good morning and welcome to all of you wherever you are in the world welcome to the deanery garden on this monday the 26th of october and it is the most beautiful day here in england absolutely clear blue sky our clocks changed over the weekend and so we have an hour more lightness in the morning and so though it is still early morning the sun is rising well over these gardens where the autumn flowers are still just about giving some color but the leaves are giving enormous color too it's totally still this morning and we give thanks for this day but whatever the day is for you bring your prayers and intentions as we say our morning prayers together let's begin on this monday morning by cheering ourselves up with some anniversaries this was the day in 1929 that all the london buses were painted red and they've become very famous the red buses where i grew up near to the city of bristol the buses were green and we got used to that and traveling throughout the world there are special cultural colors that go with particular cities so let's give great thanks for the diversity of all of that and think of the city of london with its red buses today it's the day that the football association was founded in 1863 and it's been a weekend of sports the rugby the six nations began again great cheerfulness after that long wait and next weekend will be even more exciting to find the winner and uh then also of course over the weekend lewis hamilton won his 92nd formula one win overtaking the record of michael schumacher we still remember in our prayers michael schumacher after the tragic skiing accident which caused him to retire from uh formula one and uh pray for those looking after him today so other things have happened during this day of creativity in the past um abby aldrich rockefeller founded the museum of modern art in new york and also um we've got two saints in the calendar in 664 since said a saxon missionary died and in 760 cuthbert archbishop of canterbury died it was in his archaeopiscopet that england became two provinces and the pallium was was given to the archbishop of york as well causing the the two provinces of today from that moment onwards well also in 1764 the english painter william hogarth died and hogarth is best known for his sequences of paintings telling a story he was an excellent portrait painter as well but those sequences almost like a strip cartoon are giving a moral all the time and probably most famous which is in the museum in london is the sequence called the rake's progress which stravinsky turned into an opera but we think of hogarth on the same day that we think of the um birth of seth macfarlane who is well known as a cartoon producer and uh amuses us by causing us to see characters that we know and sometimes laughing at ourselves we we think of him for family guy an american dad well here's the modern version of that hogarth sequence but much more sophisticated these days but the hogarth still tell a tale when you go to see them today that cecil chubb bequeathed stonehenge to the british nation in 1918 before that it belonged privately to him because it was on his land there are three great dates for today in our reflection and i'll i'll leave those till then we could go to many more but we must begin our prayers on this monday morning oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise send your holy spirit upon us and clothe us with power from on high blessed are you creator god to you be praise and glory forever as your spirit moved over the face of the waters bringing light and life to your creation pour out your spirit on us today that we may walk as children of light and by your grace reveal your presence 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 o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen on this day the 26th morning of the month we read a section of psalm 119 and i'm beginning at verse 105 your word is a lantern to my feet and the 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 today having finished saint paul's letter to the philippians which we uh reflected on all through the days of last week until saturday we're starting another letter written to timothy the first letter from paul to timothy and we're starting at chapter one and we will have much to say about this when we've read the first 17 verses of chapter one from paul apostle of christ jesus appointed by the command of god our savior and of christ jesus our hope to timothy true child of mine in the face wishing you grace mercy and peace from god the father and from christ jesus our lord as i asked you when i was leaving for macedonia please stay at ephesus to insist that certain people stop teaching strange doctrines and taking notice of myths and endless genealogies these things are only likely to raise irrelevant doubts instead of furthering the designs of god which are revealed in faith the only purpose of this instruction is that there should be love coming out of a pure heart a clear conscience and a sincere faith there are some people who have gone off the straight course and taken a road that leads to empty speculation they claim to be doctors of the law but they understand neither the arguments they are using nor the opinions they are upholding we know of course that the law is good but only provided it is treated like any law in the understanding that laws are not framed for people who are good on the contrary they are for criminals and revolutionaries for the irreligious and the wicked for the sacrilegious and the irreverent they are for people who kill their fathers or mothers and for murderers for those who are immoral with women or with men for liars and for perjurers and for everything else that is contrary to sound teaching that goes with the good news of the glory of the blessed god the gospel that was entrusted to me i thank christ jesus our lord who has given me strength and who judged me faithful enough to call me into his service even though i used to be a blasphemer and did all i could to injure and discredit the faith mercy however was shown me because until i became a believer i had been acting in ignorance and the grace of our lord filled me with faith and with the love that is in christ jesus here is a saying that you can rely on and nobody should doubt that christ jesus came into the world to save sinners i myself am the greatest of them and if mercy has been shown to me it is because jesus christ meant to make me the greatest evidence of his inexhaustible patience for all the other people who would later have to trust in him to come to eternal life so to the eternal king the undying invisible and only god the honor and glory forever and ever are men powerful beginning to an epistle which gives us problems and i'm not going to be able to solve them this morning nobody really can i'm leaving you with another puzzle and these puzzles become puzzles for our reflections the great puzzle is that paul seems to be writing to a situation a long time after the situation which we would expect to find in the church when he was writing it doesn't say that he's in prison but he does talk to timothy about certain places and journeys that we can't really fit into his life if we trust luke's account in the acts of the apostles now some people have got around this by saying well probably what happened and probably is very much there probably what happened is that in the first instance after a couple of years imprisonment paul was set free from rome and went on with his missionary journeys went even as far as spain which he mentions that he wants to go to in the letter to the romans you remember but then was taken again imprisoned and martyred in rome well some say this epistle would fit into that time others think that the custom which was really prevalent in those days of folk writing an epistle to a situation and thinking what would paul have said about this and using fragments of letters of saint paul which were obviously around the churches that he gave fragments within a different kind of construction well you can take your pick but we deal with what we have here and what we certainly have is the way in which theology and thinking and church life developed and the letter is explaining things of that to us but there are some puzzles even in the letter itself the first puzzle is the way in which sin paul begins the letter talking about god our savior very strange for paul to use that god our savior and jesus christ our hope and then his normal greeting of grace and peace is added to in both letters to timothy with the word mercy a different kind of of introduction but still further further on we get to this saying this statement is true and worthy of acceptance that christ jesus came into the world to save sinners if you recognize that well of course it's one of the comfortable words in the book of common prayer but the words this word is true and full acceptance and worthy of full acceptance pistols hologos the greek that appears five times in the epistles to timothy and titus nowhere else in all the writings of saint paul and it's followed by a quotation christ jesus came into the world to save sinners paul is quoting from someone else very very unlike him sometimes he quotes from greek poets and and greek philosophers but but this kind of reaching from the past is another sign to some that this is written by someone later in the poor line school of thought using fragments of paul nevertheless what we have here is a description of the way in which people even at that time were veering back to saying let let's talk about the law and then complicating the whole message and would have to go back to that lovely chapter in 1 corinthians 13 to see the high high quality that paul placed on love as a gift like faith and hope but here in this passage love becomes a corollary of a a good conscience and a pure heart and so it's a a second order and we have to wrestle with that too the passion of paul for that quality of jesus christ in total love is almost tempered by what's being said so we read it and it's very poor line because of aspects of it but as we go through i leave it to you to to choose which path you follow it could have been paul on the other hand it could have been one of his disciples who came much later on this day also we remember that alfred the great the king first of all of the west saxons of wessex and later king of all the anglo-saxons because there were seven kingdoms in those days in england died in the year 899 and we remember that in the year 1513 erasmus came here to canterbury but he was born on this day in 1466 great scholar and we remember that in 1944 william temple the archbishop of canterbury died on this day there is a thread which goes through all three of those and it's a thread of scholarship leading to social action and alfred the great was king at a time when england was at a poor pass the viking raids had had ravaged the country in the 860s of the saxon time and monasteries were at their wit's end know how to deal with this and scholarship went out of the window there's a story of the well there's a fact of the fact of a document from this monastery here of saxon document and the scholar nicholas brooks says uh that the monk who wrote it must either have been blind and couldn't see what he was writing or had no knowledge of the latin language he was writing in but that wasn't unusual in those days scholarship had gone out of the window because of the situation of the disorganization of the country and alfred as a great christian scholar set about making sure that leadership in abbeys and dioceses had people who actually understood what they were teaching so that uh is one thread which goes then on into erasmus as i say came here in 1513 and found the shrine of becket rather glitzy and the as we've said before quite recently i think at the chapel of our lady undercroft below much more to his taste in holiness and simplicity and erasmus was concerned for the poverty of the people and the learning of the people as he translated reflectively in great accuracy the new testament from the greek finding much inaccuracy in the way that jerome had translated the vulgate and at the same time we come to archbishop william temple now here was a giant amongst archbishops in terms of scholarship and prayer leading to social action and intention temple came here because winston churchill chose him prime minister's prerogative in those days to choose the archbishop and suggested his name to king george vi and he said temple is the only half-crown article in a six-penny bazaar and he was talking about the bishops of england at that time a sixth bernie bazaar but here was a half crown article chatrou did not agree with temple's political or social views but he knew that he needed an archbishop of quality as the war went on through and came to an end where england would have to rebuild and recreate and so temple was on st george's day and shakespeare's birthday and death day april the 23rd was enthroned here in canterbury cathedral in 1942 april the 23rd and on june the 1st 1942 he was here present as bombs rained down on this place throughout the night and there's that famous uh quotation also from the a diary at the time of temple stepping out of the palace in his night shirt and dressing gown meeting hewlett johnson the dean at that time who was already living in a bombed-out deanery because that had happened in october 1940 without gas without water without electricity and fully closed and gated and fro coated as he always was and in the middle of the night as the bombs rained round them the archbishop said to his dean at least mr dean you are properly dressed and that must have been a moment of a rise smile but but the cathedral could have been destroyed at any moment it wasn't parts of it were but the people on the roof saved it from the incendiaries which rained down and the next morning the scene of desolation in the city and the death in the city was palpable and real but there is a wonderful sermon of william temple preached later talking of his vision for the new society which would be built after all of this where people would have the right resources and everyone would share in that sadly and tragically temple died suddenly and in on on this day in uh 1944 too too early for him to be the pilot of that reconstruction and that world that he had imagined but others took up the the the uh the work and we remember him also as a great scholar his wonderful uh readings in saint john's gospel is one of the great spiritual classics so let's remember all of that this morning as we turn our mind over the next few days to paul's first letter to timothy and see how in the letter this young man is to help the church at ephesus build itself into a modern christian community which it must become let's say our prayers on this day and first let's see who we're praying for in our anglican communion as we look around the world we're praying for the diocese of ramo in nigeria and michael fappe the bishop there and his people and the diocese of cyprus and the gulf in the province of jerusalem in the middle east and pray for michael augustine owen lewis who is the primate of that province and also the diocese of kumasi in west africa and daniel sappho who is the bishop of that diocese and his people and here in this diocese as we pray for justin archbishop of canterbury for rose bishop of dover and for tim bishop at lambeth we pray today for the parish of holy trinity ramsgate and pray for the parish priest paul blanche and the life of that community so bring your own prayers for your own community and all whom you would want to pray for on this day here is the special prayer for alfred the great god our maker and redeemer we pray you of your great mercy and by the power of your holy cross to guide us by your will will and to shield us from our foes that after the example of your servant alfred we may inwardly love you above all things through jesus christ our lord amen and the collect for the last sunday after trinity and the modern calendar which we shall use this week blessed lord who has caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning grant that we may in such ways hear them read mark learn and inwardly digest them that by patience and comfort of your holy word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life which you have given to us in your son our savior jesus christ amen so we pray each in our own language the prayer our savior taught us our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come i 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 as we say our own prayers [Music] 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 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