good morning and welcome on this monday morning the 16th of november to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral as we come together to say our morning prayers wherever you are in the world please feel welcome how different two mornings can be yesterday we were enclosed in one of the small greenhouses with the wind and rain buffeting the garden around us dark clouds kept up the rain all day long and the wind but now the wind has dropped and here i am in a sea of autumn leaves sitting beside this hedge which we planted of native species to increase the biodiversity of field maple and hawthorne and dog rose but also underneath the yellowing mulberry tree and with a liquid amber tree beside me still showing gold the sign of autumn or the fall coming on and nothing could look more like the fall than all these leaves which soon will be cleared away to make a clean lawn for the winter but meanwhile we think of our world here we are still in lockdown we think of places of pain and suffering and perhaps our hearts and minds go out to romania with the fire in the hospital and the death of coveted patients but above all else the courage of the doctor who was so badly burned in saving patients and has now been flown to belgium we we pray for him but for all those who are so courageously fighting this pandemic at this time we remember that in 2002 this was the time that the sars coronavirus broke out and began to spread but was contained this one has been much much more severe and the effects have been really unquantifiable at the moment also today we remember in 1940 in response to the terrible bombing of coventry the raf bombed hamburg at the same time in 1940 the nazis closed off the warsaw ghetto from the outside world not wanting outside eyes to see what was going on there but more cheerfully in 1945 on this day the united nations educational scientific and cultural organization was founded it's hq in paris unesco and as i've said before we here are a unesco world heritage site together with martin's church and so and the remains of centaurgastin's abbey as a sign of the way in which the the uh thing continues to the history continues to to unfold so let's begin our morning prayers we're going to have difficulty this morning because revelation 10 is so full of images which poets musicians artists have claimed that we'll have to pick and choose a little bit o lord open our lips and our mouths shall proclaim your praise your faithful servants bless you they make known the glory of your kingdom blessed are you sovereign god ruler and judge of all do you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of this age that is passing away may the light of your presence which the saints enjoy surround our steps as we journey on may we reflect your glory this day and so be made ready to see your face in the heavenly city where night shall be no more 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 so our morning sun this morning is psalm 81 sing merrily to guard our strength shout for joy to the god of jacob take up the song and sound the timbrel the tuneful liar with the harp blow the trumpet at the new moon as at the full moon upon our solemn feast day for this is a statute for israel a law of the god of jacob the charge he laid on the people of joseph when they came out of the land of egypt i heard a voice i did not know that said i eased their shoulder from the burden their hands were set free from bearing the load you called upon me in trouble and i delivered you i answered you from the secret place of thunder and proved you at the waters of meribah here o my people and i will admonish you o israel if you would but listen to me there shall be no strange god among you you shall not worship a foreign god i am the lord your god who brought you up from the land of egypt open your mouth wide and i shall fill it but my people would not hear my voice and israel would not obey me so i sent them away in the stubbornness of their hearts and let them walk after their own councils oh that my people would listen to me that israel would walk in my ways then i should soon put down their enemies and turn my hand against their adversaries those who hate the lord will be humbled before him and their punishment would last forever but israel would i feed with the finest wheat and with honey from the rock would i satisfy them the secret place of thunder well that will come again in a moment in our lesson from the revelation to john which on this monday morning following our going back yesterday for the sunday lesson from revelation 4 and that great vision of the worship of the courts of heaven here we have another set of visions and pictures chapter 10 the whole of it is quite short but it is inspired so much in terms of artistic and creative response over the centuries we read it now then i saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven wrapped in a cloud with a rainbow over his head and his face shone like the sun and his legs like pillars of fire he had a little scroll open in his hand and he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land and called out with a loud voice like a lion roaring when he called out the seven thunders sounded and when the seven sunders had sounded i was about to write but i heard a voice from heaven saying seal up what the seven thunders have said do not write it down and the angel whom i saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever who created heaven and what is in it the earth and what is in it and the sea and what is in it that there would be no more delay but that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel the mystery of god would be fulfilled just as he announced to his servants the prophets and then the voice that i had heard from heaven spoke to me again saying go take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land so i went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll and he said to me take it and eat it it will make your stomach bitter but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey so i took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and at it it was sweet as honey in my mouth but when i had eaten it my stomach was made bitter and i was told you must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings well so many images but the prime image in my mind in artistic terms i could have gone to js turner but in fact the prime image is william blake whose painting of the mighty angel with his foot in the sea and his foot on the land towering across that painting and down below the little figure of john sitting on patmos that's where the angel's foot is on the land and about to write after the seven thunders have spoken and the voice says do not write that down seal what the seven thunders have said it says so god's hand has stayed that secret voice of thunder and instead john is given the little scroll first to should we say digest we can use that as a metaphor or we can actually see him eating the scroll and because they are the words of god in the mouth they are sweet to the telling for that is his task and vocation but in the stomach in his heart the seat of emotion for him they are bitter because they speak of the vocation of the servants of god who are prophets now we're not talking here about the old testament prophets even though ezekiel had a scroll in the same kind of way but john has used that image in a different way and also in his prophecy the prophets are not those of the past they are the martyrs of the church of his own day and the future the giving up of human life in great pain in great suffering at the behest of the imperial powers who claim divinity throughout the ages not just rome the imperial power he is suffering under and christians are being persecuted under but all powers of that kind when power belongs to god only three angels in the book of revelation are given the description a mighty angel and here is one of them it is important there will be no more delay says the angel who has the attributes of the god whom he reflects the cloud covering the holiness the rainbow of god's majesty above him the face shining as we saw the face of the son of man jesus of nazareth ascended and glorified earlier in the revelation all these things but if i'm to think of words well of course my mind goes to t.s eliot and the wasteland that enormous poem called from the heart of the young elliot after the ravages of the great war and then the beginning of the 1920s and on and eliot himself writing that great poem which is a reflection a prophecy and bits and pieces of his experience and bits and pieces of the world experience but perhaps part five is the most significant for this this morning it's called what the thunder said takes us back to psalm 81 the secret voice of thunder which has been sealed up but what the thunder says to eliot it takes place in a dry and arid landscape where there is no water and there's no better description of that dryness which again can be metaphorical or real that dryness which he speaks of at the beginning of what the thunder said and then he talks about that journey and the hooded hordes of people wandering across europe and the destruction of empires later he names those cities that had been great and had collapsed and that little list of great cities have passed and others will rise as empires rise and fall and persecutions happen in the midst of that the words of the prophets and the lives of the martyrs become the way in which god's promise of redemption through the lamb that was slain and above all else the cross the giving of those lives for the service of the gospel and the good news the seed of the church as was said the blood of the martyrs the seed of the church and so it goes on even to our own day but elliot then uses a crow not for denial but for awakening and water and there's that poignant moment where he talks about the third always walking wisdom who is the one who walks beside you with all his reflections of the emmaus road as he comes to the end of this great poem little scraps of nursery rhyme bits and pieces of dante bits and pieces of liturgy from even other faiths and ending with shanti shanti shanti which he says in his mind though from a different culture represents the peace which passes all understanding what the thunder said but sealed up for god in his mercy has delayed and there is now no more delay and john prophesies with words that are sweet because they are the will of god and he is obeying his own vocation but with a feeling in his stomach which is bitter because it means so much suffering for so many in that growing church as it will do through the ages of persecution i said that this is the day of the bombing of hamburg but it's also the day when provost richard howard of coventry in chalk wrote behind the burned altar on the charred walls of the cathedral which he himself as a firefighter had attempted to save with the other firefighters and at first they thought they had done it and then the fire with the so many incendiaries took hold and destroyed the cathedral but not his walls which still stand as a poignant tribute and on the wall he wrote in chalk father forgive father forgive them is normally the sentence he simply wrote father forgive for he felt that the whole of humanity was involved in this evil of destruction and that just days after the cathedral which he must have loved so much he was the provost of caffentry from 1933 right through to 1958 he lived to see the new cathedral as a sign of reconciliation the first foundation stone laid by her majesty the queen he was still the provost at that time and his intention was always reconciliation reconciliation hard won but across the nations john's message in the revelation to many peoples many nations many powers and kings and all of this the province felt coventry could give with its community of the cross of nails twisted from the uh disfigured nails which had fallen from the roof of the burning cathedral as a sign of reconciliation well today is the united nations international day of tolerance and tolerance means an attempt always it's reconciliation a very great friend of ours father robert mcculloch who has spent so much of his time in pakistan was asked by the commissioner for pakistan in canberra to give a message of reconciliation which he has done from the vatican he has been such a champion of the reconciliation of uh the two communions of the catholic uh church the roman catholic church and the anglican communion and has been such a power here in canterbury that we salute him this morning but we have put a link this morning below to his message of reconciliation which was broadcast for this day of tolerance what a hard concept because our instant reaction when hurt is to respond with hurt and tolerance is the message of reconciliation how hard when that kind of martyrdom is going on yes there is great anger in the book of revelation but at the heart of it all is the desire for all nations to come to what is being offered the day when we also in canterbury think of archbishop elfrick of abington he was here for 10 years at the first millennium 995 to 1005 and we thank him for creating a monastic community here where there had been secular cannons it turned it over from there there had been monks before and then they'd become secular cannons but he returned it to the rule of st and we give thanks for him buried here in canterbury and canonized but at the same time we remember him taking over from archbishop citric who was the one who on his journey to rome marked though he didn't know he was doing it the vir francis the way of pilgrimage from canterbury to rome which people still take and meet others on the way and by the telling of their story and the crossing of national boundaries awaken that sense of the words of god being sweet in the telling of stories of those so many messages and images today so much music attached to all of this as well but as we think today of all these images let's reflect on them ourselves for as we were saying yesterday the proper response to so many of these images is reflection and adoration also of the great gods whom we serve who created the heaven the earth the sea and all that is in them and asks us to be his prophets and sometimes his martyrs but always his servants here on earth so let's say our prayers on this international day of tolerance and pray for one another across the world and we are saying our prayers leo's come to keep me warm i think um uh we're saying our prayers today for the let's turn the page to the right one um the 16th of november we're saying our prayers for the diocese of sabon gita aura in nigeria and bishop augustine ohilebo there and his people and also the diocese of dublin and glendale in the church of ireland and for michael jeffries and alban jackson there in his ministry in that diocese is also the primate but um we think too in this diocese of justin our archbishop and we remember that round his neck he wears as a pectoral cross the sign of the cross of nails for as a cannon his ministry was for a time in coventry cathedral and so he is taken as one of the great strands of his archaeopiscopet the sign of reconciliation the cross of nails and here also we pray for rose bishop of dover and tim bishop at lambeth and also for the parish of all saints in luce and for steve price and chris tom in their ministry and chris watson lee the curat there so wherever you are bring your prayers and intentions through the prayer for this week heavenly father whose blessed son was revealed to destroy the works of the devil and to make us the children of god and as of eternal life grant that we having this hope may purify ourselves even as he is pure that when he should appear in power and great glory we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom where he is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever amen so we say each in our own language signs of many nations and peoples the prayer that our savior taught us to pray whenever we pray 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 amen moment of silence for your own prayers at this time [Music] the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of christ and 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 and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and upon those whom you would pray for today and always are men well it's quite a cold day isn't it leo so you come to warm me up but i thank you for that you can go and play amongst the leaves in a moment okay [Music] so [Music] you