good morning and welcome to the dinery garden in canterbury cathedral on this beautiful sunday morning the sunday following the feast of the ascension but also anglican communion sunday when we pray for every province every diocese of our worldwide communion we do so by name diocese by diocese day by day but today we are praying for the whole worldwide communion as we pray day by day also between ascension day and pentecost for the gifts of the holy spirit to be poured out on us individually and also to be poured out on christ church throughout the world we think of everyone in their particular situations and all of you joining from different parts of the world will be undergoing different kinds of lockdowns as we combat this coronavirus but on this morning we cannot but help here give thanks for god's gifts in creation as we say our morning prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise send your holy spirit upon us and clothe us from power from on high hallelujah 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 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 on this 24th morning of the month is psalm 118 and i'm reading some verses from that now beginning at verse 14. [Music] the lord is my strengths and my song and he has become my salvation joyful shouts of salvation sound from the tense of the righteous the right hand of the lord does mighty deeds the right hand of the lord raises up the right hand of the lord does mighty deeds i shall not die but live and declare the works of the lord the lord has punished me solely but he has not given me over to death open to me the gates of righteousness that i may enter and give thanks to the lord this is the gate of the lord the righteous shall enter through it i will give thanks to you for you have answered me and have become my salvation the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone this is the lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes this is the day that the lord has made we will rejoice and be glad in it our lesson on this day comes from the revelation to john the 21st chapter beginning at the first verse then i saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more and i saw the holy city new jerusalem coming down out of heaven from god prepared as a bride adorned for her husband and i heard a loud voice from the throne saying behold the home of god is with mortals he will dwell with them and they will be his peoples and god himself will be with them as their god he will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away and he who was seated on the throne said behold i am making all things new also he said write this down for these words are trustworthy and true it is done i am the alpha and the omega the beginning and the end to the thirsty i will give from the spring of the water of life without payment the one who conquers will have this heritage i will be their god and each will be my child english is a strange language so very often when we are using intricate words with many syllables they're not the important ones it's a language that has been derived from many other sources but still there is a a strong strand of that anglo-saxon plainness in the words that we use of enormous importance and often the cadence when you're reading will be complicated complicated complicated and then the important word will have one syllable maybe just four letters life hope love and sometimes only three letters and the word which overarches this day in its psalm and in its lesson and in its sunrise is the word in three letters new i can never get tired of that word every morning at the end of our introduction we give thanks to god for the gift of this new day and rejoice in his gifts it is at this time full of scents and sounds of the new season as spring is beginning to give way to summer as one walks through the garden different scents reminds one of so many things this rose which is behind me the very old rose and i planted it here when we found it and asked that it went there said that in entering this i was reminded of garden sense from my childhood it's called emily gray and it was much older than any of us at home but every year it flowered and flowered with beautiful golden flowers and a particular scent now nowadays there are much finer roses and they're much more resistant to disease but the scent of emily gray still takes me back to my beginnings and that kind of freshness is everywhere with the word new the gift of this new day on the psalm this is the day the lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it so when we found this old rose still available in the catalogue then to plant it there was a lovely thing and year by year it flowers just for a tiny a short time not like the modern roses which go on flowering and flowering but at that time there's a remembrance of long back of beginnings i don't remember many speeches that i heard during years in the general synod but one that i shall never forget was given by that enormous hero of the anglican communion bishop dennis sengulani of mozambique he who crafted with vision the peace between the warring factions of his nation and started the swords into plowshares campaign where six hundred thousand weapons of war were handed in and created into art forms of great beauty and peacefulness he came to address the general synod i think in about 2005 and in it he uttered a sentence i've never forgotten god has no freezer he gives us fresh gifts every morning that sentence is found in the scriptures in the middle of the scene of war wreckage and the ruins of jerusalem that the lamentations of jeremiah expresses suddenly in the middle of all that sadness you find this sentence the steadfast love of god never fails his mercies are new every morning great is his faithfulness encompassed in that little cameo like a flower amongst the war-torn ruins of the city that jeremiah loved is that beautiful verse flowering like the rose behind me and giving us two of my favorite hymns new every morning is the love our awakening and uprising prove through sleep and darkness safely brought restored to life and power and thought or greatest thy faithfulness morning by morning new mercies i see god has no freezer he gives us fresh gifts every day i will remember when i was vicar of sherban and the supermarket summer fields opened in the old high street there and the mayor and his wife came to snip the ribbon and the young manager proudly showed the aisles and lines of freezers to be completely set back on his heels by kate the mayor's wife who said well these are no use to me i love walking into town and buying things every morning fresh from the green grocer or the butcher or the baker how else would i see all my friends well there is that an unforgettable memory but dennis singulani's sentence is good for us all god is able in our lives to make all things new every day and our prayer as we give thanks to god for the gift of this new day it's as fresh as the sunrise we give thanks for that this morning on this anglican communion sunday so let's say our prayers and today particularly we remember the anglican communion and pray for all its members around the world for the archbishop of canterbury and all primates and bishops for members of the anglican consultative council and for the general archbishop josiah fearon for the staff of the anglican communion office in london and its united nations offices in geneva and new york and those who work in them here in this diocese we pray for the parish of saint paul maidstone for andrew sewell in his ministry there and all his people and also pray for the ministry of rose bishop of dover and tim bishop at lambuth think of all those whom we would want to pray for on this new day and pray that god will give them fresh gifts in their lives as we pray in preparation for the gifts of the holy spirit in pentecost o god the king of glory you have exalted your only son jesus christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven we beseech you leave us not comfortless but send your holy spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to the place where our savior christ has gone before who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever amen so as we come to say our own prayers for all those we care for those we love those who love us and also those whom we are thinking about in any kind of distress this morning we say that the prayer our lord taught us in whatever way in whichever language you would normally 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 so in a moment of silence on this lovely day we make our own prayers may christ exalted to the heavens our king of kings and lord of lords fill you with the graces and gifts of his holy spirit and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you and upon those whom you love and pray for today and always amen you