good morning and welcome to the dinery garden on this wednesday the 29th of july as we come together to say our morning prayers earlier in the morning welcome to you wherever you are watching us across the world and our prayers for you in your particular situation bring your own prayers for those whom you love and would want to pray for today today among other things is international tiger day and so i thought it right to give tiger his breakfast here this morning but we're really talking about those wonderful creatures out in the wild of which william blake wrote tiger tiger burning bright in the forests of the night what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry there are only well fewer than four thousand tigers left in the wild and that's including the um siberian tigers the indian and sumatran ones we're lucky enough here to have near us the wildlife park at howlitz and port lim which was the vision of the late john aspinall now kept by his son damian but there they have been pioneers in saving species endangered and releasing them into the wild and none more so than the tigers and at the same time our our friend mark coris whom we mentioned before the animal sculptor was set in february to have a great exhibition in russia for the amer the siberian tigers with his sculptures well of course all that has been put off we've included some links today about all this but it reminds us of our responsibility for the whole of creation and particularly for these magnificent creatures perhaps i should say a word about tiger himself some of you have written in to say that you've noticed he's limping and we've been very aware of that for the last couple of months and our vet our close friend christoph reichmann from the white cliff surgery in in dover has been looking after him but is now sure that she has a cancer on his left paw and so this leg has to be amputated now i've known cats who've had a very active and good life once they adapt and they do so quite quickly with three legs but it will be a severe trial for him and his life here will be a little bit different for a while so we may lose sight of him for a bit let's say our morning prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the day star dawn in our hearts and triumph over the shades of night blessed are you creator of all to 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 and as we wake refresh 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 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 29th morning of the month is psalm 139 i'm reading the first 18 verses oh lord you have searched me out and known me you know my sitting down and my rising up you discern my thoughts from afar you mark out my journeys and my resting place and are acquainted with all my ways for there is not a word on my tongue but you o lord know it all together you encompass me behind and before and lay your hand upon me such knowledge is too wonderful for me so high that i cannot attain it where can i go then from your spirit or where can i flee from your presence if i climb up to heaven you are there if i make the grave my bed you are there also if i take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea even there your hand shall lead me your right hand hold me fast if i say surely the darkness will cover me and the light around me turn to night even darkness is no darkness with you the night is as clear as the day darkness and light to you are both alike for you yourself created my inmost parts you knit me together in my mother's womb i thank you for i am fearfully and wonderfully made marvellous are your works my soul knows well my frame was not hidden from you when i was made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth your eyes beheld my form as yet unfinished already in your book were all my members written as day by day they were fashioned when as yet there was none of them how deep are your counsels to me oh god how great is the sum of them if i count them they are more in number than the sand and at the end i am still in your presence so we turn to our reading from the gospel of saint luke jesus and his disciples are now leaving the supper table and going to the place where jesus likes to pray on the mount of olives verse 39 and jesus came out and went as was his custom to the mount of olives and the disciples followed him and when he came to the place he said to them pray that you may not enter into temptation and he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed saying father if you are willing remove this cup from me nevertheless not my will but yours be done and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him and being in agony he prayed more earnestly and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground when he rose from prayer he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow and he said to them why are you sleeping rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation we tend in our minds to conflate narratives when there are several about the same event and we have four gospel narratives from matthew mark luke and john about this scene but sometimes it does us good simply to concentrate on one because it tells us about how the evangelists themselves feel and it also tells us things from different sources and luke's is quite distinctive it's quite short but it's very different it gives us first of all the going out onto the mount of olives quite simply done in a sentence but obviously a place that jesus and his disciples were won't to use and one has slipped away of course for the betrayer has gone to find the ones he is going to deliver jesus to no distinction in this story is made between the disciples in others jesus takes his inner band a bit farther on but here all the disciples are seen as a group and we're in the area of what particular temptations will be theirs in terms of fear and the temptations will be very very strong and can only come be combated by prayer and intention and he knows that their intention is weak because they have not understood at any time the real nature of his messiahship but now he himself wrestles with that vocation and it's not only the night that is dark for he feels all the limitations of his humanity and all the temptations of self-survival to go on and live a useful life for many years he's only 33 according to luke at this particular time luke says he knelt down it's the only time in all the gospels we see that aspect physical aspect of jesus in prayer he knelt down and he began to pray and an angel appeared to him traditionally we call that figure the angel of agony those of you who know newman's dream of jarontius or even more so elgar's cantata based on those words his oratorio the dream of jarontius will know that the character of the angel of agony stands beside the soul brought before the judgment seat of god but here the angel is there to strengthen jesus's own vocation to receive the cup which he asks the father he might be spared but the crucial words that are there nevertheless your will be done and he goes back and his loneliness is accentuated by the fact that the disciples are asleep and he tells them again get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation for prayer is the only thing that is going to hold them fast from desertion and denial but jesus knows total loneliness i said yesterday that uh it was the anniversary of the birth of jeremy hopkins but today is a better day to remember it for as one thinks of the two sides of the mount of olives and today also is a day when we remember in the calendar mary martha and lazarus in the bethany household which gave jesus hospitality on the other side of the mount of olives bethany's so near be so easy to get up from gethsemane and go back to bethany where companionship and safety lay but on this side of the mount of olives facing jerusalem is the vocation that will take him back to the way of the cross and there are those two sides also to hopkins his vocation which was really enlivened in his poetry by all the beauties of creation and everything that god had created in wales particularly it's in binos as he walked in the valleys his heart would sing and give us all that wonderful natural poetry and also hospitality and companionship gave him that too in the house in the valley of the el we he writes a lovely poem of a family who was so dear to him and always gave him hospitality and he finds himself in his last years of life dry of inspiration unless he goes to and he can only do it from time to time he's a jesuit bound by his rule but there was a house at monastery even where the cassidy family two sisters and their brother gave him hospitality such that gave him the sense to feel companionship and some poetry sprang from that again but at the same time back in his own bed over those years four what are called terrible sonnets of darkness and self-questioning are written and we bleed with him great drops of blood as those sonnets are written he knows that he feels fulfillment when he's able to write and give us of his inner soul and he does that about companionship and remember the word companion means those that we share bread with from the latin word for bread and at the same time he doesn't know that he is already creating poems which speak of the wrestling with vocation in those terrible sonnets with cries like send my roots reign and also arguing with god in some of them like job himself why are you doing this to me when i can serve you in so many ways i am here well the last sonnet like that written to his friend robert bridges became the poet laureate and who was the one who gave us hopkins poems because they weren't printed in his lifetime his last poem spoke about what gave him joy in his creating of poetry his next letter to bridges spoke of his illness and he then died very sadly as a young man in that same place well enough of hopkins because our lord's own vocation is in the same wrestling and the most important words in those prayers we say constantly in the middle of the prayer our lord gave us in whatever language we say it thy will be done we remember all that this morning as we say our prayers so on this morning we pray for the diocese is in the anglican communion of naya hururu in kenya and stephen cabora the bishop there and his people and the diocese of birmingham here in england and david urquhart the bishop there and all the people who live in that diocese today we make a change from one area deanery dover we've been on the villages around there and the communities tomorrow we shall go to another and on the pause we pray for our whole diocese it's a day for praying for each other for all the faith communities and denominations of the christian church in this diocese of canterbury pray for just in our archbishop for rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambeth at this time pray for all those whose work is in the conservation and preservation of our beautiful earth and all its resources at this time and pray for those combating disease all over the world and of course particularly covid19 so let's bring our own prayers to the prayer for this day which is a special prayer on this day when we remember the companions of our lord mary martha and lazarus god our father whose son enjoyed the love of his friends mary martha and lazarus in learning argument and hospitality may we so rejoice in your love that the world may come to know the depths of your wisdom the wonder of your compassion and your power to bring life out of death through the merits of jesus christ our friend and brother who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever amen so we pray the prayer our lord taught us in whatever language we say it and our minds focus on this day on god's intention for us in the words thy will be done 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 for ever and ever are men we now say a prayer for tigers being troubled here by flies we now say a prayer in silence for your own intentions for today 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 and remain with you today and upon those whom you love and those you would pray for always amen