good morning and welcome to the dinery garden in canterbury cathedral on this morning of monday the 23rd of august as we come to say our morning prayers together wherever you are in the world feel welcome and bring your own concerns we're sitting because it's a monday morning in the wildflower meadow which you've seen develop over the months and it is a sea of mostly yellow but if one looks quite carefully there are other colors of wonderful wild flowers just about everywhere and i from here can see not only the rather prevalent yellow of the calendula and one brave sunflower looking towards the east for a sun which isn't showing itself yet but at the same time the blue of cornflowers and eckyum and a letharis here there's shepherd's purse here and good king henry and the lovely daisy-like white and yellow of feverfew the medicinal herb very much so we could go on with lots and lots of the herbs around and you're probably spotting more than i am because uh you'll have a a a closer look with the camera's help this morning but it's good to sit in the garden here after two days of torrential rain which has come again and again just as one thought it had stopped down came the rain again but who are we to complain about rain it's it's dealt harshly with some of the flowers um but most of the treading was done by our turkey darcy who loves to come and visit the hens here and so the flowers will recover from the rain but the pictures that you will have of a world in danger in so many different areas are pictures of desperate storms and flooding thank god uh hurricane henry as it was called when hurricane henry actually made landfall at westerly and rhode island it was by then diminished and although there was winds and rains it wasn't nearly as bad as everything everyone had feared better though to be safe than sorry westerly is a a lovely town that we know well it's a fishing town and there in the united states one can buy in the the attractive streets of westerly um scallops and and and lobsters and and uh oysters and just about everything which is so much bigger and clams which we can't get here in england but floods did very much affect a a town in tennessee and the story of that town is one that really is a tragic one because people died and two toddlers by the the waters were snatched from their father's arms and and uh in the town of waverly um and that is a really tragic story but every human story in the dangers of this world's become a traffic tragic story we can then go to larger canvases of earthquakes in haiti or fires and really there are so many scenarios of fires now across the world some of them like the siberian ones which have a huge acreage but are in fact almost hidden from us because of the the um scarce number of people who live there and yet those forests are burning and that's to the detriment of of our planet and its climate because of the scale of those fires as well as the ones that we seem to know about because of the um journalists and who are able to get there and people themselves able to tell their story and then of course we go to places of uh of war and that takes us instantly to afghanistan and the tragic scenes unfolding there particularly at the airport in kabul i need really say no more because you will have all those stories unfolding in front of you as we do here and we can only hold all these situations in our prayers as we say our prayers on this monday morning it's a working day and you will hear the noise of work all around us and the workmen are preparing the various houses of the school for the return of the school which isn't far off now august is hasting on but i'm bound to say that the atmosphere the temperature here this morning could be a morning early in october because it's it's uh really very cool for an august day shall we say so let's say our prayers and bring your own uh ideas and intentions as we do so o 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 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 23rd morning of the month is psalm 112 alleluia blessed are those who fear the lord and have great delight in his commandments their descendants will be mighty in the land a generation of the faithful that will be blessed wealths and riches will be in their house and their righteousness endures forever light shines in the darkness for the upright gracious and full of compassion are the righteous it goes well with those who are generous in lending and order their affairs with justice for they will never be shaken the righteous will be held in everlasting remembrance they will not be afraid of any evil tidings their heart is steadfast trusting in the lord their heart is sustained and will not fear until they see the downfall of their foes they have given freely to the poor their righteousness stands forever their head will be exalted with honor the wicked shall see it and be angry they shall gnash their teeth in despair for the desire of the wicked shall perish we're returning on this monday morning after our brief excursion into the book of revelation for sunday yesterday to the book of genesis but we're going to a chapter which almost reminds us of the primeval history before the story of noah and there's much in this almost collection of stories which comes from the legends which must have been told by the families in exile and also living in the promised land later about the nations around them and that huge area of dead sea and the surround there where no life seems to thrive and this is something about the story of the five cities of the plain that sodom and gomorrah and admira and zibohim and so are those cities are shall we say slated for destruction because of the wickedness of those who dwell there it's a a thing which all societies have and deep and and and dark which which are almost uh frighten the children and i remember stories that my parents used to tell particularly about houses around them that were bombed but to me they were frightening places and sometimes there was little said about what went on in them but the legends grew up and the stories were told and accentuated as they were told over the years but we returned to the point where the three angels men or the voice of the lord god have been with abraham and he has received them with i'm going to call it rural hospitality which is a very very strict code in the whole catalogue of ancient cultures and i've been so blessed by that so many times in staying with families church families in different areas far far away from any large cities or even townships with roads and much electricity and a different kind of care of guests and culture and hospitality pertains and a lot of this today is about that is also today i'm only going to read bits of chapter 19 because it's a story which helps us understand the way in which the whole um essence of the book of genesis goes forward but we have to remember certain things and that is the the absolute binding command on hospitality in those cultures and that was lived out by abraham yesterday it will be also given by lot today but at the same time we see how the whole catalog of capacity for uh physical temptations and and human desires and all of that is is set out in a way that also is set out side by side and will come also to the statements of our own our lord when he is teaching later so let's read parts of chapter 19 and hear what is happening abraham on saturday morning had that dialogue with god looking down and pleading for the cities of the plain which he from a high point could see only in the distance but he knew of the way in which people there behaved and their absolute not accounting the lord of heaven and earth in his mind and yet he's pleading for them he returns to his place the lord went his way when he had finished speaking to abraham and abraham returned to his place i'm going to read verses 1 to 3 and 12 to 29 of chapter 19. the two angels came to sodom in the evening and lot was sitting in the gate of sodom when lot saw them he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said my lords please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet then you may rise up early and go on your way they said no we will spend the night in the town square but lot pressed them strongly so they turned aside to him and entered his house and he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread and they ate we then have a a story of the way in which the citizens of sodom just one of the towns of the the five cities of the plain transgress that that absolute commandment of of gracious hospitality and having had that and and and a lot has locked his door which is something you can do in cities you certainly can't do that in rural cultures uh in in the the ways in which uh the the um tucles in south sudan that i've i've enjoyed sleeping in in a little ring around the campfire there there are no doors it's it's it's actually a place where people are welcomed in we're now in a city and the door can be locked but as morning dawned the angels urged lot saying up take your wife and your two daughters who are here lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city but lot lingered so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand the lord being merciful to him and they brought him out and set him outside the city and as they brought them out one of the men said escape for your life do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley escape to the hills lest you be swept away and lot said to them oh no my lords behold your servant has found favor in your sight and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life but i cannot escape to the hills lest the disaster overtake me and i die behold this city is near enough to flee to and it is a little one let me escape there is it not a little one and my life will be saved the man said to him behold i grant you this favor also that i will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken escape there quickly for i can do nothing till you arrive there therefore the name of that city was called zoar the sun had risen on the earth when lot came to zoar then the lord rained on sodom and gomorrah sulfur and fire from the lord out of heaven and he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground but lot's wife behind him looked back and became a pillar of salt and abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the lord and he looked down towards sodom and gomorrah and towards all the land of the valley and he looked and behold the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace so it was that when god destroyed the cities of the valley god remembered abraham and sent lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which lot had lived we have to remember that throughout the whole of the scriptures the sense of spiritual sin and idolatry is at the absolute high point of all temptations and evils and in order to show that very often the prophets use illustrations of physical temptations of nations prostituting themselves to other gods or playing the prostitute gender non-specific playing the prostitute on high hills as they worship other gods very often no explanations are given they are seen in the same canvas and the five cities of the plain at that time sodom gamora admira zebo him and zoar are slated in the legends of the old uh community in which jesus grew up to have been guilty of all those sins the whole canvas of human sins spiritual and fleshly physical and here is abraham from a distance watching the smoke rise having pleaded for the life of the cities but also the angels have taken pity on his nephew lot and have gone down to rescue him but told him very strictly to flee and a favor is granted that one of the cities the smallest of them zoar which is um mapped to be south of the dead sea and just near to moab and the moabite peoples that little city is spared for the sake of lot the one man and really also for the sake of abraham i want to look at the strangeness of all this because as you will remember three men oblique angels came to abraham and sarah at their tent under the oak at mamrie as we read on friday morning and abraham hurried as lot does hurried to give water first to wash their feet and then to prepare as good a meal as they possibly can give as the guests holy word in in those cultures the guests are asked to rest in the shade of the oak of mammary three and from those three the voice of the lord god gives the promise to abraham and to sarah and sarah laughs at that promise in the same way i didn't read that passage that the sons in law to be of lot's daughter laugh when lots say we must flee the city now we must go now they joke about it and the sense of sarah laughing because the promise seemed so large to her quite different from the way in which the son-in-laws of lot laugh and the angels or the voice of the lord god it goes backwards and forwards for they bring the voice of the lord god say no but you did laugh and we we had that story and then abraham went out to to talk to the lord god and meanwhile how many angels go on two where is the third the only other voice speaking is the lord god himself speaking to abraham i can't answer this question for you i pose it as interesting that when the orthodox icon of rublef showed the three then one of those stays clearly with abraham and becomes the voice of the lord god himself the angel of the lord it's such a difficult thing to think how god shows himself or makes himself known but abraham clearly converses in heart and mind with god or even allowed in his own way and the two angels go on and their task is a task of judgment but of mercy on the little town of zoa for the sake of lot but the command is don't look back and of course we're now getting all these images which jesus himself he knew all these stories of course he was brought up in them and the the sense of the horror of the the dead area around the dead sea where no life grew was very much no doubt with all the children as they were being taught and there they are um and jesus often alludes to this kind of story so that when he talks about heavy judgment he alludes to sodom and gomorrah and the cities of the plain admira and zeboim and zoa but zohar was spared though the looking back caused lot's wife who's never given a name to become part of that that lifeless landscape the pillar of salt well those images are powerful there are stained glass windows showing images of that sort but at the same time jesus refers to it when he talks of the cities that refuse his gift god's gift of himself in the anointed one when he says woe to you bethsaida woe to and woe to you capernaum for it will be more bearable for the land of sodom and gomorrah on the day of judgment than for you these places have not recognized god's moment when it came and as i've said in the great catalogue of the sins of humankind it's that which counts as the worst temptation and the worst fall and when our lord is talking to the the apostles and when they go out on their mission uh of the shaking the dust of their feet when the gift is not accepted and all of that becomes something which can itself be seen in these legends now we could go on and on because this actually is a great canvas of the human capacity which paul himself sees in city after city but the gift is being offered and uh also the the way in which uh the physicality of everything in the spirituality of everything is blended in this it's a sense of also take a new beginning don't look back take a new beginning and see every new day as a gift in that way but don't think for a moment that one sin is so much worse than another it's not for us to judge the quantity and quality of sins in this way and chapter 19 is a very strange chapter it's like an insert we say goodbye at the end of it a lot and go back to abraham well let's um think of one or two of the things which we would want to to date this morning and i would say that first of all i wanted to mention that on the 23rd of august in 1628 george villiers duke of buckingham was assassinated in portsmouth by one of his own soldiers a man called fenton who had a huge grievance against the duke and i would say rightly so because uh villiers had been the great favorite of king james the first and thence on to king charles the first in the first three years of of his reign and had been loaded with favors and at that point he had asked he wanted to be a a great military commander and had gone to la rochelle with the great army and in those expeditions had lost so many men in desperate situations not only from the war but also of the diseases they caught in la rochelle at that time as a commander he was a disaster but nevertheless he is a great colorful figure in english history at that time and uh died at the assassin's knife on this day at the age of 35 in the greyhound inn in portsmouth and i fair to say that england rejoiced at that time for his popularity was was not at all great his unpopularity was massive so many families had lost men but his gardener is the one i want to think about john trodeskanthi elder who was brought up here in canterbury is one of the great gardeners of english history and one of our school houses here which is being prepared for the new school term tradescant is uh named after him because he planned for the wootton family the gardens of saint augustine's abbey having worked at hatfield house for the cecil family and later for the duke of buckingham at new hall and went with him to la rochelle but all the time tradescant was collecting plants and flowers from different areas and traveled far his son was just the same i get most of my knowledge of tradescan to begin with from that lovely book by philippa gregory earthly joys and it it shows the the way in which buckingham uh was really rather spoiled and that made him completely the wrong person to be in leadership at first cecil who is william cecil who is the first employer of tridescantin one of the great statesmen of elizabethan england as well as his son robert cecil they show the statecraft of someone with integrity buckingham absolute other side of the coin but meanwhile ordinary life in tradescant who was brought up here his son went to school here the second gardener john trudescant jr and at the moment we think of them as we are surrounded by so many plants and flowers which they brought back from foreign lands but at the same time i think of them because just outside the gates of lambeth palace there is a church where both of them are buried and that church now not serving as a church anymore is a museum for gardeners and outside the wonderful tomb of both tradescans so we give thanks for trudescant after whom the the plant tradiscansha is named on this particular morning and if you want to read about him then philippa gregory's novel earthly joys is a good way to get to know john trodeska and senior just as her second novel about them which i think is called virgin earth and takes place mostly in the united states during the english civil war and is of the life of the son john tredescant who himself began to collect plants in the same way and bring them back here we could say much more about them the other person i wanted to mention this morning because we were doing so much music yesterday and i said how enjoyable it was to play debussy on the piano but there's an even more enjoyable thing on the piano and that is to accompany someone else because then you're doing something in total creative companionship and that's a marvelous thing for anyone who plays an instrument and the piano is of course above all else a wonderful instrument for accompaniment and so i want to mention this morning that on the 23rd of august 1960 oscar hammerstein ii died and he is the lyrics writer the story writer of all those musicals which the songs of which we sing around the piano when guests are here i think most of the musical scores of oscar hammerstein and richard rogers are somewhere near the grand piano because so many people know the songs from oklahoma oh what a beautiful morning um carousel you'll never walk alone south pacific the king and i and the sound of music all of those you can still get people to sing and so after dinner very often those scores come out and the words are amazingly clever and meaningful and sometimes rather like the you'll never walk alone when you walk through a storm hold your head up high and don't be afraid of the dark all of that is something which is a gift of creativity to others but for anyone joining in the creative act of singing or accompanying another or playing with another then one knows one's humanity is enriched by the creativity the right kind of creativity for each of us all very different on the way through but hearing how we can be creative one for another and today there may be ways in which as we always say um your own creativity will come to the fore for the encouragement of another that the last uh song that uh oscar hammerstein wrote just before he himself died was edelweiss which was then inserted in the middle of rehearsals and for the sound of music when it was being rehearsed on broadway on stage long before the film was made he never lived to see that but that that little song edelweiss is something which uh is easy to sing for people just around the piano right let's say our prayers on this particular day with these grand themes but pictures of the earth in all its dangerous situations in our minds from news bulletins today we are praying for the diocese of egba in the church of nigeria in the lagos province and then we pray for justin our archbishop and for in this diocese bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambeth but today the parishes of kingstown creekside and high downs the priest there steve lilly crap and the assistant curate caroline turvey in their ministry there so let's say the collect for today the new colleague we began to use yesterday for the 12th sunday after trinity bring your own prayers and intentions as we say this almighty and everlasting god you were always more ready to hear than we to pray and to give more than either we desire or deserve pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy for giving us those things of which our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask but through the merits and mediation of jesus christ your son our lord so we say each in our own language the prayer our lord has 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 now for your own prayers um aah 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 amen sound of the chicken's egg song is punctuating the morning now and it's a joyful sound