good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of monday the 14th of june as we come together to say our morning prayers it's meadow monday and here we are in the walled garden where the green grass and all the little flowers have sprung up in leaf so also of course have big thistles which we've been dealing with bit by bit and are making some headway with them but some wonderful things are happening because fletcher has been growing on species of butterflies in the house and now the peacocks and the the lesser tortoiseshell have been released onto the nettles here under a net so that they might go on as caterpillars and then beyond to butterflies and the net will preserve them from birds eating them on the nettles the great thing is that butterflies tend when they they um develop to come back to lay their eggs on the plants that they were born on and so that we're hoping will be that they will come back onto nettles which we'll we'll have to keep control of the nettles um and have good feeding ground when they're laying their eggs later we have in the house now painted lady ones coming through they're the tiny caterpillars and we've had some trouble with them as great escape artists but they will be brought out here as well and we'll put some clips on at the end to show you the releasing of the the uh earlier ones the peacocks and the lesser tortoise shell into the enclosure with the nettles at the end of this particular morning prayer but for the moment i wanted to concentrate on something entirely other and it's a wonderful story which involves you all on this monday morning the garden congregation you will remember uh a few months ago that we told how our friend richard dyer had been driving his tractor outside wingham country market and two huge tipper lorries uh one trying to overtake sandwiched him and his tractor in between them and there was little hope for richard's survival to start with and he was put into uh i think an induced coma for a month or so and his wife annette we kept in touch with and said prayers and i asked for your prayers as well for richard and we've we've kept our prayers going in that way well yesterday uh a telephone call came when i was in the cathedral and fletcher answered it and it was annette richard's wife and she said uh fletcher i i wanted to tell you about richard and at that point the phone went dead because the connection was broken and fresher didn't know what kind of news he was going to hear and then she got back in touch and said sorry you probably were wondering what i was going to say having said richard and our line went richard came home yesterday it's only two or three weeks since the hospital said it was quite likely he'd be a year in hospital and actually could have had a paralysis which made him completely immobile for the rest of his life in fact what has happened in the last three weeks has been miraculous and more so than that because then richard came on to the phone to fletcher he'd come home the day before and he had even managed to go up to bed by himself and uh he was wanting very very fervently to say thank you to all of you for your prayers as a garden congregation he is convinced that they turned the corner for him well that's a really lovely gift for all of us and we pray for richard and annette on this morning and give thanks with them for richard's recovery so far there's a way to go yet but this is wonderful news so let's say our prayers with that news in our mind actually believing in the power of prayer to effect god's will and put ourselves in partnership with him for our healing for this world and for the next let's begin our prayers 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 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 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 our men our son this morning on this 14th morning of the month is psalm 71 in you o lord do i seek refuge let me never be put to shame in your righteousness deliver me and set me free incline your ear to me and save me before me a stronghold to which i may ever resort send out to save me for you are my rock and my fortress deliver me my god from the hand of the wicked from the grasp of the evil doer and the oppressor for you are my hope o lord god my confidence even from my youth upon you have i leaned from my birth when you drew me from my mother's womb my praise shall be always of you but as for me i will hope continually and will praise you more and more my mouth shall tell of your righteousness and salvation all the day long for i know no end of the telling i will begin with the mighty works of the lord god i will recall your righteousness yours alone o god you have taught me since i was young and to this day i tell of your wonderful works forsake me not oh god when i am old and grey-headed till i make known your deeds to the next generation and your power to all that are to come your righteousness oh god reaches to the heavens in the great things you have done who is like you o god what troubles and adversities you have shown me and yet you will turn and refresh me and bring me from the deep of the earth again increase my honor turn again and comfort me therefore will i praise you upon the harp for your faithfulness o my god i will sing to you with a liar o holy one of israel my lips will sing out as i play to you and so will my soul which you have redeemed my tongue also will tell of your righteousness all the day long for they shall be shamed and disgraced who sought to do me evil it is the most wonderful psalm 71 it's about god's presence with us throughout life from the womb until we've become old and grey-headed and it's about our duty in love to proclaim his works and give the good news within the context of his creation until the end of our days so let us now turn to our reading in saint matthew's gospel and the reading this morning is the beginning of chapter 16 of matthew's gospel you remember the last sentence of chapter 15 which we read before sunday interrupted it with a special lesson yesterday was after sending away the crowds jesus got into the boat and went to the region of magadan and the pharisees and sadducees came and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven jesus answered them when it is evening you say it will be fair weather for the sky is red and in the morning it will be stormy today for the sky is red and threatening you know how to interpret the appearance of the sky but you cannot interpret the signs of the times an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign but no sign will be given to it except the sign of jonah and so jesus left them and departed when the disciples reached the other side they had forgotten to bring any bread jesus said to them watch and beware of the leaven of the pharisees and sadducees and the disciples began discussing it among themselves saying we brought no bread but jesus aware of this said oh you of little faith why are you disgusting among yourselves the fact that you have no bread do you not yet perceive do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand and how many baskets you gathered or the seven loaves for the four thousand and how many baskets you gathered how is it that you fail to understand that i did not speak about bread beware of the leaven of the pharisees and sadducees then the disciples understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread but of the teaching of the pharisees and sadducees it's a story which mark tells in a sequence which possibly makes more sense but there are some lovely elements to this one in matthew and one of them is our consciousness whether we do it or not or know it or not of weather forecasting and this is very much so in england of weather forecasting and making comments about the weather and it is very true that if there is a particular type of red sky at night then inside we know that the morning will dawn fair if the sky in the morning is red and jesus adds the word and threatening we know within ourselves that the day will be stormy it's probably the first thing that i do and at this time of the year is very early on um looking out of the bedroom window the bedroom here face to the east and the sunrise through the year swings around and at the moment we're nearly at the longest day so it's gone right over to one extreme and i know as the months proceed where the sun will rise now deep golden sunsets sunrises rather of of the um especially the spring and the autumn are wonderful to behold and the deepest gold comes in the coldest weather that's not a red sky that's threatening we know what a red sky that's threatening is now i'm saying all these things because when we glory in the sunset in the same way and here if you go to whitstable you can see it setting across the confluence of the rivers whale and of the medway and the thames so it looks as though it's setting even though we're on the east of england setting into the sea and those things delight us but i'm saying that because jesus turns on the scribes and pharisees who are asking for a sign and his message is there are plentiful signs given by the creator and plentiful signs in your ancient scriptures which you should be reading in the same way as you do the signs of the weather which you yourselves know and you're careful about that but you're not so careful about reading the signs of god reading and he might say to them reading the violence which is brewing in jerusalem at that time between different factions and we saw some of it yesterday in the reading from the acts of the apostles with the people who have pledged themselves not to eat food until they have killed paul but they're in the middle of factions political factions and those who are wanting violence to get rid of the roman occupying army all those things read the signs says jesus and read your scriptures and read your psalms and he says this to the disciples always but the interesting thing here with this weather forecast i can never forget my father who whenever he telephoned uh his first thing was what's the weather like with you that was fascinating to him weather forecasting but season for forecasting jesus simply points them to jonah and it said why in the gospel of mark here he simply says the only sign that will be given to you is the sign of jonah and then we are back in the boat and they land and the disciples are worried by what jesus says next because it seems to them as they talk to one another because they've forgotten to bring any bread it seems to them that you cross with them for that and there's a sort of atmosphere that's another thing that causes you to remember an atmosphere and you think oh yeah there's this atmosphere isn't very good and they said to each other it's because we brought no bread and then jesus adds to the atmosphere with that word that we've used before in matthew it's a wonderful greek word means as it's translated in the king james bible oh ye of little face remember he said it to peter on the waters when peter reaches out his hand and says lord save me and the first thing is oligopistay the singular evocative here's a here's a plural vocative spoken to the disciples oh you have little faith with peter oh man of little faith and jesus really you can add if you want a note of exasperation you're not hearing what i'm saying and think to yourselves the the the kind of expressions that you would use um i could think that i might say oh for goodness sake or oh here's a lovely color i've come down um oh for goodness sake and and the sort of irritation that that actually is is there because they're not hearing him they're not listening and he is trying to give them a wonderful truth about the way that they should be reading the signs and not listening to those that they might think are authoritative because the leaven which will leaven the whole lump first of the people of um galilee and judea their own people and then spread out into the whole world is the level in which jesus himself is sharing with them to share with the people and in mark as in matthew that the numbers of the baskets in the two feedings become important as we've seen we've been through all of that the twelve baskets representing their ministry to their own people of the twelve tribes and the seven baskets representing their ministry which will be to the whole world like the seven deacons we spoke about philip the deacon yesterday in caesarea um the seven deacons who are there as signs of the ministry of that leaven that good news that gospel that evangel whatever you want to call it that good news of encouragement to the whole world which is both healing and saving and also crosses barriers between this dimension and the eternal dimension god's greatest gift to us as human beings all of that is there stop talking about irrelevances really is what jesus is saying oligopoly men of little faith it's the nearest he gets with his disciples really to real irritation and they know it so there's an atmosphere they don't forget the story in the boat that's why it's there in mark's gospel so much of mark came from peter and that memory is a strong one both of the way in which he was spoken to on the waves a man of little face and on the shore it's nothing to do with bread you have little faith it's about this receiving the true leaven well this is a day when uh we have some some important dates and they are dates to start with and we'll stay with that thought to start with about the way in which we remind ourselves and also tell people of significant things now i'm using a method of telling you which was totally unknown to jesus and his disciples and the evangelists and they would have written in pen and and in ink and those those wonderful testaments were handed on and on but for the moment in the boat and in the ministry they're having everything is simply remembered so it's the strong impressions that are remembered and later set down by mark or matthew or luke or john this is a day when diaries are put in front of us because it was on the 14th of june 1942 that anne frank began her diary in the notebook she'd been given on her birthday two days earlier a blank notebook and at that time although um they were in occupied nazi netherlands they were still happily at home and then on the 6th of july her sister was notified that she had to present herself to the occupying force and father took them into hiding all of them the sister included and what we've got is a wonderful testimony from anne frank with a tragic ending of course the last entry on the 1st of august 1944 but we have a wonderful testimony which has become one of the most popular books to be read and translated and in it anne frank sets out has secret and private thoughts and she does so by writing to a friend kitty we don't know if that friend was imaginary or whether that friend was someone that she simply made up as a companion so that that name kitty becomes something precious to us and to anne frank diaries do that i've always kept a daily journal to mark things it's for me and it's not uh this happened that happened this happened it's things that i want to remember insights that i might have had and when i go back and read just a few sentences even 30 years ago the whole scene is conjured before me it's the way people do it but people are fascinated by diaries of that sort and if you think of the way in which things like bridgette jones's diary or uh uh the diary of uh adrian mill um at the daniel defoe wrote a journal of the plagiar in 1660 or he was writing much later but he imagines a journal of someone in the plague of 1665 and journals and letters of that sort because sometimes we get the story by people collecting the re the letters that others have written because letters tend to be dated and then they piece them together so a volume of someone's letters to someone i i can think of gerard manny hopkins letters to robert bridges which have been collected and published and all of that helps us simply enter the mind of someone and the life of someone so we give thanks for letters and diaries and also the humor that they sometimes give all the the well both bridget jones's diaries written by helen fielding have been made into films which amuse people and we give thanks for that and also for sue tonin's diaries of adrian mill different growing ups um bridget jones rather older than adrian mill when he's meant to be writing but this also the important thing is that um jerome k jerome died on this day in 1927 14th of june 1927 and he's remembered really for one book and one book alone there are others says idle thoughts of an idol fellow and things of that sort but the thing he's remembered for most is three men in a boat and the humor that that gives and those stories because they are wonderful stories and they're based on a real river story but he changed lots of details but in the book do you remember it's jay as he calls himself and uh harris and george and the dog montmorency and it was meant to be a travelogue giving a lovely description of london from kingston upon thames at that time and the the going past hampton court and that's all there but there are also most wonderful humorous stories i first came across it i haven't read it for years but i first came across a section of it in a book of excerpts with illustrations of other stories as well and the story that was chosen was harris in the maze and you remember how harris who always thinks he's got the answer to absolutely everything gets lost in the hampton court maze but then a lot of other people are crowding around him and because he says oh i know the way i can do this follow me i know exactly the way and some of these details may have come from the black and white films that i've seen of these three men and about and some may come from the book because i've not checked but there is a moment in the the maze when the people suddenly lose confidence in harris and it's a piece of tiny evidence that causes that there's a woman with a baby and they're walking around and it's a hot afternoon and they harris says it's just around the corner here i know that we you know we're nearly there we're nearly out i know everything and then uh the woman stops and says that is nonsense we've been past this place three times and there is the bun that my child threw down the last time we were here you don't know the way and then then the story goes on um so there's all of that uh and the fun that's there in in the the travelogue which is added to by that and we find it fascinating it's a long time ago that that story was written in 1889 and yet it's still one of those things that one remembers uh that jerome k jerome saying the only other thing i remember about him is the phrase um i like work it fascinates me i can sit and watch it for hours and that that is the way in which he turns humor but um i i was thinking on the way through that so many of you have charted a journey especially through lent and i've got here just one example of that it's from one of the garden congregation in brazil and it's full of the most beautiful pictures and the fact that it's been sent to me means that we will treat it with in intensely precious reverence it's it's all here and the the details of what's going on there very important indeed so thank you for this diary it's written in rather like anne frank it's written in a little diary that um here's the the type of thing that's in it with cutouts of angels cut outs of special places little clips but always the date on the top as lent went through and we have treasured this since it arrived and uh we'll continue to treasure it but it's only a symbol of so much that you are sending us and i think that it is the most lovely thing to have received what i was going to say was it's written in a blank book given by a friend from a completely different country i think in japan and the the blank book then becomes a message a heartfelt message with so many things to say to us from brazil and then we are here with the garden congregation um having this book before us as a symbol of everything that you are doing but of course now the wonderful thing is that the date is done for us when we look back on any of the youtubes or facebooks or however you look back onto things and say what was happening with us as a garden congregation on that day it's there it's a different way of remembering and the minute you remember then you have the scene brought up for you as with journals and letters and so on and so forth well now this is a such a wide subject about memories and the cause of memories and what causes us to remember and also about scenes that we want to remember and the way in which a hint from a sentence or a picture can make it alive but jesus says you're happy to read these signs don't forget you should also be reading heaven signs which we try to do morning by morning in god's creation on fair days and foul days days of red sky at night and red sky in the morning shepherds warning all of that and we take counsel from our lord to the disciples and he no doubt often says to me oligopolistic oh man of little faith and to all of us oligarchy oh you have little faith why did you doubt is what he said to saint peter so as we began with richard dyer's story then let's um end with our own prayers now i should have said as part of british's story that one of the things he gave most thanks for because the hospital was doubtful about this happening is that his memories right up to the accident itself have returned he's not lost any memory and that too is precious because our memories are a wonderful treasure bank and treasure trove of all that has happened and part of our reflection which uh psalm 71 is is asking us to share on when they're things that we really want to give thanks for here's the colic for today 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 look to see which place in the anglican communion we are praying for this morning and this is the 14th of june and so we're praying in the communion for the diocese of chandigarh in the united church of north india pray for the people there and continue to pray for india during this time of pandemic and in the diocese we pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambeth and today for the church of holy trinity broadstairs and for our great friends the parish priests there dominic fenton and father dominic often comes so those of you who are watchers of coral even song here uh he often comes to take the placenta's place to sing even song for us and also sometimes comes for the music and sits in the congregation so we pray god's blessing upon dominic's ministry in broad stairs and holy trinity and for all his congregation on this day and give thanks for his life there so let's say the prayer our savior taught us in whatever language you like to use and then a moment of silence the hens will no doubt punctuate that silence on this morning 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 so um [Music] in our calendar today the name richard baxter appears he was a 17th century thinker and poet and a priest and and also a hymn writer i think of him when i hear his name for one reason only and these are the four verses that i always give thanks for which bear the name richard baxter ye holy angels bright who waited god's right hand or through the realms of light fly at your lord's command assist our song for else the theme too hideth seem for mortal tongue ye blessed souls at rest who ran this earthly race and now from sin released behold the savior's face god's praises sound as in his sight with sweet delight ye do abound ye saints who toil below adore your heavenly king and onward as you go some joyful anthem sing take what he gives and praise him still through good and ill whoever lives my soul bear thou thy part triumph in god above and with a well-tuned heart sing thou the songs of love let all thy days till life shall end what air he send be filled with praise 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 so we're going to just put a few clips on of the caterpillars and uh you may like to have a look at those and see their forward progress as they themselves enter as part of the walled garden and the meadow on this monday meadow day