good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this saturday the 19th of june you know where i am it's saturday morning i'm sitting under the willow tree in the um a pig pen outside the the shed in which they live now believe it or not the the gate is open onto their dry fields there are food troughs there's water but they like nothing better this area was dry until the rain began two nights ago and came down in torrance the moment the sun begins to shine again it will dry up in no time but this has become mighty playground and we we can't keep them from it so although the food is out there and later on we'll make sure they go and wash their feet on the lovely grass out there for the moment you're seeing a line of piggy bottoms uh here um eating in the mud and having the most wonderful happy time so um be welcome wherever you are and also i would want to say that that we have a pair of of yellow wagtails who we believe are nesting here they are here all the time and they fly backwards and forwards here they've been picking up some of the things which the the insects here that they're insect eaters and because in the hot weather there were many insects and they come down and and and make a meal of them but we've not seen them here before plenty of pied wagtails but not yellow wagtails and the way that like little belly dancers they they bob their tails at all times they are really pretty and elegant birds so they're welcome visitors as are all birds but these are are strangers to us and perhaps that that goes well on this day this is world refugee day and we're thinking of all those who have been forced to leave their homes for reasons of violence or persecution or or seeking resources in other places it's been the story of our humanity the moving of peoples across the world but throughout this morning i shall be taking part in a webinar which cannon emma has arranged and bishop rose of dover and many guests will be taking part as well so after we've said our prayers this morning i'll go off to join that that you can find online and the conversations that will take place will attempt to show like the refugees stories how people coming to a different place can enrich it with aspects of their culture if only those who are there can accept that and sometimes it takes some years for that to happen or if only they will um trust that there are people there who will do that and all these things we shall be exploring together later on in the webinar for this morning let's say our own prayers as we begin this saturday morning 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 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 19th morning of the month is psalm 96 sing to the lord a new song sing to the lord all the earth sing to the lord and bless his name turn out his salvation from day to day declare his glory among the nations and his wonders among all peoples excuse me for great is the lord and greatly to be praised he is more to be feared than all gods for all the gods of the nations are but idols it is the lord who made the heavens honor and majesty are before him power and splendor are in his sanctuary ascribe to the lord you families of the peoples ascribe to the lord honor and strength ascribe to the lord the honor due to his name bring offerings and come into his courts o worship the lord in the beauty of holiness let's the whole earth tremble before him tell it out among the nations that the lord is king he has made the world so firm that it cannot be moved he will judge the peoples with equity let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad let the sea thunder and all that is in it let the fields be joyful and all that is in them let all the trees of the wood shout for joy before the lord for he comes he comes to judge the earth with righteousness he will judge the world and the peoples with his truth well there are several phrases in that psalm which are i'm sure in our knapsack already o worship the lord in the beauty of holiness and also let the fields be joyful and all that is in them let all the trees of the wood shout for joy before the lord i'm sitting under the sheltering drooping in the best sense branches of the weeping willow here and we've learned this week how important that is for shade as the climate was hot very hot through the earlier days of this week we're told that this part of england will get hotter and hotter and so the importance of trees and a green canopy to give shade to people for their own welfare and in order that everything is is kept cooler is an important one but trees do all kinds of things as we know for our planet and we've learned to plant as many trees as we can because large areas of great stone slabs with no vegetation means that there's an enormous amount of heat and our cities can generate that so green trees and green planting is helpful in that way too now we're going to read our lesson from matthew's gospel and i'm taking up exactly where i left off yesterday at the beginning of chapter 18 and we're remembering that jesus and his disciples and a wider community are now on their way to jerusalem the supporting community of men and women around them who will give resources and encouragement as they go along but the beginning of chapter 18 i picture and um i'm taking some help from the gospel of saint mark as well and if you look at the story in that gospel you will find all all kinds of aids to understanding it but we're picturing jesus at a stopping place on the journey a resting place a place for refreshment here we are at the beginning of chapter 18 and i'm reading verses 1 to 11 i'll say something about verse 11 a bit later at that time the disciples came to jesus saying who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven and calling to him a child jesus put the child in the midst of them all and said truly i say to you unless you turn and become like children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven [Music] whoever humbles themselves like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven whoever receives one such child in my name receives me but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin it would be better for that person to have a great millstone fastened round their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea woe to the world for temptations to sin for it is necessary that temptations come but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes so if your hand or your foot causes you to sin cut it off and throw it away it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire and if your eye causes you to sin tear it out and throw it away it is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire see that you do not despise one of these little ones for i tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my father who is in heaven for the son of man came to save the lost that last sentence was verse 11. you may find in your own translations of the scriptures that that verse is left out it's not there in some versions and some scholars think that it was an addition but it's a good reflection on what is going on here they are seeking the lost all of them but jesus is now afraid that a particular temptation is falling on his own disciples for the question which in sin mark's gospel is is added weight to by the way in which this this arguing about greatness and who is the greatest amongst them keeps coming and here's a question which to jesus needs an answer about leadership an answer about role models an answer about whom we learn from and what does jesus do well of course he takes a physical image if he can he always does he takes someone imagine it as i tend to in the in the gospel of saint mark that some of the children of their host where they're staying at that time are playing and jesus calls one of them and places that child in the middle of them all to make his answer to the disciples i hope his exasperation with all of this with them is not showing too large i don't think it will be i think he is seeing this as one of the natural things in the human world that human senses of greatness and leadership and role models quite different from those which the gifts of the kingdom of heaven enable us to see so we see what his answer is there are no words yet he simply beckons to one of the children and says just stand here for a moment and then he says unless you all to the twelve unless you all turn around and become like children you will never even enter the kingdom of heaven for the qualities of spiritual imagination of reaching out of venturing forth and also a vulnerability are all qualities which the anointed one is showing and it's almost as if the child becomes the image of jesus himself amongst them all so that he's caring for that child and that child becomes the image of humanity humanity with all its failings but all its wonderful possibilities and all the wonderful gifts that humanity is capable of embracing and yet the temptation to turn to that which is evil and hurtful is always there it's why the passage becomes so passionate because jesus knows the strengths of those temptations and therefore he also wants to say how dangerous all of this is for humanity and that the gifts of the kingdom of heaven are otherwise and in sin mark all this is coupled with the sense of you are amongst people as those who serve for even the son of man came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many so that i like verse 11 it ends first of all in verse 10 with the image of the direct connection between those who are children those who are childlike in heart and mind and spirit dependent those if you take the translation of the the first beatitude um in the new english bible version uh in its original form how blessed are those who know their need of god and uh that's a paraphrase but he could say how blessed are those who are are childlike in heart and mind and dependency on their heavenly father and he's giving them the image of the child but verse 10 gives us that image of the direct contact with the throne of god their angels look constantly on the face of my heavenly father and then the if you like interpolated verse 11 or the one that was always there scholars differ for the son of man came to save the lost and we take the violence of that passage there about the the the metaphorical uh and and um in for some um actual but but i don't think jesus is advocating that he's abduc he's advocating that we know physically the temptations of our physical members and also that they are less important to us than the reaching out for the gifts of the kingdom of heaven which take us to eternal life when jesus exaggerates and is passionate then we know that not only good is near but danger is near and danger to our own vocations the vocations of the twelve who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven it's an earthly question but it gets a heavenly parable answer with the image of the child but a heavenly answer which is both fierce and judgmental and also real and factual and gentle for them at the end at this pause in their journey well today i only want to to mention um two images as we consider the potential for good or evil in humankind and the welfare and care of all those who are vulnerable not only children but on this world refugee day those who are seeking our help because they have been driven from home they're seeking hospitality and they themselves bring many gifts we know that here in canterbury from the way in which people from different cultures this has stopped during the pandemic but students from different cultures who are in training or in the early years of christian ministry come and they are quite quiet first but then they begin to share their cultures in story and in song and in custom and in the three or four weeks that they're here one notices how they learn to trust each other to listen to each other and to help and encourage one another all of that on this day but two writers and you might think they're strange images the first writer and both of them died on this day the first one died in 1937 on the 19th of june and this is j.m barry who wrote many many plays and many stories and what showed great imaginative qualities i think if i mentioned jm barry to most people and what brings to mind immediately for me is uh peter pan because peter pan which was written really quite early in his career in 1904 and produced first as a play peter pan caught people's imagination of course it's been enhanced by all kinds of interpretations since then and people are still interpreting it so that things like hook and neverland but probably most of all to many of us see walt disney peter pan all of those reinterpret from a dimension 50 years or so later but for the moment let's just think of what barry was giving us he was giving us a neverland on an island which was in the imagination but the nursery the protected nursery where wendy and her two brothers john and michael are being looked after by nana the great newfoundland dog uh and it starts with um it starts with a a a a a time when mr and mrs darling as their surname george and mary darling are going out for the evening and into the room flies peter pan and eventually makes them brave enough to fly with him to neverland and at first they have to be brave that their bodies in the film are imaginations and uh oftentimes this is a gift of the spirit too have to be brave to fly and venture and peter pan is someone who doesn't want to grow up from being a child and they go to the neverland which in the original place is never neverland in the in the play itself and uh there they find symbols of good and symbols of evil and if you want the biggest symbol of evil of course you've got the almost pantomimic figure of captain hook so all of all of that i'm using it as an image because the the desert island where everything is idyllic has always been there in our consciousness but also it is bounded by the seas and of course there's the crocodile too which is the deadly enemy of captain hook and peter pan and captain hook's constant fighting and peter enjoying all of that with captain hook and playing with him so all of these things going on on that desert island but let's think of how in the end they all come home and the desert island hasn't been enough you can take that right back to the beginning of the odyssey if you like for how does that open for us with odysseus on calypso's island and nothing is more beautiful than the way in which homer describes calypso's island beautiful and at the same time where do we find odysseus where he's got um companionship and and and also the the sense of being almost calypso's husband the nymph but but he's got the divine quality of calypso making all things good for him but she is also possessive and wanting to keep him and where do we find him first sitting out on the seashore looking across the sea and yearning for ithaca which has none of these divine delights but is home and that's the most important thing of all home and sometimes we have to journey to make new homes and find acceptance in new homes and most of our countries have been added to by the richness over hundreds of years of other cultures coming to them and this is the the the the thing here as well that constantly people are coming here from other cultures and sharing the riches of that so let's just think then of another author this morning and we're still with desert islands for the moment because this is the day in 1993 when sir william golding the novelist died now william golding was early on in my life a a figure in terms of being aware of his presence because he had been a a teacher at bishop wordsworth's grammar school which is in the close of salisbury cathedral he certainly left by the time i got there but was still writing in a great way 1961 i think he left after 20 years of teaching he'd had his war in the royal navy all these things come into his books but if i say william golding then i might think of the dangers for me of thinking that the building of canterbury cathedral was more important than the vocation of this community and our human pride would get the better of us it's only a sign of the creativity and vocation of this community throughout history and many times in its early years it was destroyed and rebuilt as a home for people to own for we are only stewards of this place and people coming here can make it a home at once for them maybe only for a few hours but they're made to feel they belong in a spiritual sense and as the end of a pilgrimage before the next steps of their journey wherever they're going and william golding i think if i say his name to you um i i tested it with fletcher this morning and the first thing that he said when i said william golding he said lord of the flies yes lord of the flies good morning for the pied not the pie the yellow uh wagtails to be here catching flies around us um lord of the flies of course it's a story and it's a story as is peter pan about children but it's not so much the uh walt disney kind of of story of peter pan where the way there is uh second star to the right and straight until morning if you remember the song the second star to the right shines in the night for you it's much more down to earth than that a group of children have been stranded on a desert island near new guinea after an air crash and um there they are and you will know the book i think because it was voted certainly in the united kingdom as one of the most popular amongst the top three books best remembered from school days and in translations it's read all over the world it talks about what happens when the the guiding hand of those forming society in the best possible way is withdrawn it talks about what is deep inside all of us and i think when the mystic boy simon says perhaps the beast doesn't really exist except inside us that becomes one of the great sentences but the fears that haunt those children on the island turn them into something which they are frightened of themselves and golding said he was exploring group thinking and individuality how we make decisions as groups and how we make them as individuals that he was exploring rational and emotional reactions to situations and the the the kind of confluence of both of them in making decisions and how we choose both as individuals and as groups what is wrong and what is right what is morality if you like what is immorality what builds and encourage is and serves the community itself and ourselves and what doesn't in the first it was wendy john and michael and and the the just that family in this one it it there are different characters there's ralph and there's piggy and there's jack with the choir or the um group that he already marshals because he is the leader of a ready formed group the choir there's simon who's not a leader but a mystic and as one looks at all of those you see what william golding is trying to do and he does it very powerfully and terrifyingly he shows us what good and what evil humankind is capable of and he was writing at that time i think the book book was published in 1954 after his experiences in the second world war between barry's 1904 peter pan and golding's 1954 uh lord of the flies two catechismic conflicts had occurred in which millions had lost their lives millions had become refugees and the whole of the world had been affected by the second of those in a terrible way and the task of rebuilding was still going on he at the time wrote out the story in a a bishop wordsworth school notebook and those notes and the the outlines of the story and then the story are still contained in notebooks he sent them to faber and faber and jan perkins the the the reader at the time there uh read the the story and said no we're not publishing that it's it's rubbish it's dull and it's pointless and luckily uh another reader and editor came to faber and faber at that time charles monty monteith who also read it and believed in it he made some redactions and especially to the character of simon and and took away some of the the spirituality of the book but the mysticism stayed there and golding wanting desperately to have the book published accepted all monty's redactions because he knew monty's believed in the book and the different characters there sam and eric the twins and one notices all kinds of things there and at the end um when uh things have come to a desperate situation and ralph is in fear of his life and simon has been killed and well i won't go on because if you haven't read the story then you'll want to read it and and also it fits well with all that jesus is saying today about the care of those most vulnerable and where you find that and the different qualities that people have which have to be brought out and encouraged one with another when we're in groups all of that and then when the ship arrives the warship arrives so the island is on fire through the conflagration of the boys and the naval officer who suddenly is standing in front of of ralph is looking around wondering how all this could have happened and then tellingly he looks back at his warship and this is after the um second world war has so say ended um but the world is in tatters after that huge conflict and all those things this morning we remember in the context of the little parable the disciples question it seems such an innocent question who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven which means i want to be called the greatest and we find that in other gospels with james and john and jesus answers in the way that we're reflected on and points out to manage his potential for good or evil and what true leadership in the christian community might look like though still it comes in a multitude of individualities and different ways of exercising it just as every one of us is a unique child of our heavenly father but we rejoice in the missing verse 11 the son of man came to save the lost so let's uh say our prayers on this day and give thanks for this little passage in st matthew we're praying today in the anglican communion for the church of north india the united church of north india and everyone there continuing of course to pray for countries like india where the fight against the pandemic is still raging hard and then here in the diocese we're praying with all our parishes for those who are refugees and seeking hospitality and at this time we pray for justin uh archbishop rose bishop of dover as i've said she'll be joining in the webinar this morning which is jointly led by the cathedral and the diocese and canon emma is responsible for our part of it so i look forward to it and we bring whatever prayers you would like to to this day under the willow tree giving it shade and shelter lord you have taught us that all our doings without love are nothing worse send your holy spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love the true bond of peace and of all virtues without which whoever lives is counted dead before you grant this for your only son jesus christ's sake amen so we say each 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 of silence now for your own meditations and prayers [Music] [Music] yes so the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god 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 are men probably one of the most important symbols in canterbury cathedral's life of the coming of refugees is the huguenot chapel in the crypt here which gave shelter to the huguenots in the middle of the 16th century when they fled here from the violence shown against them in france and they still worship here every sunday afternoon in french and if one begins to think also of the jm barry story one is reminded of the fact that people are asked to believe in the middle of that the most important thing to to get you to neverland or to cause tinker bell to to fly um is if you believe in fairies clap your hands and that that mystical thing in 1904 which is carried on in the pantomime of peter pan turns grandparents and parents and children into one audience in clapping their hands in belief well we can widen that because they're all spiritual parables but uh on this day it was good to think of the two desert islands of uh ferry and of golding [Music] so mm-hmm [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] 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