good morning and welcome to the dinery garden in canterbury cathedral on this monday morning of the 26th of april we're keeping sin mark's day and that's because mark as on the 25th of the month came on the fourth sunday of easter and the easter sunday being important the saints day is then put on to the next day so here we are monday morning please feel welcome here and the opening of the gate is the opening of the gate into a new gospel a new good news which is what gospel means because mark the earliest of the gospels opens the gate to the story of jesus we will actually talk about that in our reflection but there's another reason that we've come here this morning about six years ago when we'd been to given a and seen the monet garden and then looked at some of his paintings we decided here to have a wild flower garden under the old apple trees and fetcher planted that and in that garden too as we said to you the other day nettles and thistles were welcome because the goldfinches love thistles and the caterpillars of the butterflies love nothing better than nettles and so some of those were kept but other weeds grew up through it and for a year or two it was very beautiful and then it began to have more nettles and more thistles and became very wild it it happened that in the year 2019 fletcher was very much working in london and so the the wild garden was not maintained and the way that we decided to maintain it at the beginning of lockdown you well know because you saw it all happening we got clemmy and winston to come and you'll remember last year seeing clemion winston amongst all those weeds and tall nettles and thistles which the goldfinches and the caterpillars were loving but it didn't look very good and yet those two clemmy and winston with the piglets as they grew cleared this place better than any rotavator could and also made the soil aerate below and the roots of the trees and the caterpillars and the butterflies and all of those things began to to uh thrive but now we've got a lovely garden to replant with seed and that has made a mix of both grass seed but wild flowers of all kinds and we can think about that as it goes on so each monday morning we thought we'd help you watch it develop over the weekend we've raked down the the ground and also we've sewn it with the seed and watered it and gradually it will begin to grow day by day but at the moment it is actually freezing cold it may be the 26th of april but it feels like february and everything is slow growing at present we said that about the cherry trees on the 24th and now here we are at the opening of the gate into the walled garden on saint mark's day i've paid tribute to synthmark who of course is the patron saint of venice because his earthly remains are thought to lie under the altar of saint mark's cathedral in venice and i couldn't bring a piece of saint mark's cathedral here but i did bring the milk jug which we bought at cafe florian and many of you will know that beautiful and historic cafe in simp mark's square and so that is a reminder of venice and of saint mark the lion of the evangelists of the four creatures mark takes the lion luke takes the car for the ox and uh saint matthew the human figure and saint john the eagle so today we have leo the lion and uh that is a a good thing to think of with the bravery and the way in which mark sets out his gospel here by the open gate let's begin our prayers and we shall think about oop many things oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your faithful servants bless you they make known the glory of your kingdom alleluia 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 so 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 as 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 our men our son this morning on this 26th morning of the month is a part of psalm 119 that very long psalm which is cut into sections and i'm beginning at verse 105 your word is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path i have sworn and will fulfill it to keep your righteous judgments i am troubled above measure give me life o lord according to your word accept the free will offering of my mouth o lord and teach me your judgments my soul is ever in my hand yet i do not forget your law the wicked have laid a snare for me but i have not strayed from your commandments your testimonies have i claimed as my heritage forever for they are the very joy of my heart i have applied my heart to fulfill your statutes always even to the end so i'm choosing to read this morning as a gateway to the gospel the very beginning of saint mark's gospel the lectionary gave us for morning prayer this morning uh the part of the acts of the apostles where john mark goes with barnabas and paul on the first missionary journey and has as a very young man cold feet and goes back and as you'll remember later on in the acts barnabas gives him a second chance which paul is unwilling to give him but i'm more interested in the gospel that he set out because it has a very particular quality as we've discussed before so i'm reading from verse 1 to 15 of the first chapter of the gospel of saint mark the beginning of the gospel of jesus christ the son of god as it is written in isaiah the prophet behold i send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the lord make his path straight john the baptist appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and all the country of judea and all jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river jordan confessing their sins now john was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and at locusts and wild honey and he preached saying after me comes he who is mightier than i the strap of whose sandals i am not worthy to stoop down and untie i have baptized you with water but he will baptize you with the holy spirit in those days jesus came from nazareth of galilee and was baptized by john in the jordan and when he came up out of the water immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove and a voice came from heaven you are my beloved son with you i am well pleased the spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by satan and he was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to him now after john was arrested jesus came into galilee proclaiming the gospel of god and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of god is at hand repent and believe in the gospel well we could go on with that chapter but there are one or two things that i want to remind you of because we've looked at that part of mark before but let's first look at beginnings in gateways for it's generally agreed that this is the first gospel and by tradition it's thought that mark drew on the reminiscences of and memories of saint peter and in writing that gospel that voice becomes clear as well but mark in writing sets out an immediate beginning you remember how we've said that the greek word usus immediately straight away um is used so often in saint mark's gospel to carry the gospel onwards in its 16 chapters matthew has 28 chapters 16 chapters short chapters easily read as one book straight through we get used to breaking it into verses into chapters but this is a narrative which carries you and here's the gateway this morning the very beginning and we've got the sentence there the beginning of the gospel or if you like good news that's what gospel means the beginning of the good news of jesus christ now some ancient version verses versions leave that verse there others and jesus christ the son of god what does matthew say well remember from last tuesday when we began the gospel of saint matthew and when we began it i pointed out it said the bible the book of the genesis of jesus the son of david the son of abraham a genealogy very different beginning matthew is trying to give us mark wants to give it to us straight and if we read the whole verse as some of the old texts say the beginning of the good news of jesus christ the son of god bang straight there and straight into prophecy this was what the prophet isaiah said and john the baptist came as the herald proclaiming that and pointing to one who would come after and notice too that jesus comes to john to be baptized in the river jordan and as he is coming up out of the water he sees the heavens opened and sees the spirit descending on him like a dove and he hears the voice of the one he will call father saying you are my beloved son in whom i am well pleased and immediately justice he's driven into the wilderness to ponder that not in a sequence as we'll see in matthew but all together tempted by satan and at the same time with the wild animals and at the same time ministered to by angels it's the way temptations and holy times come and go surrounded by god's good creation and creatures and trying to find space to think and what a lot to think about for jesus coming up out of the water and having had that experience all of that in mark there is none of the the time is not yet not yet not yet for mark the time is now and that gives us that breath taking chapter one or should i say it takes your breath away because of the speed in which it all happens and if you go right up to the end of chapter one what do you find what a sentence is a long chapter 45 verses but when jesus has begun his ministry then it says in verse 45 he went out and the god that the sorry the the the leper who had been cleansed went out and began to talk freely about what jesus had done and to spread the news so that jesus could no longer openly enter a town but was out in the countryside and people were coming to him from every quarter outside teaching with the countryside around him but we know that in st mark's gospel from time to time he enters communities but the essence of it all is the immediacy and the way we get through to the end in chapter 16 leaving all that happens in the resurrection narrative of the church very much in the life of those who would carry that forward the other three gospels begin in different ways we've looked at matthew since luke begins by setting out in his prelude what he's trying to do to create an orderly account so others can hear this story and see how it unfolds and john in the beginning was the word going way way way back to the first beginnings of creative time and back beyond that and as we've said when looking at john working at the two levels so all those things on st mark this morning and a breathtaking adventure if you simply sit down and read st mark all the way through it pays dividends i wanted to look at one or two dates this morning and one in particular but let's do what we normally do and see what happened in these years maybe if i start in 1895 we see on this day and no doubt it covered public newspapers the start of the trial of oscar wilde a really sad event and speaking of england at that time but now of course all his writings are much enjoyed but his time at reading jail which this trial occasioned and which really shortens his life gave us the depth of his writings in de perfundis and also the depth of seemingly a simple ballad reading jail so we remember that with a degree of sadness and in 1923 now this is an interesting thought this is the day in 1923 april the 26th when lady elizabeth bose lyon was married to the duke of york at westminster abbey see queens mother and father duke of york became george vi and elizabeth bose lyon became our queen mother now the new bbc at that time in its infancy only in radio at that time wanted to record and broadcast that occasion and the dean and canons of westminster said absolutely not quite unfitting for a holy occasion to be broadcast in this way the sacraments of the church online in this way how distant that all seems and how wonderful that at the funeral of the uh of the duke of edinburgh on the saturday before last 2.5 billion people came to watch that and how wonderful that we can look back on our queen's coronation in 1953 and in color see all of that on television but our minds have changed in the way that we communicate in these days and no blame to the dean and chapter of westminster at that time and then we we actually are saying that's how people thought in those days so then i want to say that in 1937 in the middle of the spanish civil war hitler tried out a way of frightening people by bombing the city of guernica and it showed what blitzkrieg could mean i'm sure that in 1937 no one in canterbury felt new or imagined that in 1942 the same could happen here but that guernica occasion has been immortalized by picasso's painting simply called guernica so we'll remember that on this day 62 1962 there was a joint british united states of america venture which sent the first international satellite into orbit launched from cape canaveral now what would we do for our communications without the satellites and how that has brought our ability to communicate with each other forward 1975 all these are are interesting for today the labour party members voted two to one to leave the european economic community and a little later on the 6th of june british voters backed con continued membership of that economic community and now we find of course that economic community moved on to become a political union with its commission and everything else so the the the um and plans for for the the kind of federal aspect of things which was rejected in the brexit vote but you see how things develop and go this way and that and the economic community was something that the british people loved but at the moment we're working out all those things from brexit and doing things um loyalty for the welfare of all we pray 1989 this is just a bit of fun in the town of nass in county kildare the first annual pig race was held and if you think pigs can't run then you should watch the uh the pigs running across our lawn i don't mean the piglets i mean that the senior pigs they can run really fast as fast as the gospel of sin matthew they can run usus and the little piglets play around and they also clemmy yesterday we brought out to give her a bit of a rest from all the piglet attention and took her for a walk on the lawn and getting her back was quite a job with both of us standing on side of her because she'd run ahead and then veer off into another part of the garden enjoying the fact that she was just given giving a bit of space and time as a mother away from the demands of the piglets and uh the oh i should have said that uh the the winner of the first kildare annual pig race was called porky's revenge so uh that that was something all the proceeds were given to people in need 1986 another sad thing the chernobyl environmental catastrophe happened on this day the explosion at chernobyl chernobyl nuclear power plant released large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere so a sadness and then finally that which i wanted to concentrate on on this day in 1964 tanganyika and zanzibar merged to form the united republic of tanzania and the first president was the president of already the president of tanganyika and before that the prime minister of tanganyika julius nireiri now julius nairari is someone deeply deeply respected in tanzania he's called mualimu which means our teacher and he retired in 1985 after uh being president for all those years from well 1961 when he became prime minister right up to 85 he was a very very devout roman catholic but also someone who had an image which was represented by the swahili word ujamaa which means altogether or if you like familyhood but not in a blood family but the family of communities or those that you care for or your nation or the world and julius nerari had a vision for all of that now i give great thanks for my time in tanzania and i have a great love for the tanzanian people but i had already been working in the sudan so in hereford i found that the link was with tanzania and there was in tanzania an elderly agricultural advisor who had spent most of his life advising on agriculture in tanzania and latterly in the island of pemba north of zanzibar but he agreed to come with me as one of the party that went out first of all to tanzania and later on the two of us would would go from time to time and i would be taken also to his um farm really at risbury mill in herefordshire there to learn swahili robert she said you you cannot connect with someone unless you know their language and he was a wonderful and strict teacher and said swahili is a wonderful language an easy one to read it's all written down phonetically and in reading it but learn learn the way and of course i would sit getting it all wrong but what i'm holding is a gift from tanzania i've plenty in the house and um but this one is special because it is actually a symbol of ujamaa all in it together a complete tangle of people and that ujamaa is the image which naireri wanted to create for his people his his uh his his image was not just for his own people he it was who when eddie amin i mean in a coup a military coup ousted the elected president milton naboti gave about a sanctuary and all the time was preparing to help the people of uganda which the tanzanian army did in the end and to prepare the way for the democratic government to return to uganda ujjamar my image of ujimar a very poor nation but where no one was allowed to go without help from the community was probably in my first visit there in masasi where i was walking along the path and a little child who couldn't have been more than three years old was sitting eating a banana and that was rich food and as i came up i greeted the child jambo and the the the little boy answered and broke his banana and offered a half to me i felt like saying no you need the banana not me but it was so clear that that was a gift that he wanted to give and whatever uh little images i have that mental image of ujamaa we're in this together have half this banana my breakfast and so i stood and at it with him there and then moved on i didn't know enough swahili then to have a conversation but i knew enough to greet and say goodbye and all those things that one needs in the language of a people and you learn lovely things like the word lala salama which means sleep well or nana which is uh we'll see you tomorrow see you sometime uh and best of all safari and jama journey well all those things i remember and give thanks for jeffrey wilkinson i've gone to glory and all that he taught me not just he was an agricultural officer remember not just about the tanzanian people but what grew well and where it grew whether we were in tea plantations or places where coffee was grown or we were looking at trees and what would grow and what was sustainable and he was a great one for teaching how biogas worked from the cattle that were there and a great one also for warning against cutting down woodland which destroyed land well you know how much we would uh be able to talk about that together as a garden congregation after all our work with the forest garden but behind here in this gateway this is a piece of land we hope we're going to make flower and look green and floral as the spring goes on so monday mornings we'll come and have a look and see how it's going on as we pray this morning for many things and i would want to pray for the people of tanzania and the church in tanzania there and also for the ministry of saint mark's venice on this day that we keep sin mark also in the anglican communion today we are praying for the diocese of brasilia in the episcopal anglican church of brazil brazil at the moment very very badly suffering from the pandemic and we think of friends there pedro our friend there in brazil who keeps us up to date with the news uh his family and and all that but you will have people perhaps in brazil you want to think and and of course we continue to pray for the people of india and all other nations suffering so badly at this time from the pandemic pray for justin our archbishop and here in the area deanery of canterbury today we're praying for the parish of mary breden not too far away and just to walk up the road here pray for barney to bury one of the non-residential cannons of the cathedral here stephen carter and charmaine muir the cura there and uh so the the churches of mary breton was was bombed in the war and so when you pass it today it's a new church in certain times and that becomes very important indeed and the ministry there is a very powerful one so let's say our prayers on this day first the collect was in mark and then the collect for this week of easter almighty god who enlightened your holy church through the inspired witness of your evangelist sint mark grant that we being firmly grounded in the truth of the gospel may be faithful to its teaching both in word and deed through jesus christ our lord amen the collect for this fourth week of easter almighty god whose son jesus christ is the resurrection and the life raise us who trust in him from the death of sin to the life of righteousness that we may seek those things which are above where he reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever are men so the prayer our savior taught us in whatever language you would like to use 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 on this morning of the day that we keep saint mark the god of peace who brought again from the dead our lord jesus christ that great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight 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 are men just one final memory of geoffrey wilkinson the old agricultural advisor who taught me never to travel without uh a little marmite and a little coman's mustard in a tube or in a small pot because uh he said sometimes in the world where your your diet gets a bit samey every day things and spice that up you probably will revolt at the idea of marmite to me it's been a savior with cassava chips from time to time so um i give thanks for his memory and we'll say to you safari and jama journey well