good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of friday the 16th of july as we come to say our morning prayers together be welcome wherever you are in the world it's a morning when we are saying prayers and standing beside in heart and mind the people of germany and belgium who have suffered so much by the terrible flooding they've lost so much those who've lost their lives and those who have lost so many possessions those who are still missing and and those who are attempting to bring relief and help at this time we keep them in our prayers as we worship this morning together i'm sitting here in the herb garden of the daenery garden and it's a time of year when early summer flowers are beginning to take over from spring flowers so we find the beautiful madonna lilies at their best at this time and once again there's a fragrance all around me of these beautiful lilies beside them our agapanses still waiting to come out but in the distance you can probably see things like hollyhock and and and roses as well are blooming beautifully so one sees the seasons passing one by one and we remember our lesson from the fig tree yesterday as we come to our lesson still in saint matthew today but let's begin our prayers first and say our psalm and then we'll come to the lesson in saint matthew oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise visit us with your salvation and sustain us with your gracious spirit blessed are you sovereign god creator of all to you be glory and praise forever you founded the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands in the fullness of time you made us in your image and in these last days you have spoken to us in your son jesus christ the word made flesh as we rejoice in the gift of your presence among us let the light of your love always shine in our hearts your spirit ever renew our lives and your praises ever be on our lips 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 the 16th morning of the month is psalm 80. here o shepherd of israel you that led joseph like a flock shine forth you that are enthroned upon the cherubim before ephraim benjamin and manasseh stir up your mighty strengths and come to our salvation turn us again o god show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved o lord god of hosts how long will you be angry at your people's prayer you feed them with the bread of tears you give them abundance of tears to drink you have made us the derision of our neighbors and our enemies laugh us to scorn turn us again o god of hosts show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved you brought a vine out of egypt you drove out the nations and planted it you made room around it and when it had taken root it filled the land the hills were covered with its shadow and the cedars of god by its boughs it stretched out its branches to the sea and its tendrils to the river why then have you broken down its wall so that all that who pass by pluck off its grapes the wild boar out of the wood tears it off and all the insects of the field devour it turn again oh god of hosts look down from heaven and behold cherish this vine which your right hand has planted and the branch that you made so strong for yourself let those who burnt it with fire who cut it down perish at the rebuke of your countenance let your hand be upon the man at your right hand the son of man you made so strong for yourself and so will we not go back from you give us life and we shall call upon your name turn us again o lord god of hosts show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved so we turn to the passage from saint matthew which continues from yesterday we've come to chapter 25 and chapter 25 is composed of three long parables two of them are particular to matthew but the middle one is told in a a really matthew kind of way and so it's a very special chapter inserted by matthew here at this time when jesus is approaching the last section of his life as the gospels tell it before we we we come to the crucifixion itself and resurrection we don't know where this is taking place it could be in the temple courtyard matthew has just gathered together these stories and as with all jesus stories i believe they must have been told many times because he would have spoken to different groups at different times tell them in different ways but with so many of the pictures and parables no doubt when he sees something that reminds him of something then he would tell that story well matthew and a lot of these stories would have been handed on by oral tradition as well has gathered three together and we shall read just the first of these today chapter 25 and going up to verse 13. jesus said then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom five of them were foolish and five were wise for when the foolish took their lamps they took no oil with them but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps as the bridegroom was delayed they all became drowsy and slept but at midnight there was a cry here is the bridegroom come out to meet him then all those maidens rose and trimmed their lamps and the foolish said to the wise give us some of your oil for our lamps are going out but the wise answered saying since there will not be enough for us and for you go rather to the dealers and and buy for yourselves and while they were going to buy the bridegroom came and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast and the door was shut afterwards the other maidens came also saying lord lord open to us but he answered truly i say to you i do not know you watch therefore for you know neither the day nor the hour the lesson is of course in the last sentence watch we've had that before watch because you no idea when the master will return in one of the stories even yesterday and one could take that as the theme but i think i'd rather widen that the sense of the bridegroom being amongst people in something like a festive celebration is something very much in the uh metaphors of jesus the pictures of jesus as he draws and of course there is the actual story of him as a wedding guest yesterday we had a funeral of one of our people graham sinclair i talked about yesterday morning and we continue to pray for charlotte and toby and charlie his sons today there's a wedding and it's a big wedding uh it's the first wedding really that we've had in choir and some of the uh norwich cathedral team are coming to be with us because george who will be the bridegroom who was one of our choristers uh and uh educated here at st edmunds uh is at the moment the sub-organist of norwich cathedral and so he and his bride kirsty are bringing musical friends from our sister cathedral church at norwich and we pray for today and the placenta there uh cannon aidan platten is coming along as well to preach a sermon and as i marry the bride and groom it's very much so we say uh a wedding uniting two communities the community of canterbury cathedral the community of norwich cathedral a time of intense celebration and we shall look forward to that and all the music it brings and the celebration of the sense of coming to be guests of the bridegroom and the bride back to the sense of cana of galilee which is mentioned of course in the preface to the the wedding service because one is telling people exactly what they should should should be as friends of the bride and groom they should be legal witnesses they should be there to say their prayers and there to share in the bridegroom and bride's joy on this day and as we say that we are following jesus in these things we can point to him as a wedding guest but he himself at other times likens himself to the bridegroom and it's right to feast when people are with him there will be time for fasting when the bridegroom is no longer there says jesus to the pharisees so here we are with an image here of a wedding feast and a delay because times are not in the hands of those who are prepared and they're prepared to give light and welcome and ten of them ten maidens go to be there with their lamps to welcome the bridegroom now oil has a finite quantity and as the hours go on towards midnight then the lamps begin to need more oil and so this is also a parable about resources it's a parable so it's taking the things of earth and the lessons we learn here to be furnishing our spiritual life and the way that we respond to what we are given in the gift of the holy spirit and we've always talked as a garden congregation about a spiritual knapsack and we'll talk more about that later on in our reflection but this is all about being provided with the right resources for the right time but we don't know when that time is so i suppose the the real lesson from this is be prepared for it's no good when the time runs out to say well i could have done that or can you help me now because on this particular occasion they stand alone with resources because the resources of others are being used in a particular way which becomes necessary and so the the lesson is in being prepared to have all that ready for the time when we might be alone in a particular situation and not have the right resources in our minds and our knapsacks to counter everything that's happening to us and also to give us daily strengths as we go on how many times have we said this and i'll come back to ways in which we use towards the end of our reflection but let's take those lessons to start with that we are called but times are not given to us so the time is always now and the time is to be ready now but be prepared for what now might mean in the days the weeks the years ahead when we find ourselves in a particular situation and the resource is not there in preparing of course we can help one another we can give each other resources even please god when we're at a time when we need help there will be human health well at hand but there there will come times when we're thrown back onto our own resources suddenly and it's important that our knapsack our spiritual knapsack is well equipped with things that we know with things that we can remember which things which are so intuitive to us because of the regularity of all that we do and all that we do to to gather the fragrance and the memories and the way in which others have taught us as we go on in that way one can be prepared the oil is ready there to resource and fill up we carry it with us and as we do that we're able then to share those resources with others and replenish our own resources but when the crisis time comes then this parable is saying you need to be prepared for that moment and the time might come when it's too late to furnish that so let's think of other things which have happened as we embrace that wonderful picture of all the bridesmaids having a a little nap because the bridegroom is so long coming but when they wake only five of the ten have the wherewithal to light up the path of the bridegroom and celebrate this is a day on the 16th of july when um pope ellison iii died in 1216 he had been pope for 18 years we've mentioned him recently with regard to archbishop stephen langton who had known innocent the third well before he became pope when they were both learners together gathering their own resources of scholarship and experience and and and spiritual things in the rhythm of worship to go on to be langton archbishop of canterbury but rather more than that in the way in which he he stuck it out with the state against him and at the same time was brought back and then led the barons into pressuring king john to seal that magna carta well it was innocent who insisted it had to be langton innocent was one of the most powerful of medieval popes and claimed an authority over all the kings of christendom so that when john finally submitted after england to be placed under interdict by innocent then he acknowledged innocent as his feudal overlord it's not that part of innocent i want to think of today but he is an historic figure of huge importance nevertheless he presided over a christendom where several figures of enormous importance to our spiritual development were beginning to find their own vocations let's start with saint francis it's in francis of assisi who had realized that he had a special vocation and wanted to get rid of extraneous possessions and also a reliance on those and you remember he because his father was so utterly against any vocation he had he stripped himself naked and the the the bishop um closed him with his his his his own uh cope and that that is that's a a famous medieval painting by so many uh and then began a different life without saying i'm relying on this i'm relying on god and what he's told me to do and the message was to build up his church so with 11 of his followers looking in the middle of rome i should think fairly shabby they went to rome i managed to have an uh an interview with uh an audience with innocent the third you can imagine the the scene of the most powerful pope in christendom and then the little poverello saint francis with the 11 that he had taken with him seeking permission to form an order and as in so many matters of state innocent listen for a while and then the chamberlain or whoever took them away and and uh that was that and and probably things would have just been put on the back burner and you'll remember how and this is well attested uh innocent that night had a dream and in it she saw the lateran basilica the cathedral church of rome which of course from the eternal city uh could have have a claim to be the mother church of all christendom the cathedral church not in peter's basilica but it's in john lateran in that dream the the the john lateran cathedral was there in front of innocent and beginning to topple and suddenly the little figure of the poverello whom he'd seen earlier on stepped forward and held it up and kept it standing and when innocent woke up he sent immediately to find francis and the 11 wherever they were in rome and they were brought back and given permission to form that order which based itself of course in assisi this is a day also when we remember the um birth of claire of assisi who was born on the 16th of july 1194. it's an interesting juxtaposition because claire herself from a rich family was one of francis's earliest and best supporters and in the end she too angered her family by leaving and getting rid of her rich robes and cutting her hair and asking francis if she could form an order too now the franciscan brothers had a wandering ministry it spread of course across the world with great power but it would have been very difficult for that ministry at that time to in that way to have been performed by women it's been a very dangerous ministry and francis therefore established a community he himself was the guardian spirit of of all of that until claire herself was made in abbess and they settled eventually at san damiano which was the church that francis had mistakenly thought he had to build up before he embraced the vocation that it was the whole church that he needed to build up but all the way through supported by the prayers of the poor class and their life as a witness in that way it was claire who ministered to him when he was dying and we give thanks on this day for claire's vocation and francis vocation within the compass of that that reign of of innocent the third and beyond it well beyond it and even to now and as we do so we think also of uh it's not a special date for him but dominic at the same time the order of preachers he and some of his companions in traveling through southern france found that these discussions were making no headway against a particular heresy and what dominic realized was that the cistercians in their history had now become too laden with possessions and complications and it wanted something as ascetic as the heresy that those who espoused the heresy that they were countering and this was the birth of the dominican order the order of preachers which again at the lateran council the fourth latter and council began to get its permission and and uh innocent was presiding in in 1215 over that began to get its permissions to be an order of that sort see how to out of of things which first of all look so powerful openly the medieval papacy was never as powerful again in in in that way but from it sprang beautiful things with a fragrance all of their own and we give so much thanks for that it's the way that time works and the resources that we have from those orders through history of the franciscans and the dominicans and the poor claires of the franciscans the order of sinclair are so manifold excuse me so manifold that that we we can't help give thanks for them daily well now let's go back to this spiritual knapsack and i want to mention here another anniversary heller bellock who was a poet and writer who died on the 16th of july in 1953 was famous for his couplets how many times have i said to all of you that a couplet is so easy to remember because of its rhythm and its rhyme and uh it's much easier to think of sin luke chapter two in the words while shepherds watch their flocks by night all seated on the ground the glory of the angel of the lord came down and glory shone around simply because it's inverse it's much easier to remember oh god our help in ages past our hope for years to come than to to have the whole of psalm 19 not in metrical form in your mind and couplets like that are just wonderful um bellock said this is not a couplet it's it's a quote of his that i like when i am dead i hope it may be said his sins were scarlet but his books were red and he enjoyed little little couplets like that which stayed in the mind i remember at school the music master setting us a coverage it only happened once i know it's more than a couple of the poem of of bellocs four lines of bellocs to write as a song and uh when uh mr hilton i had said this he read it uh in his mind and and i i sort of only heard it the once and it's been in my mind ever since i can't even remember what you and i set it to but it was one of bellock's cautionary verses this time not to children we'll come on to those but to adults lord finchley tried to mend the electric light himself it struck him dead and serve him right it is the business of the wealthy man to give employment to the artisan versus from from belloc and because it's in four lines and has a certain rhyme to it one remembers but the one that sticks with me most of all which i heard first from the pulpit of sherban abbey from a former headmistress of gerbin school for girls dame diana rita harris who went on to be chairman of cms she was preaching at someone's funeral and she was talking about a former head mr house mistress of the school and i was sitting listening to the sermon and she quoted a little poem about the gift of courtesy because she wanted to use this word courtesy for the house mistress she was talking about and the the the words are of courtesy it's so much less than courage of heart or holiness yet in my walks it seems to me that the grace of god is in courtesy and when i looked i looked it up and found that it was by hilar bellock and it was written in the guest book of storington priory who gave him lunch one day the day was the 17th of may 1908 or 17th of may as my birthday and i thought ah that said that's rather an interesting thing there are more verses in that and starrington priory was thanked by a set of verses but the first four lines raise up the quality of courtesy now it's not any particular quality that i'm wanting to talk about this morning it's the way in which we can remember things we'll be wanting to remember different things because we're different kinds of people we have different gifts but our knapsack must be well stocked that's the absolute message of this particular parable and other things can remind us just like the madonna lilies with their wonderful scent this morning they can remind us and give fragrance but if one puts them into our prayers and then into our knapsack they're ready when we want them and no books are at hand and there's no way that we're not in a church we're not being given prayers to say we're on our own with our own resources and this becomes hugely important now we we we can't let hillary bella go without a little bit of matilda because his cautionary tales for children are probably the most famous thing about him and you'll remember uh and i'm not really great at all um but it begins i love these lines matilda told such dreadful lies it made one gasp and stretch one's eyes her aunt who from her earliest youth had kept a strict regard for truth attempted to believe matilda the effort very nearly killed her and it goes on and you remember how matilda calls the fire brigade as a hoax and then in the end everyone gets used to the fact that matilda tells lies and when the house does catch fire and she shouts out of the window we get that couplet for every time she shouted fire they only answered little liar it's a long poem so i won't read it this morning but it's it's a lovely set of couplets on the way through and i'm only using the couplets to remind you how useful they are to remember things and keep them stocked in your mind but you'll choose your own bouquet of special things to put in your own spiritual knapsack because we are unique in these things but don't forget to collect them while there's still time let's say our prayers on this particular morning we are praying this morning in the anglican communion for the diocese of daijon in the anglican church of korea we're praying for justin our archbishop as always and for rose bishop of dover and tim bishop at lambeth and here today we begin to pray for the parishes all around the town of maidstone collected together in the area deanery of maidstone mason is the county town of kent and uh we will be praying for that when we come to the day we pray for the parish of mason itself but today it's the whole area of maidstone dinner in many parishes as we do them day by day but we do pray for the area dean chris lavender and the lay chair of that area deanery diane enfield on this day so let's say the collect for this week and it's an easy one to remember and god you have prepared for those who love you such good things as pass our understanding pour into our hearts such love toward you that we loving you above all things may obtain your promises which exceed all that we can desire through jesus christ our lord amen so each in our own language now we say 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 for ever and ever are men a little bit of silence now for our own prayers so three 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 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 will pray for today and always are men