good morning and welcome on this monday morning the 31st of january the last day of the month to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral as we say our prayers on this morning wherever you are in the world feel welcome we've come into this part of the orchard and it's a windy stirrup type of morning with a clear blue sky and the sun which is already rising over the wall and there's a sense of stirring up things for new beginnings and i'm sitting amongst hazel catkins which are sometimes called lamb's tails and they're wiggling like the tails of young lambs but they are also a sign of things stirring within the trees around me are other signs of a new beginning there are signs of the uh snowdrops there are signs of the aconites but let's concentrate on this wonderful display of quite early hazel catkins quite long ones male hazel catkins these are and they are there to spread the pollen around um and at the moment they're doing all they should as lambs tales too so this is good for our reading this morning as you'll see and it fits in very well with the theme although everything is a bit stirred up by the wind and quite chilly but nevertheless not frosty and it gives a real sense of new beginnings this morning with the morning sunshine so let's uh begin our prayers on this morning we're still in the epiphany season today is the last time we shall use the epiphany collect because uh sorry no that's wrong uh tomorrow will be the last time we use the epiphany college because on on wednesday we keep the feast of the presentation of christ in the temple and that gets a special colleague and then the next day we're into ordinary time and the epiphany season is over and so if you're using daily prayer that becomes the fifth sunday before lent how the year goes on so here we are this morning epiphany season still oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your light springs up for the righteous and all the peoples have seen your glory blessed are you sovereign god king of the nations to you be praise and glory forever from the rising of the sun to its setting your name is proclaimed in all the world as the sun of righteousness dawns in our hearts anoint our lips with the seal of your spirit that we may witness to your gospel and sing your praise in all the earth 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 on this last day of the month is psalm 144 blessed be the lord my rock who teaches my hands for war and my fingers for battle my steadfast help and my fortress my stronghold and my deliverer my shield in whom i trust who subdues the peoples under me oh lord what are mortals that you should consider them mere human beings that you should take thought for them they are like a breath of wind their days pass away like a shadow bow your heavens o lord and come down touch the mountains and they shall smoke cast down your lightnings and scatter them shoot out your arrows and let thunder roar reach down your hand from on high deliver me and take me out of the great waters from the hand of foreign enemies whose mouth speaks wickedness and their right hand is the hand of falsehood o god i will sing to you a new song i will play to you on a ten string harp you that give salvation to kings and have delivered david your servant save me from the peril of the sword and deliver me from the hand of foreign enemies whose mouth speaks wickedness and whose right hand is the hand of falsehood so that our sons in their youth may be like well-nurtured plants and our daughters like pillars carve for the corners of the temple our barns be filled with all manner of store our flocks bearing thousands and ten thousands in our fields our cattle be heavy with young may there be no miscarriage or untimely birth no cry of distress in our streets happy are the people whose blessing this is happy are the people who have the lord for their god it's in one way very much a young person's son the daughters and the sons who are ready and waiting to take over with new beginnings as the psalmist sings and the images he gives of them are images of strength and of wonderful power so that when we come now as we do to our lesson uh it's also a lesson reflecting that kind of atmosphere let me read as i do without uh spectacles so i'm i'm reading uh in one samuel and i'm still in chapter 13 where we left off and uh with this i shall begin at verse 19 of 1 samuel 13 and then go into chapter 14 up to verse 12. now oh here's our friend the robin now we have uh here a different kind of hand telling the story it becomes almost like one of the legends of nations where adventure and questing becomes the role of young people and here is the situation set out first of all in verse 19 for the people of israel and then we have a a one day type of beginning at the beginning of chapter 14. now there was no blacksmith to be found throughout all the land of israel for the philistines said lest the hebrews make themselves swords or spears but every one of the israelites went down to the philistines to sharpen his plowshare his matic his axe or his sickle and the charge was two-thirds of a shekel for the plowshares and for the mattocks and a third of a shekel for the sharpening of the axes and for setting the goads so on the day of the battle there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people with saul and jonathan but saul and jonathan had them and the garrison of the philistines went out to the paths of mikmash chapter 14. one day jonathan the son of saul said to the young man who carried his armor come let us go over to the philistine garrison on the other side but he did not tell his father saul was staying in the outskirts of gibeah in the pomegranate cave at migron the people who were with him were about 600 men including ahydra the son of ahitam ichabod's brother son of finicha son of eli the priest of the lord in shiloh he was wearing an ephod and the people did not know that jonathan had gone within the passes by which jonathan sought to go over to the philistine garrison there was a rocky crag on the one side and a rocky crag on the other side the name of one was bose's the name of the other sene the one crag rose on the north in front of mikmash and the other on the south in front of geba jonathan said to the young man who carried his armor come let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised it may be that the lord will work for us for nothing can hinder the lord from saving by many or by few and his armor bearers said to him do all that is in your heart do as you wish behold i am with you heart and soul then jonathan said behold we will cross over and we will show ourselves to the men there if they say to us wait until we come to you then we will stand still in our place and we will not go up to them but if they say come up to us then we will go up for the lord has given them into our hand and this shall be the sign to us so both of them showed themselves to the garrison of the philistines and the philistines said look hebrews are coming out of the holes where they have hidden themselves and the men of the garrison hailed jonathan and his armor bearer and said come up to us and we will show you something and jonathan said to his armor bearer come up after me for the lord has given them into the hand of israel well that's just the beginning of a story it's a very long story and at the same time i have some warmth behind me now at the same time it's the story of a young man full of strength prince jonathan who's out to make his own way noticed the phrase in all of this but he did not tell his father now what we're going to see in this almost nightly tale you can think of the questing of the arthurian knights or the imagination of any young woman or young man in in questing out and thinking i want to take life in my own hands and go and do this i have the imagination i have the inspiration to do this let's just go and not take any notice of of anything else that is trying to hold us back and there would be warnings and there will be take care but we have here in a moment or two a triangle of three types of people and this is how this story will play itself out where are you wanting to go this is how this story will play itself out first and foremost you have the one with actual power in shall we say middle age that's king saul himself taking careful thought for his people but himself not acting according to the warnings of samuel who represents wisdom and old age and a different kind of advice and planning and a kind of waiting for god to give the message now there you have those two and as we saw there's huge tension there and notice that in this story which is very interesting indeed as all the detailed geographical details are given so that people can sketch in their minds what the the past looked like that jonathan and his young armor bearer were going through with the rocks on each side it was an adventure and there above were uh the philistine garrison the watchmen of the philistine garrison looking down almost in derision at the hebrews coming out of their holes they reckoned without the strength of prince jonathan but for the moment were given lovely details we haven't told that that uh king saul is waiting not knowing that jonathan has gone in the pomegranate cave so you have samuel who already has warned saul against the course of action he's taking because he's ceasing to take the lord's time and just as a precaution saul has brought along with him a hydra who is the the priestly descendant from from eli and is wearing the ephod and in the end saul is going to send even for the ark to come and be with them well we've seen all that before but at the same time samuel has absented himself from this having given the warning the aged and the powerful middle aged making their plans and then the young with inspiration and adventure in their hearts now we can think of other even in our our own history of the the church think of saint francis of assisi venturing before ever he had his call and vocation venturing out in the finest armor that his father could provide and going out with all the other young people the young men who've gone out to war in those days this isn't a war between nations in italy it's a war between cities venturing out so that just sisi would go and fight perugia and peru and and so little communities going out to battle and we know that it's it's in that activity that francis first gets the stirrings of the fact that he's called on to venture and risk everything in a very different kind of fray and here is jonathan and jonathan and his armor bearer in their youth thinking they can venture anything the questing knight the i'd call him the best king israel never had for jonathan is destined to die in battle quite young there with his father this is a different kind of story and you see here disobedience of rules and regulations when uh the armor bearer is a little bit doubtful but i am with you heart and soul there's a loyalty there of the young armor bearer to prince jonathan even though he must have been quite nervous that jonathan was simply disregarding any advice of his father by just not telling him what he was going to do let's go and do this because i think the lord will deliver them into our hands and that's how we ended it jonathan takes a sign if they say this we stay here if they say that we go up to them the lord has given them into our hands and that's how the story ends for today you have all of those tensions and differences between the planning the timing the waiting of the young the middle-aged and the old and the middle category oddly is odd one out in the end it will be samuel who takes up the cause not only of jonathan but also who jonathan will play an immense part in the story which samuel has uh planned now but in the cause of the one he is going to anoint as king who himself will be adventurer but at the same time will be a venturer of a different kind but for today this is a story about the young now a date and there really is only one date i want to mention today and that is the fact that on this day on the 31st of january 1797 the composer franz schubert was born he was born in vienna and he came from a musical but not wealthy family and he himself was musical from the very beginning of his life he never ceased being a young man he died tragically from sickness at the age of 31. in 1828 but he was born at a time of the changing of the nations the map of europe was about to be ripped up and redrawn and he lived at that time but he lived mostly unnoticed and his burden his vocation his absolute quest was to compose music it absolutely poured out of him he took lessons from those that first of all his his father suggested but then from antonio salieri and he was with salieri to the age of 20 but teaching at his father's school and then from then on he began to be his own person so that we know that in the year 1815 he composed twenty thousand bars of music it simply poured out of him it was something he knew he had to do and it didn't matter that only a very small group of friends at first or the pupils that he was writing for when he went to great houses to teach the daughters the piano uh and began to to write things for them it's thought that march militare which is a great piano duet to play for those who can play the piano it's a sort of average way like me and to do that is a wonderful kind of of of activity with the two of you sitting at the keyboard playing march minute air but they were composed for specific people and we remember them uh but much of schubert's life at that time we just don't know what we do know is that he got a group of young men who'd go out drinking and composing songs and singing them and they were they began to be known as the schubertyards but this was a time in europe when the french revolution having happened the napoleonic wars having happened the map having been torn up redrawn at the congress of vienna then people were very nervous about all that happening again they just reestablished peace and order and the police had great suspicions the austrian police about this group that would meet and there'd be rioters singing and all kinds of things going on and in the end it was broken up one of them was even put in jail because they were thought to be revolutionaries they were in fact inspirational musicians yes they had new ideas yes they felt the world was their oyster but at the same time what their their real conviction was was that they could give music and compose it so if we look at schubert's life it is a very short knife full of composition compositions many of them which were not discovered until after he died very little of his music was published while he was alive and yet there were all kinds of scores and songs which were being written now schubert is is really i suppose best known for his over 600 songs that he wrote for voice and piano and they are lovely songs just really beautiful songs taken to set the literature of many nations and i've got here this first book of schubert's songs that i was ever given as uh part of a birthday present it was given to me by my mother who used to like to sing as well when we sat at the piano and uh it set for medium voice and here are 30 shubert songs which are a delight to play and a delight to sing many of them and if one looks down at the titles you see that rather like gustav dore in illustrating so many pieces of literature and we were looking at him very recently schubert did the same but with music with beautiful melodies and if i just read down this is in alphabetical order i'm not going to read all the way through the 30 but it begins with his ave maria and then here are the titles courage cradle song crusaders urlaf lake the fisher maiden the fisherman the fishers song the full-orbed moon the greenwood calls hark hark the lark huntsman rest and on it goes and when we get right to the end we find the lovely shakespeare song from two gentlemen of verona who is sylvia what is she and as i say their beautiful songs to sing and there are a rose among the heather it's called here hedge roses i've always called it is such a lovely song about a boy going along and seeing a rose which he wants to pluck or there's the trout here now the wonderful thing about schubert was that once he composed the melody for the song and it became known as a song and there were two long song cycles uh one of them that we say in english the fair maid of the mill descender merlin and the the other one winterizer the winter's journey uh separate songs from that were set out and sung but things like the trout became and that was just a fisherman's story of catching a trout became the basis for the most amazing chamber music so that you then get things like the trout quintet and as those those things are developed so the melody gets developed schubert sonata does sonata's piano sonatas which again are a joy to play develops melodies all the way through and you can feel him developing them developing them so that when schubert eventually died so young he composed i've got the details here 630 songs was earlier voice and piano seven masses piano sonatas seven finnish symphonies and one the eight's unfinished chamber music motets anthems and of course in church we sing so much of his music in that way but much of it was simply then set aside in manuscript and it took other composers to go and find them and later they did schumann came and found the manuscript for the great c major symphony and brought it back to leipzig and handed it to mendelssohn who had it performed but until then it was really not known and at the same time in 1867 long long after schubert's death for schubert died in 1828 in 1867 george grove of grove's uh musical dictionary and also saratha sullivan who was not sir arthur then he was a young composer himself went and in their travels found the manuscripts of six symphonies and much more and so it was left to others to discover and find schubert was not aware of that but as he lay and it was quite clear that his life in this last illness was ending four of his friends five days before his death for his of his friends led by the violinist carl holtz one of his great friends and came as a string quartet to play for him and schubert weekly asked for beethoven's string quartet number 14 in c sharp minor opus 131 it's known as and holtz and the other three musicians played that around schubert's bed knowing probably this would be the last piece of music he ever heard and at the end as hoax finished playing he looked at the others and said of the beshophan sonata the king of harmony has sent the king of song meaning schubert a friendly bidding for his imminent crossing it's a very touching tale of a farewell but the last thing it was was farewell to schubert's music for schubert was one of those inspirational young people who starting from a foundation of all the rules of music then broke free and began to use the inspiration rather like prince jonathan in his quest or francis of assisi in a quest that led him in a very different direction and as we sit in the stirring wind on this morning of new beginnings with the blue sky well it's blue sky thinking that young people enjoy so much and sometimes it's risky and sometimes it's a failure but there's the old saying uh fail once try again fail better next time and try again and that kind of riskiness is very much a young people's exercise caution is the king saul those in power exercise and then wisdom often totally ignored is samuel himself at the really the end of his days but with one very important last action for god to take and that will involve his underlining of the young so on this day let's say our prayers together i wanted to remember this also as the 80th or would have been the 80th birthday of derek jarman the activist for gay rights see um the the the film producer the in all sorts of ways someone who used imaginations threw it out in in a way that it offended some and uh with others they were inspired by it now what i wanted to say was that he was also a gardener and lived in prospect cottage on the kent coast here and that has now been designated as a protected site and one can visit that garden still right out looking out over the the sea and on a morning like this it would be very windy indeed but it's a good place to go and see so we give thanks for his life and remember that this would have been his 80th birthday but she died in 1994. okay let's uh say our prayers on this day and we are thinking today of the diocese of kano in the church of nigeria in the kaduna province and we're thinking also of in this diocese archbishop justin and bishop rose of dover and of course bishop emma at lambuth but today are the church of holy trinity broadstairs and there we think of the parish priests whom you will know well then you may not know it but if ever ever you tune in regularly to even song online then the priest there dominic fenton very often comes if the the presenter is not here very often comes to sing the office for us and he's always a welcome visitor and we pray for him then not as a a musician he's a great friend of ours but not not as a musician but as the parish priest of that parish in broad stairs holy trinity so here is the collect still for the fourth sunday of epiphany and we'll read that tomorrow again for the last time and then just say you get the sequence of this complicated time of year right second of february candle mass feast of the presentation gets its own collect and then after that we turn into ordinary time and the colleague becomes the colic for the fifth sunday before lent here's today's bring your own prayers wherever you are in the world as the hazel cactines like their lamb's tales under a blue sky wiggle around us and cause us to have new energy god our creator who in the beginning commanded the light to shine out of darkness we pray that the light of the glorious gospel of christ may dispel the darkness of ignorance and unbelief shine into the hearts of your people and reveal the knowledge of your glory in the face of jesus christ your son our lord amen so each in our own language we say across the world the prayer that 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 amen moment of reflection now as we say our own prayers so please [Music] oh oh hearts [Music] oh [Music] and is [Music] foreign these jesus [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] one time is [Music] fears [Music] christ the son of god perfecting you the image of his glory and gladden your hearts with the good news of his kingdom 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 now and always are men so you've enjoyed the activity of our school on this day when we're thinking of young people and their inspiration in music and all kinds of creative things and at the same time we've received many messages of thanks for the uh gilbert and sullivan evening last night and i want to say it many of them have been sent as though i did anything i did absolutely nothing at all fletcher did all of that and it was a huge pleasure afterwards to receive from quite unexpectedly from uh sarah caldwell smith the uh a message now she is a development officer and a lead soprano singer in the new york gilbert sullivan society pl the players there and she sent a message all unexpectedly saying thank you we had people popping up from all over the world and we couldn't think what was and then suddenly we realized that this had all come from an uh our garden congregation and so it was a a happy thing for them and it's a happy thing for us as well and particularly we want to thank fletcher for just organizing all of that for those of you who did enjoy it and and we're part of that and it's on a morning as i say when arthur sullivan was one of those who absolutely quarried around to find schubert manuscripts and make the inspiration of this young composer we've been thinking of this morning known to the whole world so that we could all enjoy schubert's inspiration