuel do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature because i have rejected him for the lord sees not as man sees man sees look looks on the outward appearance but the lord looks on the heart then jesse called abinadab and made him pass before samuel and he said neither has the lord chosen this one jesse made sharma pass by and samuel said neither has the lord chosen this one and jesse made seven of his sons pass before samuel and samuel said to jesse the lord has not chosen these then samuel said to jesse are all your sons here and jesse said there remains yet the youngest but behold he is shepherding the sheep and samuel said to jesse send and get him for we will not sit down until he comes here and he sent and brought him in now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome and the lord said arise anoint him for this is the one then samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers and the spirit of the lord rushed upon david from that day forward and samuel rose up and went to rama it's a really lovely story but no one there really knows what's happening samuel is anointing david and that might be the most ordinary thing for a seer to do there's no words of kingship spoken and at the same time notice how the story very in a sort of reticence leaves the name david until the very last sentence this is the one says samuel but we're held in a sort of suspense as in all good stories and the name david then comes forward well let's think about that with a great deal of joy because we've actually come first and foremost to bethlehem which is a place of new beginnings and we've not been there since we were with ruth there in the fields and boaz now as it happens if you read the genealogy of saint matthew chasing the line of david in the house of judah now remember saul is from the tribe of benjamin but this is now the house of judah in bethlehem and we read in that genealogy that boaz and ruse our grandfather and grandmother to jesse so these are the very fields that in which ruth was gleaning when we were thinking of that new beginning and bethlehem is set before us once again and as we think of the new beginning we see samuel judging first of all as god says with a human eye don't look on his stature or his height or anything like that human beings judge one another by physical appearance in this way but the lord looks on the heart it's one of those great sentences that rings through scripture the lord looks on the heart seven fine sons of jesse pass by samuel is puzzled well he's none of these is there anyone else and the one who is called is the one that jesse himself has discounted as being too young to be bothering the sears notice with here's an important visit from samuel and they're all a bit alarmed why the sears should come from rama to be with them there and samuel has to say don't be afraid i've simply come to offer a sacrifice give you a holy moment here in bethlehem but bring your sons before me and before we sit down we'll have them here and then he has to ask aren't there any more and jesse replies yes but he's keeping the sheep he's too young he's out keeping the sheep it's quite another significant image of the shepherd king and we shall come across significant signs and images of david as the shepherd king as we go through but there are other images that we shall come to one of them tomorrow but for the moment the boy enters and as we'll see in some of the stories ahead the brothers sort of discount him he's the youngest and and they themselves clearly are older and and now are young men and this is just a boy but he's brought in from shepherding the flock something which goes with david as and is anointed we of course know that the anointing of david is an anointing of kingship and here begins the royal line of david you can take the genealogy back from that but when jesus is given that title as the anointed one it's the the blind man at jericho shouting son of david have mercy on me son of david have mercy on me it's one of those titles which is given to the person with the the messiah ship and pastoring becomes also a sign of the shepherding of the flock it's why uh bishops and and and heads of monasteries carry a crozier with the shepherd's staff which is what that is it's their task to look after the flock in all dangers and to to know their sheep and these signs come all the way through from this moment is there anyone else yes but he's beneath your notice he's shepherding the sheep yet we find that the most lovely image and it's an image which is used throughout the gospel of the shepherd looking after the sheep protecting them from wolves and being the door of the sheepfold all those things that come to our mind the moment we say that but for the moment let's let's stay with david for david himself doesn't know what's happening uh as we shall see he has some way to go yet before any of this flowers into something which is giving him kingship over the the people of israel we're nowhere near that yet this is a moment of the shoot springing and those jesse trees in stained glass that you find in the windows of the cathedral with the line of david going through a jessie tree and in like a tree of life but but showing from jesse that royal line coming begins just here in this little story 1-13 when samuel is feeling afraid himself that if saul finds out what he's doing he'll have him killed it's the way of kings to try to get rid of dangerous things and in the same way um samuel knowing that he has to obey the lord and making a human mistake right at the beginning which is comforting to us that even the seer can make mistakes and thinking this must be the man when he sees a liab simply looking at him no humanity looks at the outward appearance the lord looks on the heart let's take those images as we look today at a particularly um fine date i think it's the 4th of february and on the 4th of february 1906 in the town of breslau as it was called then it's now rockloff in poland but then it was in germany are dietrich bonhoeffer the lutheran pastor and theologian and let's say it right at the beginning christian martyr was born and we remember him mostly right at the end so that 4th of february 1906 he was born and on the 9th of april 1945 so near the end of the conflict that the tragedy seems more poignant he was by personal orders of hitler hanged in the concentration camp where he was being kept but let's look at his vocation before we look at what he's left us in images because he very definitely is in the book of modern martyrs in our our chapel of of martyrs of the 20th century and also you can find him on the west end of westminster abbey that as one of those that are held up as someone that we look to well on this day he was born the 4th of february 1906 and he began almost at once to be um a theologian heart and soul a theologian he trained in a very academic way in the lutheran church this was he trained at various universities studying at tubingen and then even going across to the union theological seminary in new york for his training and there was a certain amount of of german theological exactitude in him at that time for when he went to the the union theological seminary he said after a few weeks there there is no theology here it wasn't strict enough for him uh academic theology was everything and every every dot and uh and and and uh little mark of of theology was that he wouldn't have said that later that's that wasn't to be his way but it was then as a young man fervent for systematic and and academic theology he taught systematic theology in the university of berlin in 1931 and was passionate also for ecumenism he wanted barriers broken down but his theology was was just there and then he wasn't yet ordained he waited to the age of 25 to be ordained but he began in that ecumenism to concentrate much more on the teaching of christ as he found it revealed in the gospel it became much more a sense of the revelation of god himself in the humanity of jesus which opened up the scriptures for him and that sense of everything being systematic died away when he began to enjoy the people that he found himself with and rather like but when we were talking about simone vale having a a real passion to be with those that she felt were disempowered so he himself was like that in the united states he became passionate about african-american spiritual singing and he was a a musical person and enjoyed those songs so that as we think of simone vale's great revelation one of her mystic experience the first of hearing the portuguese villagers sing their hymns and yet they they were disempowered people and they were singing joyfully and the heavens were open above them and she wanted them to have the freedom of being empowered well bonhoeffer felt that about so many but he didn't know that this was to be his life work for when he came back to germany and was ordained he spotted at once and had a huge burden on himself spotted it once the danger of what was happening with the arrival of hitler in 1933 as the chancellor of germany he wasn't afraid in any way two days after hitler was installed as chancellor bonhoeffer made a broadcast on german radio attacking this cult of the fiora and the broadcast was cut in the middle already he was marked by the nazi authorities they'd hardly come into power but he was there now it wasn't as if he stayed in germany he he then went across he came across here and was the pastor to german lutherans in sydney and enjoyed the communal life there but he knew it deep inside himself that he must go back for it was his own people that were beginning to suffer from everything that was being fed to them by the nazi propaganda machine and the workings of the gestapo and from the very beginning he had a passion for the protection of those most endangered by the gestapo's activities and by hitler's desire to liquidate people and bonhoeffer took that as his own burden he began to teach and prepare people for ordination within the church but he found himself at odds with the section of the german lutheran church and because they seemed to be conforming to what was going on and his huge desire was that they shouldn't they must stand however dangerous it was there were no excuses that could be given they had to stand up and be seen to protect the flock shepherding the sheep and that meant no distinction between those who were whatever kind of attacks they were getting and being singled out by the nazi machine and particularly of course the jews themselves and bonhoeffer held the flame up for them and at finkenwald which was the great um place where he was teaching and giving to seminarians the the teaching that they needed then uh he had great great joy but so much of that had to be almost kept secret the fact that he was training new pastors for the confessing church of which he was a founding member he was still the lutheran church but it was a section that was going to stand up publicly to nazism and of course it was physically a very dangerous thing to be doing and yet from those those days at finkenwald comes great joy of a christian community standing up for those things that they they should have been standing up for and yet they were placing themselves in massive danger at that time he wrote two books which have become very very famous indeed one of them is called the cost of discipleship a study on the sermon on the mount as i said it was very much a transformation from the systematic theologian to the one who saw the revelation of the vocation he must have in the shepherding of the sheep as being a pastor and yet it was in the end to cost him his own life so that the cost of discipleship was everything and the study on the sermon on the mount was fixing himself on the humanity of jesus and beginning to to to get a very different kind of theological understanding of what god wanted from him he spoke about costly grace meaning what it cost to have that grace for someone to be brave at this time and at the same time there is the huge joy of of everything he was feeling with those in training for ordination in great danger to themselves in this confessing church and we find that in his book another of the books called life together i'm going to have an umbrella i think it's the rain has come on rather we started in quite fine weather but anyway this will keep my papers dry it's not so much me it's the the ink will run otherwise um so he managed even to get to the united states again but after two weeks in safety that he knew this wasn't where he should be that for him to stand up and be brave meant he had to be standing up and being brave as the shepherd in the dangerous place and the cost of discipleship meant that and the looking to jesus meant that and life together meant discipleship and pastoring and being the one who looked after the sheep back with the the davidic thing well it was inevitable in the end however secret things were it was inevitable that he would be arrested and eventually the gestapo caught up with him and in 1943 he was imprisoned at first in the military prison and then from there his letters and papers were easily transported out by guards who were friendly to him one even offered in some way to try to help him escape but no escape wasn't in his mind he knew where he had to be he knew what his vocation was and he knew where the shepherd must be amongst the sheep and at whatever cost then looking after them and those letters and papers from prison which have come out tell a different kind of story with his theology developing he'd made friends with the bishop of chichester george bell who was dean here in 1924 to 1929 and that's through their ecumenical activity and some of those letters went to him but just friends all over the world when they were when they were smuggled out but in the end he was placed in a concentration camp and after the july plot to assassinate hitler with which hitler knew that bonhoeffer was implicated in the end and evidence came forward from that on april the 4th in 1945 he was led from his uh cell at the concentration camp to be hanged on a sunday morning immediately after he had celebrated his last sunday service he knew exactly what was going to happen and as he was led away he asked another prisoner an english prisoner called pain best to remember him to bishop george bell a verbal message if best survived to and he did to remember him to george bell and that message came back and caused bell to be one of the first to go to germany to after the war to say to the german people walking about that um it wasn't you it was nazism that we were fighting but as bonhoeffer walked out the words this is the end but for me the beginning of life the cost and the reward from the great shepherd of all the sheep of discipleship we remember him on this day the 4th of february the joyful day of his birth in 1906 but we remember also the day of his heavenly birthday into eternal life in the hands of the the great shepherd and as that we remember that was on april the 4th in the year 1945 so uh we give the april the 9th sorry 1945. my paper's getting inky uh and uh we give great thanks for his life and for his vibrant theology and showing us not only the cost of discipleship but in so many ways revealing the humanity of jesus and the sense of jesus himself as the shepherd of the flock guarding the sheep from spiritual wickedness and dangers and being there amongst the fold as bonhoeffer was so let's say our prayers on this particular day uh of rain now but the gold daffodils are still at my feet and the davidia tree reminding us of the vocation of david whose heart god had looked on and found him worthy to be the shepherd king himself and we are praying today in the anglican communion for the diocese of capita in the province of the episcopal church of south sudan the eastern ecuatoria province and at the same time we pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover for emma bishop at lambus and as we continue to pray for the churches around margate at this time we pray for the harvest new anglican church there the position of the pastor there at the moment is vacant and say we pray for those choosing a new one so we use the ordinary connect for this ordinary day when uh the sense of of spring is around us and the earth here is being refreshed by fairly gentle rain here's the quality for today bring your own prayers and intentions and thanksgivings as we say it together almighty god by whose grace alone we are accepted and called to your service strengthen us by your holy spirit and make us worthy of our calling through jesus christ our lord amen so each in our own way and in our own language 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 are men moment now for reflection of your own [Music] yes [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] oh watching me [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] one of the things which the nazi authorities attempted to ban from churches were the books of the old testament being read and the confessing church of bonhoeffer was adamant that the totality of scripture must be read and this morning at matins in the cathedral when we were reading the office for a friday morning an ordinary friday morning i was reminded of that as a verse from the prophet hosea chapter 6 jumped out at me and it was for loyalty is my desire and not sacrifice and the knowledge of god rather than burnt offerings it reminded me of the tensions between saul and samuel but also it seemed a good verse on this particular day to be thinking of with bonhoeffer who was a champion of all the scriptures and hearing the voice of god but also god revealing himself in the humanity of jesus 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 are men i think we've just about beaten the rain it's coming down again and the clouds are gathering so the earth will be glad of it