you come to see exactly what's here is it good morning and welcome to the deanery garden in canterbury cathedral on this 1st of september wednesday the 1st of september as we gather to say our morning prayers septembers because of academic years always feel like new beginnings here but this is very much the beginning of a new month and we're continuing later on our stories from genesis we're also continuing to pray for so many situations of human danger distress fear across the world too many to list but between us we're covering all of them with the pictures in our minds and hearts as we pray this morning together across the world so bring your prayers and your intentions for those whom you know to be in such distress and in situations of war and fire and flood and earthquake and pandemic i think there's never been a time when so many different pictures are showing themselves to us of human need so let's make our prayers very urgent this morning as we pray oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the true the only light banish all darkness from our hearts and minds blessed are you creator of all do you be praise and glory forever as your dawn renews the face of the earth bringing light and life to all creation may we rejoice in this day you have made as we wake refreshed from the depths of sleep open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will that the world may rejoice and give you praise blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind and as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this first day of the month is psalm 1 blessed are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked nor lingered in the way of sinners nor sat in the assembly of the scornful their delight is in the law of the lord and they meditate on his law day and night like a tree planted by streams of water bearing fruit in due season with leaves that do not wither whatever they do it shall prosper as for the wicked it is not so with them they are like chaff which the wind blows away therefore the wicked shall not be able to stand in the judgment nor the sinner in the congregation of the righteous for the lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked shall perish we're continuing in the book of genesis and we're at chapter 28. when we were dealing with the story of abraham there was a sense of abraham and con conversation with the lord god being lifted above things the patriarch seemed to be in that constant conversation with god but now with the story of jacob we come to the story beginning to be amongst all the human weaknesses human fears human terrors bad decisions even deceitful decisions made because of fear and wrong intentions and the way that the lord god uses them yesterday we saw how rebecca made the choice for jacob her second son though as twins jacob came from her wound womb holding the heel of his brother esau in patriarchal ways the inheritance went to the firstborn if you travel through the genealogy of the line of david at the beginning of the gospel of saint matthew or in gospel the gospel of saint luke you will find that very often the decision as to where the line goes and god's purpose is doesn't lie with the firstborn sometimes it lies with the most unexpected take yourself only to the story of samuel coming to anoint a new king for israel and asking jesse to see his sons and jesse parades the sons one after the other according to human expectation and who is chosen the one he hadn't even bothered to call david out in the sheepfold and samuel asks for him quite often one comes to a point where the most unexpected vessel becomes the way in which god chooses to take things forward and we're like that with jacob jacob can at times seem deceitful and tricksy uh he has the cleverness of his mother rebecca but at times you you wonder at the decisions he's making and then you find yourself amongst all those human fears and terrors of which the world is full and the way god uses them well this passage in chapter 28 that we're going to read from verse 10 up to the end of the chapter at verse 22 is one of the most famous and most favorite parts of the old testament and it reaches right into the new testament and is mentioned of course by our lord in the first chapter of the gospel of saint john but meanwhile let's just take a step forward that book of genesis is very long and we have to remember that rebecca fearing for her son jacob's life when she hears what esau's intention towards him is so the moment his father dies he's going to kill his brother she says you you better go away you better you better go it's safer for you so jacob sets out and he leaves beersheba which means the well of the oath that well which becomes so important in any settlement and the oath was made by isaac to abimelech in order that he should have a well in the middle of things well the well of the oath that oath is now going to be no longer home for jacob he's going to leave beersheba verse 10 of chapter 28 jacob left beersheba and went towards haran and he came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set taking one of the stones of the place he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep and he dreamed and behold there was a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven and behold the angels of god were ascending and descending on it and behold the lord stood above it and said i am the lord the god of abraham your father and the god of isaac the land on which you lie i will give to you and to your offspring your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed behold i am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land for i will not leave you until i have done what i have promised you then jacob awoke from his sleep and said surely the lord is in this place and i did not know it and jacob was afraid and said how awesome is this place this is none other than the house of god and this is the gate of heaven so early in the morning jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it he called the name of that place bethel but the name of the city was lars at the first then jacob made a vow saying if god will be with me and will keep me in this way that i go and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear so that i come again to my father's house in peace then the lord shall be my god and this stone which i have set up for a pillar shall be god's house and of all that you give me i will give a full tense to you it's a wonderful story with so many dimensions to it a new holy place is created bethel and there have been so many holy places across the world when people have created a church or a chapel and called it bethel a new holy place jacob has left home he is in fear of his life he's going he hardly knows where though rebecca has suggested he goes to her brother laban and he's traveling and he's in a spot that he doesn't know where there are no distinguishing features and yet it's sunset and time for rest and despite his fear exhaustion takes hold of him and he lies on the ground and takes one of the stones in that part of the rather barren area that he's in and his head lies on that we brought one of these in as a little sort of sign of of that in the middle of this area when fletcher was carrying it he said it reminded of him of the way in which he always gets a big stone and puts a towel over it to rest at this time of year usually in south of france on the beach but here this is just a plain big stone and it reminds us of jacob's sleep and the hard passage that his head has in terms of remembering maybe the deceit on his brother esau and the anger of his brother esau and his brother's intention to kill him and the loneliness of being away from his home in beersheba and now in this place utterly unknown and as the sun goes down and he sleeps with his head on the stone for a pillow he dreams a dream of a ladder being set right up to heaven and on that ladder it seems the angels of god are coming and going up and down joining a bridge between heaven and earth between the finite dimension in time and the infinite dimensions of eternity and he as with the patriarchs before him hears the voice of the lord god present tense i am the god of abraham and of isaac and he is about to become also in a very real sense the god of jacob too which our lord speaks of in the present tense in the temple court charge that holy place in his culture do you remember how he says remember to the sadducees do you remember how moses at the story of the bush the voice of god says to him i am the god of abraham of isaac and of jacob he is the god of the living not the dead the god of the present for with him all times are in his hands and remember that jesus also mentions this story of the latter in talking to nathanael you will see greater things than these you will see the angels of god ascending and descending on the son of man it's wonderful to think that our lord himself had the pictures of these scriptures in his mind a stony rest far from home there is a an old hymn which my parents knew very well and loved we seem not to sing it anymore but the first two verses speak of this story of jacob and link it with the cross of jesus you will many of you know it beneath the cross of jesus i feign would take my stand the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land a home within the wilderness a rest upon the way from the burning of the noon tied heat and the burden of the day o safe and happy shelter a refuge tried and sweet a trusting place where heaven's love and heaven's justice meet as to the holy patriarch that wondrous dream was given so seems my savior's cross to me a ladder up to heaven we make our own holy places and sometimes attempt to consecrate them as jacob did with the stone when he woke in the morning and said how awesome is this place this is none other than the house of god this is the gate of heaven and he pours oil over the stone and raises a pillar and this becomes bethel a holy place for ever after but it depends on that moment when god calls jacob and says to him wherever you go i am with you and jacob makes an oath to god a vow of faithfulness and that is the beginning of a new journey for jacob i wanted to speak of a moment in my own life that the moment that him is mentioned and i hear its tune going along in my head as to the holy patriarch that wondrous dream was given i'm taken back to a moment uh in 1994 and in 1994 i was setting off from hereford on a long journey which would take me first to harare where i'd never been before but was there to do some work on the link between the diocese of rochester and the diocese of harare and then would go on from harare to new territory for me my ministry before had been in south sudan and i'd been to kenya but i had never been at that time to tanzania and i was set to go first of all to dar es salaam and then on to a long should we call it a safari a journey a swahili word for a journey on and on and on to different places and i was to be away for a month my father was still living and i worried for him there were no such things as as mobile phones and easy ways of contacting in those days and i i just wanted the journey to go well but was nervous because i was at first going alone later i would be joined by friends in dar es salaam and then as we began to think of that journey the day that i was about to leave i celebrated communion and found that i was reading as the old testament lesson on that monday the 3rd of october this lesson of jacob and with the promise of god to jacob to be with him and jacob asking to be kept safe in his journey and be brought back to his father's house well let me take that on a few weeks because at that time um i came eventually after one stop after another after another to the island of zanzibar and found myself in the company of a bishop leslie stradling who had been the bishop there had been consecrated almost 50 years before and was taking a journey around places where he had ministered he was now in retirement but i became his companion for a little bit of that journey and we went together to mbwani on the island of zanzibar the day before i'd been awakened in the guest house at zanzibar early in the morning by the singing of the congregation at the earliest of the services singing that hymn and i remembered having read then the story of jacob and when we got the next day the oldest of the churches on the island of zanzibar we stood in front of the tower of the church later we climbed it um and uh two ancient church wardens who had been with with the bishop in his ministry there came and knelt and kissed his ring it was the most touching moment for me to watch and then they stood up and looked with pride at the church and over the door in arabic and swahili were some letterings and words and i asked the bishop what what are the words and he said the words are in arabic and swahili [Music] this is the house of god this is the gate of heaven she said you know it comes from the story of jacob's dream and i said yes i know that and i'm really grateful for the translation and i felt things had been underlined for me here was another holy place so many holy places throughout the world but they are all of the experience of a particular human being and probably that human being has made many mistakes and been surrounded by many fears many tensions fallen many times into those temptations and been raised and forgiven and given insights like the ladder into that world which is beyond so i give thanks for that story in a very very definite way and for the way in which jacob anointed the stone and made of that a holy place bethel as an image for all of us at that time you will have stories in your own lives like that where suddenly you feel that a coincidence is much more than a coincidence and you're being given just a a nudge by god to leave your fears leave your doubts make a new beginning and feel his forgiveness despite your shortcomings when we look today at the kinds of anniversaries that we have we are in the middle of so many terrifying scenes on september the 1st in 1939 poland was brutally invaded by nazi forces which quickly overran it and britain and france who had made pacts with them could do nothing swiftly for their armies were not mobilized and they were a long way off and russia had actually contrived to make an agreement with nazi germany and the the polls were left alone and what followed was absolutely brutal on this day too in 1715 king louis xiv died after having been king for longer than anyone else in french history king of france in 1643 and he had gathered into him his own hands every vestige of power the the complete symbol he called himself the sun king a symbol of divine right and absolute power and the palace of versailles into which he poured so much uh resource to bring his nobility and all those of influence there where he could keep an eye on them but on this day his life ended and who was to take all that then from that moment onwards there was no one of that capacity and it's almost as though the seeds of 1789 and the revolution were sown by that original intention to bring everything in into a place where the the the divine king could keep his hand over things and the rest of france ceased to be able to see those who were governing them on this day too in 2004 the chechen rebels seized the school at beslan where two days later 330 people would be killed most of them children another brutal picture in our humanity and then in this day also at the depths of 13 000 feet in the seabed in 1985 73 years after the tragedy the vessel the titanic was found by robert ballard and cameras showed that wreckage another scene of human tragedy all of these pictures very powerful pictures but showing us the fragility of our human kind within this planet the way in which mistakes are made for all sorts of reasons and intentional decisions are taken for the wrong reasons all of those things within the context of a planet which has dangers of its own and here is jacob with his head on a stone in the wilderness on this day too in 1967 september the first siegfried sassoon known probably best as one of the war poets died he died at his home in hatesbury and we remember him as a poet of the war and also someone who protested against the idealization of war and its glory and suffered for that protest and was thought to be making that protest out of shell shock but one remembers too that beautiful poem which he created of such freshness which suddenly came to him uh having come from that that moment where the fighting stopped and later he recalled that moment and in two or three minutes had written down a verse sitting in his own library later so that the horror and the freedom came together in that poem here's this but there's a another poem of his i want to share with you this is one you'll know well everyone suddenly burst out singing and i was filled with such delight as prison birds must find in freedom winging wildly across the white orchards and dark green fields on on and out of sight everyone's voice was suddenly lifted and beauty came like the setting sun my heart was shaken with tears and horror drifted away oh but everyone was a bird and the song was wordless the singing will never be done just a a moment of inspiration which seems to link earth with heaven sassoon is someone who wrote so many diaries that his life is well chronicled and the mistakes of his life he's quite quite quick at putting down but his life completely changed with the war coming and then in coming back it took him a while to begin to write of life before the war and we have that in his various memoirs of the fictional george shirstan i think it's the best description of an edwardian cricket match for a little boy coming to take part in it that i know and getting up early with great excitement and looking out over the countryside on the day of the match but in old age sassoon underwent a totally converting experience and began to pray and lay everything at the feet of god and realize that his life was not without purpose and intention and he realized that that prayer had to be filled also with penitence but that penitence had to carry with it a sense of total forgiveness and preparation like a ladder step by step to infinity and a god who forgives so much grace here is sassoon's prayer in old age he had been helped to that by so many friends and other friends were completely surprised by what was going on but it's as though he consecrated his life and in prayers he created an oratory in his own house at hate spree but also loved to go to downside abbey and pray that and in his prayers he created a prayer in old age and here is one bring no expectation of heaven unearned no hunger for beatitude to be until the lesson of my life is learned through what thou didst for me bring no assurance of redeemed rest no intimation of awarded grace only contrition cleavingly confessed to thy forgiving face i ask one world of everlasting loss in all i am that other world to win my nothingness must kneel below thy cross there let new life begin so one goes back to that hymn so seems my savior's cross to me a ladder up to heaven but perhaps i'd also want to remember and i've brought the hymnbook out to remind me of this that that wreck of the titanic reminds us of the story that the ship's banned played a hymn when the passengers were full of fear reminding them of words of another hymn which speaks of the patriarch and it's one again we don't seem to sing much now but it's here in the old i i picked up the first it came to hand it's the old bbc hymbook here it is and you will know it some of you to one tune some to another nearer my god to thee nearer to thee even though it be a cross that raiseth me still all my song would be nearer my god to thee nearer to thee say we come to jacob though like the wanderer the sun gone down darkness be over me my rest are stone yet in my dreams i'd be nearer my god to thee nearer to thee there let my way appear steps unto heaven all that thou sends to me in mercy given angels to beckon me nearer my god to thee nearer to thee then with my waking thoughts bright with thy praise out of my stony griefs bethel i'll raise so by my woes to be nearer my god to thee nearer to thee it's a wonderful illustration of what jacob did took of his stony griefs in the middle of that wilderness consecrated them offered his life anew and set off step by step on his journey having seen also that every step in geographical and time terms could be consecrated into a step towards infinity like the angel's ladder so let's say our our prayers on this particular day and we are praying in our anglican communion today for the diocese of ekiti west in nigeria in the ondo province praying here for the area deanery of sittingbourne and for the area dean there julian stanforth so we use the prayer for this particular week of the year following the 13th sunday after trinity almighty god who called your church to bear witness that you were in christ reconciling the world to yourself help us to proclaim the good news of your love that all who hear it may be drawn to you through him who was lifted up on the cross and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever our men say thee our father together as russell's cockroach greets the morning whatever language you 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 for your own prayers [Music] so [Music] me [Music] um [Music] the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and if his son jesus christ our lord and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen you