good morning and welcome on this friday the 12th of march welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral as we come to say our morning prayers it's another windy morning with rain in the air not quite so much wind but nevertheless not the easiest morning to to be just sitting in the garden and yet the fresh air is good and and and lovely to be in so welcome wherever you are and there are flowers all around me as you're seeing hyacinths growing up just beside the moss of the wall of the stream there as it runs down through the garden to the orchard to the fish pond below and we give thanks for all of this this is a day when there are certain pictures and themes in our minds and they're really important ones and when we come to our reflection we shall dwell with them in depth but two um bbc television items even this morning are really challenging the one of the the the nun in burma myanmar to some uh that uh she is is facing the violence of the police and uh saying kill me instead of the demonstrators who are all children who've taken refuge in her convent and and school there and that is a powerful picture which we'll think of and what it means a little later on in our reflection also sir tim berners-lee who on this day in 1989 submitted proposals to the european organization for nuclear research which which developed into the world wide web and on this anniversary he's made a statement two years ago he was wondering whether it was a good thing that he had given to the world the world wide web because it was being used for purposes which were not creative and encouraging to one another but now two years later of course it's been a life saver in terms of communication and education and his message this morning is that we should extend the gift of interconnectivity as much as we can particularly to young people the world over and in this land too so we think of that as we say our prayers using this method of interconnectivity oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise hear our voice o lord according to your faithful love according to your judgment give us life blessed are you god of compassion and mercy to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of our sin your light breaks forth like the dawn and your healing springs up for deliverance as we rejoice in the gift of your saving help sustain us with your bountiful spirit and open our lips to sing your 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 amen our psalm this morning is psalm 62 on god alone my soul in stillness waits from him comes my salvation he alone is my rock and my salvation my stronghold so that i shall never be shaken how long will all of you assail me to destroy me as you would a tottering wall or a leaning fence they plot only to thrust me down from my place of honor lies are their chief delight they bless with their mouth but in their hearts they curse wait on god alone in stillness o my soul for in him is my hope he alone is my rock and my salvation my stronghold said that i shall not be shaken in god is my strength and my glory god is my strong rock in him is my refuge put your trust in him always my people pour out your hearts before him for god is our refuge the peoples are but a breath the whole human race a deceit on the scales they are all together lighter than air put no trust in oppression in robbery take no empty pride though wealth increase set not your heart upon it god spoke once and twice have i heard the same that power belongs to god steadfast love belongs to you oh lord for you repay everyone according to their deeds wait on god alone in stillness oh my soul the advice of the psalmist this morning in that morning sound for this twelfth day of the month so we come back to the gospel of saint john and today we complete chapter eight i'm beginning at verse 48. jesus still standing in the courtyard of the temple the outer courtyard where he has been teaching the people and confronted again and again by the jewish authorities and as with the other mornings as we've been reading through chapter eight the conversation continues in two different dimensions the finite dimensions which the jewish authorities continue to punch away at and the infinite dimension which jesus is trying to give them as a gift and they don't see and won't accept it and the conversation becomes more and more violent verse 48 the jews answered jesus are we not right in saying that you are a samaritan and have a demon jesus answered i do not have a demon but i honor my father and you dishonor me yet i do not seek my own glory there is one who seeks it and he is the judge truly truly i say to you if anyone keeps my word they will never see death the jews said to him well now we know that you have a demon abraham died as did the prophets yet you say if anyone keeps my word they will never taste death are you greater than our father abraham who died and the prophets died who do you make yourself out to be jesus answered if i glorify myself my glory is nothing it is my father who glorifies me of whom you say he is our god but you have not known him i know him if i were to say that i do not know him i would make myself a liar like you but i do know him and i keep his word your father abraham rejoiced that he would see my day he saw it and was glad so the jews said to him you are not yet 50 years old and have you seen abraham jesus said to them truly truly i say to you before abraham was i am so they picked up stones to throw at him but jesus hid himself and went out of the temple not a difficult thing to hide himself amid the crush of the people and the business of the outer courtyard of the temple where all came and went but this kind of conversation takes us back to the early chapters of the gospel of saint luke when mary and joseph have brought their 12 year old son to jerusalem and they lose him and he is found by them sitting in the temple asking questions of the doctors of the law and responding in his own way using the teaching that his mother and father and the local synagogues had given him and answering in a way that caused them to wonder already at that time and now here we are 18 or so years later with jesus in saint john's gospel confronting but not wishing to confront but to enlarge the thinking body mind and spirit and the creativity in this finite world reaching out to the infinite in more than imagination but in spirit wishing to do all of that and being met stonewalled by the answers given by the jewish authorities the crowds who are standing around as we've seen from the earlier parts of chapter 8 are reaching out for the teaching of jesus believing extending their humanity in different ways to reach out for the spirit but as jesus keeps saying my hour has not yet come when i am lifted up i will draw all people to myself all these all these things are being given now and as a prelude to the teaching that will continue in st john's gospel as we go on day by day through the next few days of our lenten journey but around him there is violence and when people are confronted in a way that they can't counter and this is very much happening with the conversations with the jewish authorities then the humans last resort is to reach for the stone to throw it and not only diminish but eradicate the danger to their own teaching and authority well the church has not been innocent of that throughout the centuries and we remember people being silenced because those who felt they held the whole truth wanted to silence them and then later maybe years and years and years later some kind of reparation was made see how jesus in his exasperation uses the strongest expression that he can muster in the old version verily verily i say unto you and in this version truly truly i say to you this is the strongest he can be and yet still they're not receiving it and the strongest he can be is the images that he's using and this time the image comes neat in the present tense when they start to talk about abraham and what abraham believed and knew and foretold and the development of abraham and all of those things from their own scriptures which has been jesus's lifelong study clearly so from all the ways in which he quotes it and gives it to the people fresh as the springtime fresh as the daffodils and blossoms that are growing in this northern hemisphere's approach of spring for the way in which he teaches has a quite different authority and he's doing it in his father's house as he said as a little boy but at the same time earlier in sid john's gospel when he cleanses it from that which is getting in the way of that teaching the psalmist's prophecy zeal for your house will consume me is remembered by the disciples at the end of that at the end of all things well this morning also we look at that neat statement at the end before abraham was past tense i am present tense that's a message for us not present tense in the temple courtyard all those years ago present attempts now wherever we are present tense tomorrow when you might read it again or at any time in the future when you might read it again and to that present tense jesus is beginning to attach sacramental images which perhaps teach us more strongly than words but not this morning for the stones are being picked up to destroy him and so to their great detriment jesus hides himself and leaves the temple his teaching will occur elsewhere for a while for his hour has not yet come tomorrow we move on into chapter 9 in a very different way i said that we had very powerful images and so we do this morning and let me start then with sister anne rose new tongue and the way in which she faced the authorities in that burmese picture and both burma and myanmar but not without with without the r on the end come from the ethnic background both and some of us know it by one name others by another it matters not she's there with her people and she's stepped outside to protect the children and young people who have come out to demonstrate conscientiously that picture will ring down the centuries for there she utterly unarmed a catholic nun is kneeling in front of soldiers ready to fire on the children and to hear her interview is to be in the presence of a modern martyr if you must kill kill me but how powerful that statement will become as we go on in st john's gospel but let's think of it absolutely in the present tense at the moment as we pray for the people there and all that they are suffering at this present time and pray for the international community responding to that and give thanks for sister and rose newton on this morning but let's give thanks also for tim berners-lee who as i said in 1989 on this day the 12th of march submitted proposals to the european organization for nuclear research cern in the acronym and those proposals developed into the world wide web so many of us came to that as what you might call digital foreigners and then had to learn the way but as i said two years ago tim berners-lee was already doubting whether this was a blessing or a curse for the world he cannot be in any day i don't know for during this pandemic it has been the salvation of people's coming together and those who are without that facility have in a way being disabled from that kind of connection so his message this morning to all governments and to our own government here is extend that interconnectivity and when they say we cannot afford it the answer is you cannot afford not to afford it for this has been the way of learning for so many online and still is and the way of connecting with each other and keeping up our awareness of one another and spreading encouragement and as we do morning by morning even spreading the message of our worship and the words of jesus as we hold ourselves accountable to them in the present tense so we certainly give thanks for that gift and pray for its right use and for the interconnectivity to be extended in the way that he asks and then another thing that takes our eye this morning is the fact that on this day in 1913 agatha von trapp was born she was the oldest of the von trapp family who became worldwide famous with the film the sound of music which was developed from rogers and hammerstein's musical well of course that's an idealized picture and she was the first to say so but it's a wonderful picture because it does give the flavour of what it was like for gail von trapp and his family at that time when nazism was abhorrent to them and although at the beginning their status protected them and also the the the fact that they held italian citizenship as well but that wasn't going to be a protection for very long and they had become already famous singers and agatha who in the film is of course liesel tells her story in her own autobiography she died in 2010 and so at that stage she was 97 i think and by then she had also written a book about life after the sound of music but she sang right through and became known to the world in the beginning as austrians oblique italians who had confronted nazism and all its terrors and at the same time as those who had given musical encouragement to people and the ability to sing and we think of all those things as her gift today there are other things which happened on this day in 1930 mahatma gandhi who visited here soon after and stayed at the deanery began his 300-mile march to the sea the sea of arabia in protest at the british tax law securing the monopoly for salt he on that march reached the sea and then began to bring take salt from the sea itself to show the free gift of salt and he and sixty thousand others were arrested but he became at that time an international figure always always striving for peace and we remember that again as one who stands in front of people with power kneels in front of people with power thinking of sister anne rose with her arms outstretched and at the cost of their own safety it's a day also in 1994 when the first women priests were ordained 32 of them in bristol cathedral how they had waited for this day and we give thanks therefore for that it was to be 21 years before the first woman bishop libby lane was consecrated in our church but we remember back to 1994 today march the 12th and the ordination in bristol cathedral of those 32 women priests as a sign and forerunners of so much ministry which they had already been carrying out but now had the authority of priests to go on what else can we say there are so many things uh this morning which i could be talking about but maybe i should mention that in 1622 ignatius loyola and francis xavier were both canonized both jesuits and perhaps it's a nice coincidence that the convent of sister anne rose new tong is dedicated in the memory of sin xavier who was himself martyred and then again um i wanted just to mention and this in a a humorous so as so often the the humor gives us a pause for thought thought of terry pratchett the journalist author screenwriter modern philosopher writer of humor and science fiction uh um died having recounted in his works the onset of early alzheimer and caused people to understand what that meant to himself and to those who knew and loved him i wanted to mention his book in 1989 the unadulterated cat which talks about the characteristics of cats in reality he says and an unadulterated cat who is one who um uh goes around and makes a mess of flower beds and and rips up things in the house uh and catches birds and mice just when you don't want them to and brings them inside he says that's the that's the real character of cats not the what's he called the other ones the the fizzy keg cats that you see really well behaved and looking so demure on the side of food packets for cats well we know all about that and we think of uh our dainty little lilies habit of uh whenever there's a piece of paper newspaper or a sheet of paper that i've happened to have dropped on the floor lying around she will always tear it up into neat shreds and make a little patterned nest of it so we give thanks for her unadulterated behavior in that way before she leaves signs of herself in that way around the house to remind us that lily like everyone has a unique character as did terry pratchett he had a unique capacity to imagine imagine into realms that became puzzling for humanity and that we've seen through the teaching of jesus in john's gospel confronting the people it's a day when in 1737 galileo's body was moved into the church of santa cruz in florence the great honor in that place where so many of fame and of creative invention are buried and galileo of course had been someone that the church had said your teaching is not true and then use their power to suppress what he was saying but now here in 1737 on march the 12th we give thanks that he was recognized and moved in to santa there are so many things we could go on with 1864 w hr rivers was born the great english anthropologist neurologist and psychiatrist he died in 1922 but he's made famous by his his work with those who had suffered so much in the trenches among them people like siegfried sassoon and wilfred owen and caring for them afterwards and dealing with the after effects of that terrible war it's also today plant a flower day and that will be a good thing to do on a day like this the sun has come out and the rain has stopped and even the wind has allowed us now to say our prayers together so first we see who we're praying for today and on this 12th of march we're praying in the anglican communion for the diocese of northwest australia in the anglican church of australia the western australia province pray for the people there and also in our own diocese as we pray for archbishop justin bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambeth we pray for the kent emergency chaplains scheme and for their um joint leader david slater emergency chaplains in all sorts of ways have been necessary through this pandemic and we very much pray for their work and give thanks for it in this area of uh kent so let's say this week's comic i hope you've learned it by now it's very much a college that in our heads is important when we're in a situation of pain or sorrow where books aren't with us and we've things in our head when our imagination is is running dry because of the situation around us it's a glorious colic so do learn it and have it as part of your spiritual kit bag almighty god whose most dear son jesus christ went not up to joy but first he suffered pain and entered in not into glory before he was crucified mercifully grant that we walking in the way of the cross may find it to be none other than the way of life and peace through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language the prayer which jesus 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 so a moment of silence for our own prayers christ give you grace to grow in holiness to deny yourself take up your cross daily and follow him 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 you