good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this wednesday the 16th of february as we meet to say our morning prayers welcome wherever you are in the world let's begin by continuing to remember and undergird with prayer the tension and military buildup in the on the border between ukraine and russia and all the difficult decisions and influence that can be brought to bear which is connected with the world leaders right across the world who have an interest in in helping this situation for good and the welfare of those people but we have a an option as a large garden congregation worldwide to hold that situation in our prayers at the same time we've come into the front garden of the deanery this morning so you will hear the noise of scaffolders and workmen up on the building itself the cathedral as i'm pointing to with my left hand here and around in the school because this is school half time so you won't hear the noise of children around but you will hear the noise of workmen doing work which is easier to do when the school is on holiday but we thought it was a good time therefore to come into this front garden and it will suit our purpose as you as you see this this setting here for the moment though i want to say that this is a really important day in the calendar for canterbury it's the day when we remember modern martyrs here we have a chapel of modern martyrs where in books those of the 20th and 21st century have lost their life usually for others uh in the faith and we remember them far far too many to remember but we name names like janani lum the murdered archbishop of uganda oscar romero uh in in in his actually murdered his altar the the archbishop of oscar romero or from different communions of the christian church barum dakani tafti young man who was shot his father had been the the bishop in iran and had gone with mother and and daughter now an english bishop of the daughter but at the time they fled for their safety knowing they were in danger and the young man barham stayed behind and he lost his life in defense of those who were worshiping as christians there we remember dietrich bonhoeffer whom we remember very recently in one of our morning prayers we remember maximilian colbert for whom pope john paul ii lit a candle in the uh chapel of uh our lady martyrdom at the site of thomas beckett's martyrdom and when he knelt that he lit a candle there and said the name maximilian colbert for culber had given his life for another at auschwitz we remember edith stein a nun uh who herself had came from jewish extraction but she was a christian theologian a christian nun and she also died at auschwitz and maria scott silva who uh with that name obviously comes from eastern europe but was living in paris as a nun and helped jews to escape and was taken to ravensbrook and died in that concentration camp all these people and there are many across the world today that were were thinking of um all these people gave their lives for others and died a martyr's death and they gave their their life for the faith we think of william alexander guerry who was the bishop in south carolina who was shot by a priest who himself was was probably having mental issues but he was shot uh because he was about to ordain someone of the african-american part of his communion his congregation and and uh that we remember our friends in charleston and the cathedral there pray for michael wright the the dean where there is a a little prayer desk with guerry's name on that and also canon cali and all our other friends there on this day so you see what i mean with the melanesian martyrs and everyone else that we could be going on all morning with this list this afternoon we do that formally in the cathedral with a procession to the chapel of modern martyrs for the moment you will have people in your mind who you think of and this afternoon also at the service we read part of t.s eliot's sermon which thomas beckett gave about martyrdom on the last christmas day of his life before he was himself martyred all those years ago so uh at this time let's let's uh think a little wider because uh we are out here in the front here because of what will happen in our reflection when we start to read the scriptures again and i wanted to say we're sitting in front of this window here and behind me is a room you will know well because it's the room which is such a study with all the books in and the white christmas tree and all those things and we've come here not for that room i'm just giving you what's behind me through the window but we've come here because of these enormous norman walls almost like a fortress a castle a stronghold and that we should be thinking of in our reflection but around me uh once again is the the garden springing to life and we shall see that as the the days go on so let's on this day then begin our prayers and the prayers are particular for this day o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your faithful servants bless you they make known the glory of your kingdom blessed are you sovereign god ruler and judge of all to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of this age that is passing away may the light of your presence which the saints enjoy surround our steps as we journey on may we reflect your glory this day and be made ready to see your face in the heavenly city where night shall be no more 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 does we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm this morning is psalm 80 and as as we are going to go to the character of david immediately after in in our reading from one samuel this is a lovely psalm about the shepherd king of israel and also that the shepherding of our lord himself of his flock which is an image that he himself gave us 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 who pass by pluck off its grapes the wild bore 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 fine 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 whom 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 it's a sound redolent of david of course but david was the inspiration for all the psalms written across a whole swathe of history and i can't help feeling that this is a psalm when jerusalem itself and the temple and all that the kingdom had looked to at that time had been destroyed and this psalm has a time of exile connected with it because of course the vine was the symbol of israel and the river the river jordan the the sea the mediterranean how the vines stretched out and flourished in the reigns of david and of solomon and then gradually how things through history went on until the armies came to destroy jerusalem and take people away into captivity and there's a flavor of that why have you then broken down its walls so that all who go by tear off its fruit um so turn us again that sense of turning is all connected with repentance a turning and an ability to come to god in penitence and faith and to find restoration and re-creation a lovely sound for this morning but uh let's go to our lesson it's quite a short lesson this morning it's just the first little bit of chapter 22 of one samuel you will remember that david alone went to get bread from the priest to himmelek yesterday and also asked for a weapon in his danger how he pretended to be a madman so that he wasn't endangered all alone when he was in gath and now we come to david in chapter 22 still alone but coming to shall we call it a stronghold and we're just going to read verses 1 2 5 of this chapter david departed from there and escaped to the cave of adalam and when his brothers and all his father's house heard it they went down there to david and everyone who was in distress and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was bitter in seoul gathered to david and he became commander over them and there were with him about 400 men and david went from there to mizpah of moab and he said to the king of moab it's the other side of the river jordan he said to the king of moab please let my father and my mother stay with you till i know what god will do for me and he left them with the king of moab and david's parents stayed with him all the time that david was in the stronghold then the prophet god said to david do not remain in the stronghold depart and go into the land of judah so david departed and went into the forest of hereth it's a strange little story and the sense first of all of the brothers of david and the parents of david coming down from bethlehem to this cave of adalam which is called the stronghold and hence us coming out here with really strong walls here the stronghold the sense of the brothers and the family coming down to be with him and then also the lovely sense that david instantly thinks this is too dangerous for my parents and so crossing the river he goes to the king of moab who seems friendly disposed and says can you please look after my un aged he could have said parents and so jesse and david's mother who's not named in the scriptures uh are are left with the king of moab uh safe over there while david goes back to the stronghold now what we're saying is that this um cave is a shelter as well as a stronghold a shelter in time of distress and there is now not the same kind of loneliness but all kinds of people with their troubles come to join david there and by the end of this we're told at the paragraph that he has 400 men and that would be connected also with the many who had come with those but it's become really a fortress with an army but it's also a little bit like the legends of outlaws like robin hood in sherwood forest or there's a sense of and we'll see that in the chapters to come of david going around and helping his people with the force that he has when they're in danger but at the same time he is very very wary of saul finding out where he is and it's that that causes uh the prophet to say to him don't stay there in the stronghold for saul will know that and come and find you so david then goes into the forest for a bit uh and this we're beginning now some chapters with stories that are partly written uh in a lovely and detailed way we shall come to the story of abigail at some stage and and uh in that there's a new kind of helper for david of a very different kind so as we do that we're thanking god for those who are going out to support david in that intense distress but we shall see david's continual loyalty and allegiance to king saul what the others might have been saying about it and saying you know show show vengeance on so but david and for jonathan's sake that jonathan doesn't appear is still well disposed towards saul but trying to understand where all this viciousness and bitterness is coming from and we shall see a little of that we're not going to read all the chapters between here and the tragic denumer of all this but we are thinking of how david is now being supported and how everyone who was in distress everyone in debt everyone who was bitter in seoul it says comes to the cave of adalam and gathers around david always on the watch for saul's army but david ready to help his people wherever that is needed now this cave of a dullum as we say has become something that's sometimes used metaphorically in political circumstances when a group of people who are disgruntled with their own political leadership come together and begin to say we don't agree with this and and and they gather rounds and now in 1866 this happened in our british parliament and after the death of lord palmerston very famous prime minister in 1865 the liberal or whig party at that time had as its priority a new a second reform act but members of that party felt that was a step too far and a man called robert lowe who was a great orator led a reaction and discontented memory members of the whig party the liberal party joined him and it was john bright who said you are nothing more than a dolomites you're at the cave of a dullum stirring up trouble for our leaders well they stirred up enough trouble to unseat the prime minister lord john russell at that time and then it melted away really because their grievance was over but they had come at that time and it's amusing to think that that little image which is only five verses long of the cave of a dullum has been used in political ways to to show that when disgruntled people come together it can be dangerous for those in power but at the same time they have to be reckoned with and although they were laughed at by john bright and said you're just like the cave of a dollar you're a dolomites and at the same time they had enough power to unseat the prime minister and life had to go on after that in that way so we think of all that on this particular morning and i wanted to name as a date um also the fact that in 1876 on the 16th of february the historian who became immensely famous in his time george mccauley trevelyan gm trevelyan was born he died in 1962. and he was very distinguished british historian and academic he was a fellow of trinity college cambridge first of all then a full-time author and in 1927 he returned to cambridge as the regis professor of history and became master of trinity college cambridge from 1940 to 51 and then finally in retirement chancellor of dharam university all those things but i'm saying all this because his staunch wig liberal principles took the history of this land of england and writing from that perspective he was a champion for what he saw as democratic government bringing steady social progress well this was all going on in the early years of the 20th century and the way he wrote history was in a literary way and the way he could tell a story and describe a landscape it's not a fashionable way of writing history today but it was then it caught everyone's imagination his his um three-part book on the life of garibaldi the italian who was so formative in the unification of italy he published that between 1907 and 1911 and that was taken up utterly readable wonderful literary books he had a way with language and if we define him i suppose he was an outstanding literary historian he was giving sort of heroic proportions to garibaldi as a poet a patriarch a man of action vanquishing despotism but what caught the popular imagination most with his history of england in 1926 and there he was searching for the deepest meaning of english history and it was written from his perspective as i say this is not a popular way of writing history today because one has to be very even-handed and and with all facts there but this was almost passionate history about what he believed and felt and it caught the popular imagination and he's talking about the nation's evolution and identity about parliamentary government about the rule of law about religious toleration about freedom from continental interference or involvement uh in the affairs of the continent but more an involvement in the global horizon of the international vision all of that is there and some of it is up for big challenging but at the same time it is really beautiful language to read and he was somebody who caught the popular imagination of that time um there's a a an estimate given him as the the most honored most famous and most widely read historian of his generation in the first half of the 20th century because of the skill of his literary craftsmanship he was a storyteller and therefore people took that and the way a story is told becomes crucially important to how people receive it let's go back to that sentence of francis bacon which as you know because it's only a few days ago i mentioned it josephine tay used as one of the titles of her detective novels when she was trying to justify richard the third truth is the daughter of time she simply called that novel the daughter of time but francis bacon probably francis bacon's quote is truth is a daughter of time and that means that the one who's telling the story with authority to tell the story actually wins the pitch because they can set out the truth as they see it and they're not being inaccurate they're ordering and interpreting facts with their own vision and we think of all that with the way in which uh shakespeare told his histories at the time of elizabeth the first which was weighted in a particular direction to give the tudor monarchy the best possible advantages and it's not as if one's twisting the facts so much as just ordering them in a particular way and that means then that the storyteller if they're good at telling stories and using facts and marshalling them to put their vision forward the storyteller has the advantage of that vision being accepted but at the same time we are gathering facts by our experiences and our spiritual and and mental imaginings and all of the interaction we have with one another and ready to tell our own stories and share those which is what we do with each other day by day and at the same time to receive truth completely differently sometimes and being turned around on our heels by certain experiences and certainly the experience of all the martyrdoms and also the terrible tragedies of the 20th century and all the things that happened there meant that that kind of sense of going forward slowly through good governments into a social progression took quite a challenge and today we we look back at that century as we do with the martyrdoms and think there were some horrendous things there and things today we'd look at and say this is unjust this really shouldn't be happening and people should influence all of this well i wanted to mention trevellian because he was born today but at the same time because he like the writer of the first book of samuel was a wonderful storyteller and the way that the story is being told in the first book of samuel is of course weighted towards david who later becomes the king and so it's david himself and the storyteller gives us that who holds to a loyalty to saul and all of that is written in wonderful language in this first book of samuel which we've been studying quite a few themes today to wrestle with and um i'm as we come to say our prayers i'm going to go back to the martyrs in a moment but we're saying our prayers this morning on the 16th of february to the diocese of qatar in the anglican church of kenya and in our own diocese we're praying for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover for emma bishop at lambeth and praying other diocese for those involved in lay ministry so we do that with glad hearts on this day but to go back to those who by their martyrdom have been shining lights for christ and his church but also shining lights for qualities of their own faith which we admire then as our lord said that there's no greater love than anyone can give than this to lay down one's life for one's friends and that can be laying it down in a life of service and ministry and care of all types or it can be laying down one's life even to death and when we were talking about this and the martyrs this morning of the men and women of who've given their lives in that way um it came into our minds especially remember that poem and it's it's actually the poem which is in the film the life of violet zabo and she has that poem running through it and you remember it and we can apply this really to the martyrs and others who we admire in this way this is it the life that i have is all that i have and the life that i have is yours the love that i have of the life that i have is yours and yours and yours asleep i shall have a rest i shall have yet death will be but a pause for the peace of my years in the long green grass will be yours and yours and yours it's relevant of so much that we were saying on uh monday when we kept the feast of the valentine it's relevant of so many of the offerings of the martyrs most of those martyrs so to speak uh metaphorically stood in front of the bullet it was meant for another and uh jonathan daniels i think of the ordinand who did that to to save uh one of the the african americans young woman there who was simply coming out of a shop there and that was at a time when there were demonstrations going on in in that time and he'd gone down from his peaceful life as an ordinance in the in the northern part of the united states and down to that to join that situation so all of these things are things that we remember on this day the giving of life greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends and the sentences from the gospel of st john of course are the prelude to our lord himself opening his arms to the world and those five deep wounds i always like to think the five smooth stones from the brook defeated goliath and all his military power and the five deep wounds with christ's open arms saved the world so let's say the prayer for today the collects and bring your own prayers and intentions as we do that this morning almighty god who alone can bring order to the unruly wills and passions of sinful humanity give your people grace so to love what you command and to desire what you promise that among the many changes of this world our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language 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 are men now we've been thinking right across the world of the worship of folk in completely different places and this uh singing now of the hymn glorious things of the unspoken comes from what was and still is the presbyterian church a very ancient church based architecturally on uh saint martin in the field in fargo square in chennai which used to be madras and the the people singing it there have instruments and and diversity and great joy glorious things of the unspoken zion city of our god it's a davidic kind of hymn i look back with enormous affection to time it chennai in madras and think of madras christian college and our lovely friend spurgeon there and his ministry there with the the students but also the the synthesis mountain where thomas the apostle uh with a long long tradition that that this was so in in the indian uh uh subcontinent there looking out to sea on that mountain over the ocean and going to the shrine of st thomas all of those things in chennai but the church of south india is a united church of south india so that the presbyterian church of sintandru which we're going to now with the singing of glorious things that they have spoken is in the same church as what the anglican church of uh sin george there and so we are giving thanks for the unity of christians there and at the same time the holiness of that site nearby and uh so let's hear that as we make our reflection [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] [Music] is [Music] uh [Music] foreign [Music] oh [Music] is [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] [Music] [Applause] ah [Applause] [Music] well that was wonderful to experience and it causes us to remember that the tradition of christianity in india with that mountain of st thomas the apostle predates christianity coming to this land by some great stretch of time and so we give thanks for the diversity of our faith across the world and also for the courage of those who are having to stand up very often to to pressures and persecutions where they are worshiping so let's then um come to our blessing and then i have something after that to share with you 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 i wanted to save this morning and i say this with a heavy heart from both of us that uh at 11 o'clock our time uh it will be announced that on the 16th of may at midnight um which will be the eve of my birthday uh the i cease to be the dean of canterbury and this is a great disappointment to us uh because uh the law of the church of england is absolute on this and although the archbishop had been hoping that he could find a way to have us for longer because we have the energy and vision to do much more and uh of course we're preparing a lambus conference and and and ending all the the work here that's going on with the canterbury journey and opening out from the pandemic both in school and in the cathedral so that it had never occurred to us that this would be an impossibility but the lawyers have declared it to be an impossibility so that and that very recently and so we are now faced with the fact that when the clock strikes on the 16th of may um i shall no longer uh be the dean and and can take no part from that moment onwards uh it's an anomalous law because of course in any other walk of life uh that would not pertain but it is still there in the canon law of the church of england and so we are this morning saying to you that we're really disappointed that all the energy and vision that we have um can no longer after that date it seems to be used for this place because of this this should we call it an anomalous law which pertains only to the clergy uh so um what i'm saying to all of you is that that means that um at that time of course we won't be ministering here from then on but we want to keep faith with you until easter yesterday so that having told you this this morning and the announcement will tell the people here uh and we shall be obviously um disappointed and sad but i want then from tomorrow onwards to go on to easter uh in regular and rhythmic worship both in the cathedral and out here in the garden with you but after easter day you will excuse us if we then need some time until may the 16th to begin to prepare for the future whatever that may be and so uh i'm telling you this this morning as folk right across the world that we have grown to know and love some of you we know personally some of you have been in touch but so many of you feel an intimacy as we do and i'm and fletcher also i'm devastated to be giving you this news so um let's embrace that sadness uh and and say uh that despite the disappointment day by day for the moment we shall go through lent together and right up to easter day and then beyond well who knows and we shall come to that date and it will be something that that we have to face together from then on uh so um let me just wish you that kind of love from both of us that we always show and then say to you pray for us but don't send lots of messages for the moment because i don't want fair wells to begin in any way until at least after easter as this is to be and and but i did want you to know so please undergird us with your prayers on this significant day when i'm giving you muse that is sort of unwelcome to me god bless you all