[Music] good morning and welcome on this thursday morning the 15th of april as we come to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral to say our morning prayers welcome wherever you are in the world during this week as most of you will know this nation is keeping a week of mourning following the death of his royal highness prince philip and our prayers continue for the queen and royal family as preparations are made for the funeral on saturday at windsor we will bring our own intentions our prayers and our concerns on this day as we come together not only to say our prayers but reflect on the themes and as those of you who are generally part of this garden congregation will know we're looking at the i am sentences of jesus and we'll continue that when we've read our lesson from sin john's gospel but for the moment let's say our prayers together and be welcome here we're thinking of this theme of mourning and as i said yesterday the blue flowers of this week are the important ones and here is a blue cornflower which will again be a lesson to us when we're thinking about the principles of of the forest garden that we've been thinking about during these days as well it's a beautiful blue but it's still really to flower in profusion and there's also around me the the daffodils which are coming almost to the end of their flowering season and uh bugloss a very shining blue which you may pick up around but lots of flowers now blooming and popping out of the ground each morning so let's say our prayers together as we keep not only a theme of mourning but of course a theme of resurrection and easter in this easter season oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise in your resurrection o christ let heaven and earth rejoice hallelujah blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as once you ransomed your people from egypt and led them to freedom in the promised land so now you have delivered us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of your risen son may we the firstfruits of your new creation rejoice in this new day you have made and praise you for your mighty acts 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 say may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever are men our psalm on this 15th morning of the month is psalm 77 we've said how the psalmist goes from one mood to another and encompasses all moods from despair and grief right through to exaltation both individual and in a community exercise and here is a cry to god to begin with but as we said yesterday when we come to our prayers it must be the honest way that we are feeling that we lay before god so that everything about us is in our prayers here's the psalmist in psalm 77 i cry aloud to god i cry aloud to god and he will hear me in the day of my trouble i have sought the lord by night my hand is stretched out and does not tire my soul refuses comfort i think upon god and i groan i ponder and my spirit faints you will not let my eyelids close i am so troubled that i cannot speak i consider the days of old i remember the years long past i commune with my heart in the night my spirit searches for understanding will the lord cast us off forever will he no more show us his favor has his loving mercy clean gone forever has his promise come to an end forevermore has god forgotten to be gracious has he shut up his compassion in displeasure and i said my grief is this that the right hand of the most high has lost its strength i will remember the works of the lord and call to mind your wonders of old time i will meditate on all your works and ponder your mighty deeds your way o god is holy who is so greater god is our god you are the god who worked wonders and declared your power among the peoples with a mighty arm you redeemed your people the children of jacob and joseph the waters saw you oh god the waters saw you and were afraid the depths also were troubled the clouds poured out water the skies thundered your arrows flashed on every side the voice of your thunder was in the whirlwind your lightnings lit up the ground the earth trembled and shook your way was in the sea and your paths in the great waters but your footsteps were not known you led your people like sheep by the hand of moses and aaron a psalm of many moods as we come to our reading from st john's gospel as i said to you i'm taking these i am statements in not the chronological order that they come in the gospel we're going from one to the other and today i'm in john chapter six and beginning now to read at verse 35 of chapter 6. this chapter begins with the feeding of the 5000 with the breaking of the loaves and the sharing of the fishes and the gathering up of the fragments left over and in verse 35 jesus begins to teach about what the true bread is because they've begun to speak about the manner in the wilderness those of you who perhaps were watching uh even song last night will have heard as the first lesson spoke of the gathering of the manner according to the way in which each had need and here jesus begins to think about that time of journeying that way in which god led his people in olden times for him in the days of his ancestors and then he speaks about the way in which god is ready to feed his people now verse 35 of chapter 6 of saint john's gospel jesus said to them i am the bread of life whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst but i said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe all that the father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me i will never cast out for i have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me and this is the will of him who sent me that i should lose nothing of all that he has given me but raise it up on the last day for this is the will of my father that everyone who looks on the sun and believes in him should have eternal life and i will raise them up on the last day but the jews grumbled about jesus because he said i am the bread that came down from heaven they said is not this jesus the son of joseph whose father and mother we know how does he now say i have come down from heaven jesus answered them do not grumble among yourselves no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws them and i will raise them up on the last day it is written in the prophets and they will all be taught by god everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me not that anyone has seen the father except he who is from god he has seen the father truly truly i say to you whoever believes has eternal life i am the bread of life your father's at the manor in the wilderness and they died this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die i am the living bread that came down from heaven if anyone eats of this bread they will live forever and the bread that i will give for the life of the world is my flesh i am the bread of life it takes us into the teaching of jesus which rests again according to the prophets according to the scriptures on all that his ancestors had gone through and they keep questioning but what is holding them back is that jesus is familiar to them we we know him we know joseph we know his his parents we know where he comes from how can he say i came down from heaven and we speak again of the way in which jesus is dealing at different levels with all that is going on and today of course it's it's the bread that he's talking about but it's also about the physicality of his giving himself to us the greek word that's translated the bread that i will give is my own flesh the word flesh is something which gives us a particular image and the word sucks in the greek is really talking about the physical being of each one of us as a human being our finite physical flesh and blood reality and it's that that jesus is prepared to offer for the whole world even to the end which this gospel will take us to and beyond that the gateway to the other dimension will open for those who receive that gift of the spirit and the bread becomes a sign of that but notice he speaks of whoever comes to me will never hunger whoever comes to me will never thirst well that could take us back to a different image of jesus sitting with the women woman of samaria at the well here and we can go back to earlier chapters of saint john's gospel but the i am the ego amy statement is i am the bread of life which is heaven's gift just as moses gave manna in the wilderness but whoever eats of this bread the physicality and the faith in that physicality of jesus which receives the opening of the spiritual gift and in the gate of eternal life which will we shall come to with another of the i am statements but for today we're really in the wheat field and that image is so much a part of is teaching the cornfield the cornflower is called a cornflower because it tends to to grow amongst the wheat fields but all kinds of things find shelter in the wheat fields and that wheat ground becomes the staple diet of the the bread and even the leaven is created from that flour nowadays we tend to use brewer's yeast to take a shortcut but in those days it was 11 from the fermented flour and all of that as when you're making sourdough bread not using yeast but using the wheat itself the essence of the physicality of the wheat which jesus uses as a symbol for himself that wheat field i'm giving you my humanity in all its physical totality he is saying to them with that last statement the bread that i will give is my own flesh and the church has taken that bread and broken it as jesus did it's the last supper but also at the feeding of the five thousand and found that it is enough like the manner to feed the people when shared not only their human feeding but also their mental and their spiritual feeding all this in this image and i've lived in worked in countries where wheat was not the staple crop and found those who were translating the new testament having to use the images of what was a staple crop which could be ground into something which fed people the millet and the maize and and all of those but for us here in england it's always been the wheat and in jesus time the wheat and he uses the image of the grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying and then producing much life as the stalk grows so we give thanks for these present tense i am statements we've been thinking also this week of the planting of the forest garden the meeting and planning that we had i'm actually sitting here in the lower part of the january orchard i'm surrounded by companion planting and the water coming down behind me here and the trees and bushes and short trees all around me i've got here a little sprig of horse on and the hawthorne leaf i remember uh there's even a little sprig of buds here because it will flower beautifully and scent beautifully quite soon but the hawthorne was known to us at school as bread and cheese and we would chew on the leaves going home and the taste of the hawthorn reminds one of of uh early days when out in the the the fields or in hedges one would would bite on things knowing that they were perfectly wholesome but giving enormous amounts of life and shelter to bird life well now we talked about the various layers the great canopies the tallest trees above me here are the the sycamore trees the ash trees and the birch tree a very very high birch tree which has grown fast and then even a mulberry tree growing up high formed the canopy and behind a great bay tree is here which is in leaf all year through massive shelter for all kinds of creatures but the wheat is really down at the level of what we're seeing around us the herbaceous level which takes the sun and takes the rain and grows and also gives enormous protection to small creatures um we have a a a little um family of harvest mice which we keep and fletcher is trying to breed them so that we can introduce them they are the tiniest creatures very difficult i mean it would be impossible for me to have one in my hand and show because they run almost like a ball bearing they are so fast leo wouldn't have a chance they massively fast but at the same time they are tiny one of the smallest mammals in the world and so light that they can climb a wheat stalk and make their home at the top in the wheat field and to bread their family and be gone by the time the wheat is harvested there's an old style of patient waiting which helps them but so many new farming methods have meant a a a damaging of the life of things like harvest mice or or dorm ice which which uh grow or develop here in in the ancient woods it bleed but they are an endangered species and fletcher has gone round with the team noting where the nests are to see how many there are there and arranging for protection protection and salvation are very much part of the way our lord is teaching looking around with compassion on the people and using here the images that they see around them as the sun shines down on them the wheat fields and the the trees and shrubs that are growing as we come down through those levels of the forest garden from the tallest trees to the smaller fruiting trees to the shrubs and jesus talks about the mustard seed to remember which grows into a large shrub and the birds can nest in its shade down to the wheat at this kind of level so we call it herbaceous level before we go on to ground cover and root vegetables and then the things which grow vertically the vines and creeping plants but that kind of companion planting and the realization of the keeping of god's earth is something we can think about when we hear jesus's present tense statement as we nourish ourselves not only with food for our bodies and food for thought and food for our souls as we reach out to that dimension which is infinite which he speaks of in his humanity and offers us in the gift of the spirit all those things but on this day there are images in dates in the past of horror and images also of wonder and all have a human dimension to them april the 15th let's start with an image of wonder in 1452 leonardo da vinci was born on this day he was a polymath should we say and his notebooks are full of mental searchings and imaginings which are well beyond his time exhibitions of his work which we've seen in plenty and also the paintings of leonardo da vinci across the world just speak of genius you remember how we said that um genius dryden spoke of genius as being born that skills can be taught but that kind of genius seem to have been born with him as musical genius in the same way as seems to be born but many skills can be taught but leonardo da vinci was someone who who flowered with human creativity and one thing's not any of the mona lisa but of that great painting of the last supper capturing a moment in the last supper as jesus has broken the bread and it's the moment where peter is saying to the beloved disciple ask him who it is who is about to betray him so there is a sort of sinister thread as well as the bread laid out on the table in that magnificent painting where we could spend much time on leonardo da vinci but if i come through in chronological order also on this day in 1729 the full version of bach barcelona's passion was first performed in thomas's church in leipzig that amazing work setting two full chapters of the passion to music with reflective corrals and many passionate solos and beautiful orchestral work around it at first it was almost a hidden work performed many times in leipzig and it was the young mendelson in the early 19th century who decided he must make this known to the whole world and organized a great performance which was a complete sellout and from that moment onwards the st matthew passion has grown and grown in our affections and become one of the great works of music and also of reflection and explanation of the passion well let me come on to two scenes which are difficult for us to think about really in 1912 on this day the great liner titanic sank in the middle of the atlantic ocean on a completely calm night an icc is striking an iceberg and sinking that huge ship sinking within three hours of striking the iceberg everything that seemed so solid and shall we say so civilized and comforting crossing the atlantic from england and france and ireland over to new york and 400 miles away from newfoundland struck an iceberg and sank and 1500 people were drowned or froze to death in those icy waters and help when it came came to rescue those traumatized in the lifeboats and taken to new york it's an an image which has captured people almost as a prelude in 1912 to what was going to happen to europe in the great war in 1914 that society which it seemed so civilized and strong um catapulted into one of the the great catechisms of the 20th century but titanic became an image which stayed in people's minds and the early 1950s film a night to remember was the first attempt to uh give that in in all its accuracy as far as they could but since then many things have been discovered including the wreck of the titanic itself so we remember that as a time when humanity in its confidence was caused to face something which was perfectly horrendous and it showed the fragility of anything that is created in that way by our human invention so we remember all those who who died there and remember that occasion on this day and then and this even more horrendous uh in 1945 on this day april the 15th british and canadian troops entered the concentration camp at bergen-belsen in lower saxony and what they found there these ordinary troops was a scene of utter horror which challenged all their values and and everything that they they believed and thousands of bodies lay unburied the the the the the smell of all that was apparently just horrendous 60 thousand still were left there uh dying mortally ill many of them uh beyond saving but not beyond tender care starving people packed together suffering with typhus and dysentery and the statements by the british and canadian troops ordinary folk who were mostly conscripts who'd gone to war and facing this one said we hadn't been trained for this and it was so so different to well anything the primary task was to save life and get people fed as with our psalmist we as human beings have to face that kind of scene and our intentions in all our reflections is to reach out for the qualities of the kingdom of heaven and to know that the welfare of one another and the willing someone's good is everything in the ministry of the human christ who offers himself even to death in the fullest way offering not only his teaching and everything he brings from the creator he calls father to share with us but also his own human life down to the very last breath so we give thanks for that image of the cross on this morning but also hold in mind the way in which humanity in leonardo da vinci and jr spark can create wonderful things and feed people with their own creative skills and we're called to do the same in our ordinary way with our creative skills too so let's say our prayers on this april the 15th as we gather together and in our anglican communion today we're praying for the diocese of birmingham in the church of england and for the bishop and people there and here in this diocese of canterbury for archbishop justin for bishop rose of dover for bishop tim at lambeth and today for the parish of walmar and cornillo and for seth cooper and carolyn wood and stephen o'connor in their ministry there walmart a lovely place by the sea where it's lovely to walk and it's castle there too is a wonderful place to go not only as a castle but with the gardens that are there and hopefully all those will be reopened again as the lockdown eases so here we are with the collect for today almighty father you have given your only son to die for our sins and to rise again for our justification grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness that we may always serve you in pureness of living and truth through the merits of your son jesus christ our lord amen so we pray 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 the moment of silence now we make our own prayers and intentions for today the god of peace who brought again from the dead our lord jesus christ that great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight 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'm reminded sitting here in this garden uh part of the gardens of the precincts of one of the private gardens of the generation that our former head gardener of the whole precinct philip went from here to be the head gardener at walmart castle and so those gardens i know are in good hands and we send greetings to him at the at uh this time when things are opening up and the spring is causing things to flower and grow in gardens [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so so so foreign