good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of friday the 24th of september as we gather to say our morning prayers welcome wherever you are in the world and as i always say bring your own concerns your your own intentions and memories and images that you would want to offer in prayer together today from all sorts of different places across the world i'm sitting here in a rather special place it's if you like a junction between five completely different areas of the garden which fletcher has created here and that the path beside me has come from the vegetable and herb gardens which i can see this morning are already in beautiful morning sunshine and then the path this way comes across the formal lawn and shall we say entertaining space of our sunlit space this morning once again i'm sitting in shade under a huge cherry tree magnolia tree and the the large ash tree uh above me and beyond me oh just beside me let me say first is a a shady and damp garden where plants who love that kind of atmosphere really grow well and you can see the tree ferns and various other kinds of plants in that way and then also just by me too the steps going up to the sunlit bastion gardens with their little pools and and the the view over the side of the wall onto the city itself outside and then behind me the path goes onwards through the orchard into a wild space of conservation and also a place where people can find uh reflection as the seasons change it's a a wonderful concept but at the same time we wanted to use this because this is a day when in our reflections of joseph and his brothers and his father jacob two very separate journeys and really many others that have fed into them but two very separate journeys join at a significant junction perhaps i could say also that sitting under the the trees reminds us of that the way in which abraham sat under the shade of the oaks at memory when the three angelic visitors came to see him and one thinks of jacob sitting in the shade waiting waiting for the return of the brothers and his beloved son benjamin with great fears of their safety in his heart so let's begin our worship on this particular morning it's the most lovely day with a lovely blue sky and the sun is shining through a canopy of beautifully colored leaves oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise let your ways be known upon us your saving power among all nations blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief your only son was lifted up that he might draw the whole world to himself may we walk this day in the way of the cross and always be ready to share its weight declaring your love for all the world 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 morning psalm on this 24th morning of the month is psalm 116 it's a psalm of different atmospheres a psalm of great compassion and a sound with verses which stay in the mind i love the lord for he has heard the voice of my supplication because he inclined his ear to me on the day i called to him the snares of death encompassed me the pains of hell took hold of me by grief and sorrow was i held then i called upon the name of the lord o lord i beg you deliver my soul gracious is the lord and righteous our god is full of compassion the lord watches over the simple i was brought very low and he saved me turn again to your rest o my soul for the lord has been gracious to you for you have delivered my soul from death my eyes from tears and my feet from falling i will walk before the lord in the land of the living i believe that i should perish for i was sorely troubled and i said in my alarm everyone is a liar how shall i repay the lord for all the benefits he has given to me i will lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the lord i will fulfill my vows to the lord in the presence of all his people precious in the sight of the lord is the death of his faithful servants o lord i am your servant your servant the child of your handmaid you have freed me from my bonds i will offer to you a sacrifice of thanksgiving and call upon the name of the lord i will fulfill my vows to the lord in the presence of all his people in the courts of the house of the lord in the midst of you o jerusalem alleluia on friday mornings it's always my privilege to celebrate the eucharist in the cathedral and as i do so as i have just done in the cathedral this morning several of these sentences from this beautiful psalm come to mind i will lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the lord i'm very conscious that as i do that i'm doing it for all those around me but also lifting up that cup which the lord invited his disciples at the last supper to drink and said to james and john when they were looking for glory are you able to drink the cup i drink of and be baptized with the baptism i was baptized in that sentence but also i will offer to you a sacrifice of thanksgiving and call upon the name of the lord so the two sentences verse 11 both ending call upon the name of the lord i will lift up the cup of salvation i will offer to you a sacrifice of thanksgiving and then i will fulfill my vows to the lord those sentences are powerful in the new covenant of our lord's establishing with his own human life as he is lifted up but also the way in which in this life and beyond into the eternal life he frees us from our bonds and establishes that huge hope the psalm is speaking of all that but the psalmist is prophesying forward and giving us those lovely sentences to hold on to so let's go then to our reflection and our reading we take the scriptures from where we left off yesterday in chapter 45 of uh the book of genesis and starting at verse 16 you'll remember that joseph has now made himself known to his brothers there is ample compassion and forgiveness and his establishment that it was god who sent him before them to prepare the way and then there is much embracing of the family and particularly the reuniting of joseph with his mother's son benjamin the two sons of rachel by jacob and we well know how jacob loved rachel who was buried in bethlehem and died at the childbirth of benjamin but here are the two brothers who've not seen each other for oh 20 years and uh there's a reuniting and we ended yesterday after he kissed all his brothers and they'd all shed many tears after that his brothers talked with him he's set aside their fears and their anguish and their worry at realizing that the one they are standing before is the one that they had intended to kill all those years before in their hatred of him so i'm starting at verse 16. of chapter 45 when the report was heard in pharaoh's house joseph's brothers have come it pleased pharaoh and his servants and pharaoh said to joseph say to your brothers do this load your beasts and go back to the land of canaan and take your father and your households and come to me and i will give you the best of the land of egypt and you shall eat of the fat of the land and you joseph are commanded to say do this take wagons from the land of egypt for your little ones and for your wives and bring your father and come have no concern for your goods for the best of all the land of egypt is yours the sons of israel did so joseph gave them wagons according to the command of pharaoh and gave them provisions for the journey to each and all of them he gave a change of clothes but to benjamin he gave 300 shekels of silver and five changes of clothes and to his father he sent as follows ten donkeys loaded with the good things of egypt and ten female donkeys loaded with grain bread and provision for his father on the journey then he sent his brothers away and as they departed joseph said to his brothers do not quarrel on the way so the brothers went up out of egypt and came to the land of canaan to their father jacob and they told him joseph is still alive and he is ruler over all the land of egypt and jacob's heart became numb for he could not believe them but when they told him all the words of joseph which he had said to them and when jacob saw the wagons that joseph had sent to carry him the spirit of their father jacob revived and israel said it is enough joseph my son is stood alive i will go and see him before i die there's more of the story to come but that makes a wonderful conclusion for this morning that first we can imagine jacob sitting waiting as i said probably under the shade of a tree looking along the path looking looking to see the brothers arriving and hoping against hope that benjamin is safely with them and will be brought back as a sign of his love for rachel and also a memory of his as he believes dead son joseph and eventually he must have seen them coming in the distance but it was a very very different procession than the one that set off for now they are coming with the wagons and with all the provisions which joseph has sent for his father not only to have there and then where they are but also on the journey all the way back to egypt notice that joseph himself cannot be spared he's too crucial for the life of egypt in that only second year of famine there are five more years of famine still to come and joseph the wise counsellor is crucial to pharaoh nevertheless his love now for his brothers and particularly for benjamin is established by the gifts and presence he's given them and the way in which he makes their journey far far more bearable and comfortable on the way back to canaan back to their father and the messages he sends to his father and also the provisions for the comfort and uh the the provisions for father and the whole community to share on the way back to egypt but he's been sent as he believes by god to prepare the way and even the pharaoh is delighted that the extended family of joseph shall we call it with all their possessions will come down and occupy the land of goshen and be treated as favored citizens with all as we shall see all their their rights and customs respected and this joining together of the two ways which i was talking about a bit earlier with these paths coming together at this point in the garden is actually connecting in a particular way as the story we've been reading in genesis through the story of the patriarchs and matriarchs uh of of abraham and sarah and isaac and rebecca and jacob and rachel as that has developed through and their offspring and the way in which now the the matter is connected notice though and we shall go back to that part of the story tomorrow notice though that the line will not go on through the most obvious one joseph who has been effective in this and has used all his gifts spiritual gifts as well as mental gifts of wisdom and physical gifts of energy to be the pharaoh's best man in terms of looking after egypt at a time of huge crisis but the one who will carry that seed forward is a different one and until quite recently in our story an unnoticed one and when you read down the genealogies of the new covenant in matthew and luke you will find there are many unnoticed ones who carry the story forward unwittingly fulfilling god's plan even though they don't know it the gifts given to them their creative gifts are used but essentially also they become part of that royal line which will be the royal line of david tending towards the word made flesh will be lifted up and give the freedom of the new covenant and the opening of so many gates from this life and beyond but also so many gates and and and places of good news and promise even here and now to those who just receive that gift day by day the one who prepares the way and then jacob quite naturally all very human when they tell this story which sounds to him too amazing can this be true and he needs the evidence of all the wagons and the provisions to gain the courage to believe and to take a great step in his old age and go almost as his last vocation to go down to egypt a foreign land and jacob is set to go now because there he will see his son joseph again and his heart will be gladdened so now the journey is going to be made all over again this has been a story of many journeys and many human emotions and they're set to continue but on this morning we give great thanks that now the two stories of egypt and canaan are joined together for this part of the book of genesis just as they will be separated again when we get to the next book of the old testament itself the book of the exodus can this be true yes here is the evidence and here are the brothers believing and here return to him is young benjamin who is going to go back and be with his brother as all the others are too there's that lovely human touch where joseph says to his brothers and don't quarrel on the way which is is reminiscent of of so many things throughout the scriptures and jesus himself hearing his own disciples squabbling as they think about who is the greatest amongst them all and getting it wrong about what greatness and glory really means so let's let's think then this morning of of um what kind of dates are there for us to to ponder there are three people that i want to remember on this day both of whom i mean all three of whom had september the 24th as a significant day in their lives september the 24th 1890 saw the birth of someone who probably is not known by name to many of you ap herbert he's called sir alan herbert who in 1935 and this is the least important bit of his life really but it's an interesting quirk in english political life in 1935 was elected member of parliament for the university of oxford in those days and since the reign of james the first there had been two special constituencies one for the university of oxford one for the university of cambridge in 1918 another constituency for universities the university of wales and also the universities of uh that had been created in more modern times were opened up and then in 1948 those things were abolished and all shall we call them special constituencies were abolished but ap herbert was just the sort of person of an independent mind who could represent the universities he'd grown up uh with an interest in law uh and had gone off to fight in the first world war and come back and then entered one of the ends of court thinking he would be a solicitor or a barrister and then he became much better known as a writer of humorous articles with serious content especially for the magazine punch and quite often telling a humorous story with a serious content is a way to get people smile and then think yeah there is truth in that and the way in which he poked fun at bits and pieces of political life here in this nation in his articles amused so many and it was particularly so with the law and english common law uh and he published a whole story a book of stories called misleading cases and they many of them were made up cases but they actually took up points of law still on the statute books which actually were slightly ridiculous or needed reform it was a way in which he as a writer could do that with great humor it's also known for writing musicals and plays and dramas which were put on in the west end all of that but misleading cases to me instantly conjures up a comedy series of the which was televised in the late 60s and 70s called misleading cases based on ap herbert's stories about the english english judicial and and and common law system and in it he himself was played as a man called albert haddock um by roy detrice and the judge the ever patient judge who would hear his his cases winding all kinds of people especially the witness for the prosecution um or the rather the council for the prosecution into knots the the the the judge mr justice swallow was played magnificently and humorously with great seriousness by aleister sim who probably is best known to us for playing scrooge in the the the lovely black and white film of christmas carol but all those things show us how many different ways not only of teaching there are but of realization when something has served its purpose and need then to go on and so we we think of ap herbert on this day and give thanks for the way in which he chose to cause people to reform things by his sense of humor and his ability to write and put on dramas and plays and write comic poetry the same time of a very very different stamp we have the day 24th of september 2004 when the french writer francoise segal died and she is probably best known for her novel which she wrote in teenage years which was published in 1954 when she was only 18 bonjour tristess very very different atmosphere from ap herbert it wasn't done with comedy in mind it was done with a sense of intense sorrow and sadness and compassion for the way in which people felt and she was an absolute should we call it expert in creating an atmosphere in which people's journey and how they were feeling she was she was so much someone who i remember my sister tuning into that i was i was quite young in 1954 but for pauline it was an opening of a door in life to show that you could feel like that and that you could explore your internal self and also be absolutely um independent of i think she probably had awful quarrels with my father about such things as this uh because it it taught her to question and we think also of francois saigon's novel she wrote many and wrote so many things but the other one that that caught the public imagination was amy who brahms amy vu brahms the composer brahms and that's a story about uh a woman who has two different kinds of loves the love for her husband and then the love a passionate love for a much younger man and how the two feed in to one another in that the exploration of the internal spaces of someone and our right to be curious about ourselves we've we've seen that quite a lot recently in in our thinkings about reflections and how all this needs to be laid out not only in our mental life and our physical life but in our spiritual life so that there is an honesty about we ourselves as body mind and spirit and her great sentence that i love her quote in translation i shall live badly if i do not write i shall write badly if i do not live well that journeying is in her life and she died on this day in the year 2004. we've been joined by another set of journeyers who are loving standing in the sunshine today and that's the guinea fowl here i'm in the shade they're in the sunshine and they are constant journeyers around the garden the extraordinary thing about them is that they set off on a journey and you think are they going in that direction and suddenly they will instantly change direction and you've no idea amongst the six of them who is the leader it's a facet of guinea fowls they go fast and then maybe they stop and they're curious and they and today they're loving the bright sunshine as they warm up but their journey is constant journeying and never knowing which of them is the leader and you can't spot it you've no idea why they've turned one of them must have have made the decision but you can't see it sometimes they even fly in that way and to see the guinea fowl landing in the morning to come down like like elegant aircraft landing from the trees is is another facet of their own characters well lastly and this is a a happy anniversary for on this day the 24th of september in 1946 the composer john rutter was born and he is 76 today so happy birthday to john who um we value hugely for all the music he's given to the church it would it would be take a long time to read all the ansems and the christmas carols which he's not only arranged but written some of them written the words for as well and also performed with his cambridge singers there's the also the five books of of of carols for choirs in which he collaborated with sir david wilcox right from the beginning and have become a staple of all kinds of choirs right across the world when they're celebrating christmas but at the same time things like his gloria his requiem his magnificat and anthems which speak not necessarily of christmas though in fact the first time i ever registered him was i think in the nativity carol born in a stable surveyor or in the shepherd's pipe carol which which makes you skip along with the shepherds at that time they were both i think written in the 1960s uh early and mid-60s but also the way in which he looks around at the beauties of the world and helps us to understand our responsibility for creation and with that i would name the very popular setting his own setting of the words for the beauty of the earth and also his equally popular setting and this is done for both organ and also with orchestral accompaniment all things bright and beautiful all creatures great and small and then more recently the lovely anthem look at the world and all those things we remember as gifts from john's creative power to choirs to congregations and to each of us as we're listening to the way in which he sets those themes in beautiful music and perhaps that the piece which people seem to like best of all his gaelic blessing the lord bless you and keep you and that echoes the blessings that i often give at the altar so thanks be to god for the musical creativity a different way of expressing gifts the musical creativity of john russia on this his birthday today it's a lovely day for a birthday so we come to say our prayers and this is an ember day when we think of all those who have a vocation to a particular kind of ministry within the church and also the stirrings of a vocation and are beginning to discern what that is we pray for all those training those in uh preparation for that ministry and in our anglican communion today we pray for the diocese of central florida in the episcopal church of the united states and in our own diocese for archbishop justin bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambeth and today for the parish of all saints staplehurst and for silke testsluff in the ministry of that parish there and i am using the colic for the ember day almighty and everlasting god by whose spirit the whole body of the church is governed and sanctified hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people that each in their vocation and ministry may serve you in holiness and truth to the glory of your name through our lord and savior jesus christ amen so we say each in our own language the prayer our savior 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 are men into silence now for your own prayers on this september morning [Music] the lord make his face [Music] bless you and keep [Music] make the face [Music] is [Music] is you peace [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] man [Music] my [Music] my god 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 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 [Music] oh [Music] the skies is [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] [Applause] yes [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] please [Music] [Applause] seriously [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] i