good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral i'm sitting in the orchard and it's early in the morning and matins in the cathedral is a bit later on saturday mornings at 9 30. so we thought we would do something a bit different this morning and take you through our morning chores with the the girls to start with the uh the the four girl pigs and then we're taking them on to the the higher part of the garden it's called the dean's walk where they'll have a lovely day it is the most beautiful day here with no wind whatever a totally blue sky and flowers all around me and the girls first of all can have a drink in the little streamlit here and also enjoy an early breakfast but we're going to do this in three parts so we'll move on to the boys and then move on to the newly born little piglets and we're trying to do that this morning so please enjoy the sequence as we go through and this is the the last day that we'll be with st john's gospel because tomorrow palm sunday begins holy week and the lessons will be special but we'll return to st john for the three hours on good friday afternoon between 12 and 3 which is i've said before we'll put on in six different sections which you can watch all the way through or you can enjoy from time to time and come back to with your reflections but for this morning amongst the daffodils to start with here in the orchard and with the four friends that we're used to so often on a saturday morning i'll begin our morning prayers wherever you are in the world bring your own concerns and enjoy all that is going on oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise let your ways be known upon earth your saving power among the nations blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief your only son was lifted up that he might draw the whole world to himself may we walk this day in the way of the cross and always be ready to share its weight declaring your love for all the world 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 this morning which is a pilgrim psalm is psalm 122. i was glad when they said to me let us go to the house of the lord and now our feet are standing standing within your gates o jerusalem jerusalem built as a city that is at unity in itself did that the tribes go up the tribes of the lord as is decreed for israel to give thanks to the name of the lord for there are set the thrones of judgment the thrones of the house of david o pray for the peace of jerusalem may they prosper who love you peace be within your walls and tranquility within your palaces for my kindred and companions sake i will pray that peace be with you for the sake of the house of the lord our god i will seek to do you good a pilgrim sound and as i said this morning we are journeying ourselves so we'll simply take uh our four friends here up to their place for the day in the the higher part of the dean's walk where they can enjoy a lovely sunny morning amongst the green grass there and then after that we'll rejoin you with the boys and they're part of the garden as well so here we are at the second part of our rhythmic morning chores on this lovely morning and this time it's winston and the three boys who are having their breakfast in the background you can see the chickens having theirs but we'll at this point in our worship reads the section from saint john's gospel that we've come to on this last morning of reading st john i'm starting at the second half of verse 36 which is exactly where we left off yesterday when jesus had said these things he departed and hid himself from them though he had done so many signs before them they still knit did not believe him so that the words spoken by the prophet isaiah might be fulfilled lord who has believed what they heard from us and to whom has the arm of the lord been revealed therefore they could not believe for again isaiah said he has blinded their eyes and heartened their heart lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn and i would heal them isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him nevertheless many even of the authorities believed in him but for fear of the pharisees they did not confess it so that they would not be put out of the synagogue for they loved the glory that comes from human beings judgment more than the glory that comes from god and jesus cried out and said whoever believes in me believes not in me but in the one who sent me and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me i have come into the world of light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness if anyone hears my words and does not keep them i do not judge them for i did not come to judge the world but to save the world the one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge the word that i have spoken will judge that person on the last day for i have not spoken on my own authority but the father who sent me has himself given me a commandment what to say and what to speak and i know that his commandment is eternal life what i say therefore i say as the father has told me the depths of the vocation of jesus as he steals himself for this last stage of his vocation and the feast of the passover is about to begin he has to be in jerusalem he was used to going up and down to jerusalem with his parents as we see from st luke's gospel and it's in luke's gospel that we'll be following on the mornings of holy week itself from monday till thursday tomorrow we shall be with saint mark as palm sunday gives us the story of the entry into jerusalem and perhaps this is the time to think that we would long in our modern way of being for every detail of that holy week to have been given to us almost in a biographical form but we have what we need and we have what we need from four different witnesses there are several words for witnesses used in the greek of the four gospels one of them is the one from which we derive our word martyr a martyr is a witness and that word is meaning witness in the original greek there's another which means eyewitness the one who actually saw what was going on but luke who says he has collected together those things which eyewitnesses saw gives us in his gospel what he thinks we need mark gives us what he thinks we need matthew gives us what he thinks we need and this fourth gospel the gospel of saint john also gives us what we need for our life now so many of those words light and life and word and also knowledge for the word to know what jesus is actually giving is crucial in all of this and the depth of that word to know is a lifetime study well all of these things are as i keep saying and very much so in the gospel of saint john present tense the most important words spoken again and again by jesus i am and then a little uh image to help us afterwards i am the light of the world i am the true vine i am the way the truth and the life and in the last chapter we read in uh bethany on the road to bethany to martha i am the resurrection and the life and then the question do you believe that and what has been given to martha is enough for her believe that her beliefs as with the blind man who begins to see not just in a physical way but do you believe yes lord i believe all of those things coming to us now means that our modern thirst for every detail in biography is very much a modern thing the evangelists wouldn't have actually thought of themselves as writing biographies they would have thought of themselves and the reason for the evangelist writing the last gospel is given to us right at the end of saint john this has been written these things have been written so that you may believe and have life and once again the present tense jesus i am the way the truth and the life every word a lifetime's study of reflection not only of this world in all its creative wonder but of what the blue sky above me above me and all its perfect emptiness this morning represents that which is beyond figuratively represents but in reality represents a dimension which the evangelists the witnesses are trying to give us and we through this week will have a wonderful kaleidoscope of different pictures from the four witnesses who've used other witnesses to give us what they believe we shall need about jesus who is the way the truth and the life who is the resurrection and who has come to do the will of the one who sent him they get alarmed when the wind has just closed the door behind me and say hey scatter it's the way of creation even big winston gets alarmed when he hears a sudden noise one has to be so gentle with creatures in the way you approach them and that perhaps is also a lesson for one another the way in which we are gentle with each other and with each other's feelings and able to listen to one another and understand at a deep level during this time of worldwide pandemic becomes immensely important so we're going to move on now to our next port of call the third and last one and we'll rejoin you there and think about some dates of today and say our prayers together so here we are at our last port of call and uh we've come to uh clemmy and the piglets who are now exactly a week old we came here last saturday morning just an hour or two after they were born and now they're being quite brave and the way they're walking around with their mother but she's been the most wonderful mother and while we're here let's uh just think what this day march the 27th has meant in years gone by and i really only want to deal with two big dates and that's in 1625 king james the first died now people are remembered for many different things but oftentimes there's one big thing that a a person is remembered for and to them it might be the most surprising thing but king james is well known across the world for the way in which he he was a scholar himself caused an english translation of the whole bible from the best sources that could be found by scholars at the time to be written it was published in 1611 during his reign and at the beginning of what we used to call the authorized version of the scriptures there is a a very sort of lauditory passage saying how wonderful the blessings of the reign of king james the first was to the english people in fact the gift of the 1611 what is now so commonly called throughout the world the king james version of the bible was an immense not only gift to english-speaking peoples but also a great resource and influence on the english language on creativity and on the way that people thought for centuries to come probably for should we say three and a half centuries certainly when i was growing up it was that bible that my father and mother would see as the bible that they knew the words of that bible were well known to many and people carried it with them carried it to war carried it to danger gave it to one another it's special occasions and here were the words of life in that language of the early 17th century it was a time of beautiful english language it was the age of shakespeare and so many others writing in beautiful ways but of course translations were then produced through which because the sources became more accurate was seen to be in terms of accuracy better translations but there are always two kinds of translations of the bible the ones that promote absolute accuracy and those who almost by paraphrasing give meaning in translation which they believe to be missing by simple accurate translation and we could go through all the translations of the scriptures and see which way a translation veered towards accuracy or through paraphrasing something tried to help us in our understanding but then of course you're into the area where the person who's trying to help you understand is putting a great deal of their own interpretation into things and we have to leave that argument hanging in the air so oftentimes one turns to one translation or another and then go back to the original language and think well that does explain things there i remember translators working with the completely different languages and dialects in south sudan shall we say and there were things in the gospels which people actually wouldn't even have known what they were and because it was a completely different area of the world so things which were in use in the same way become important nevertheless we give great thanks for the king james bible which is at the root of translations and knowledge of so much of our english understanding of the bible and has given us so many sayings that we use when we don't know really were using it from there because it became so embedded in the writings of english literature and even in the language of the people through hearing it over and over and over again so on this day when we remember the death of king james the first there are many things one could say about the jacobean age but i would want to say thank god for that translation of the english bible from people of varying degrees of what we call these days ecclesiastical tradition ecclesial tradition of puritans who were scholars were sitting with what they were called armenians in those days uh and king james just got them all together high and low and broad and and all the varieties of ecclesial tradition and said there is one thing you can do and that is translate the holy scriptures and they did and in 1611 that wonderful translation the king james bible was produced and still lies as a foundation stone for modern scholarship to look back on and say well this is how they did it how should we do it now we're planning a translation of our own and there have been many many since and then i wanted to say and this is very much a part of english life but again the gift was carried right across the the world and across all the continents and i wanted to talk about the way in which on this day uh in 1963 richard beeching proposed a devastating report on the british railway system and it was published and he was working on a principle of everything must make a profit rather than everything must be a public service and what she suggested was a savage abolition of a great amount of the railway system across the united kingdom so that at the end of his second report two thousand one hundred and twenty eight railway stations were closed and sixty seven thousand seven hundred jobs were lost on the railways and some of those lines have since been reopened but many of them were lost to the public transport system because of course the the lines were torn up and built over and and so on and so forth it was a great fact of transport life from the 19th century onwards that every area was covered and and that was taken across the world and and europe in the same way and right across the the the the russian continent and people building railways and every little st little village seemed to have its railway station where people could walk in the station master living there and literature written about it perhaps the most famous one is the railway children with perk supporter uh and the station master rather more severe um but it was a fact of life like the parish church or like the doctor all appearing in the in the railway children in that way but that sense of a station being almost within walking distance from everyone went at this time with the sense that everything must actually be able to make a profit and so everything was thrown onto the roads and we know what problems that caused too so let's remember that the the map of england changed because of that report and that will be the case throughout the world where in some places internal flights took the distances as well but the railways still hold a place in our heart but also we give thanks for them allowing people to travel to one another which we can't do at the moment of course during this pandemic so those two things i just remember that on this day last year 2020 then the british prime minister boris johnson was tested positive for the coronavirus and and suffered very gravely from it but it actually brought home to the nation exactly the seriousness of what we were facing and we've gone on since and now we know so much so much more about it and we pray for one another right across the world on this day for protection from the pandemic and give thanks for those who look after our health and welfare discover and also administer vaccines and look forward to a future where we can come together again and travel again so let's say our prayers on this morning and we're praying this morning in the anglican communion for the diocese of barbados in the church in the province of the west indies and we pray also for archbishop justin who's coming here tomorrow to begin holy week with us and then we also pray for rose bishop of dover and tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parish of bethesda with high holden and woodchurch and for sue rose in her ministry as the parish priest and those who support her in that community and the ministry there so let's say for the last time this uh collect for the fifth sunday of lent which this passion-tied week now ending and a new colic will be given to us tomorrow for palm sunday here is today bring your own prayers and intentions on this day most merciful god who by the death and resurrection of your son jesus christ delivered and saved the world grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross we may triumph in the power of his victory through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language the prayer that jesus 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 image of silence now as we say our own prayers on this particular morning [Music] christ crucify draw you to himself to find in him a sure ground for faith the firm's support for hope and the assurance of sins forgiven and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you would love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen so now you're looking at the real breakfast for the piglets they've watched their mother have some of her breakfast they shall have some more later on but there's a very contented noise now and you see what a wonderful mother clemmy is to her nine little piglets