good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this monday the 6th of september meadow monday and we've come into our wildflower meadow which last week we saw how the niger had taken over with their golden flowers each year it seems that one of the wildflowers makes all the going and at the moment it's very much the niger but the sunshine on belharry tower and on the golden niger in the garden as the sun rises this morning is a wonderful sight it's a lovely september morning here and bring your prayers from right across the world as we think of scenes of as we have been doing of danger and scenes of people fleeing from their homes and having to be helped or also areas still of of pandemic continuing to pray for afghanistan and all those uh dangerous parts of the world where people themselves are having to be helped by people putting their own lives at risk to do that we give thanks for them just one or two snapshots across the world which actually give a a sign of hope on this day uh the world conservation congress is meeting in marseille from the 3rd to the 11th of september and its theme of biodiversity is is majoring on wildlife protection the international union for conservation of nature has arranged all of this and we pray for all those who are delegates at that very important conference at the moment in california where raging fires have been endangering property and life the residents at the southern end of lake tahoe are now returning to their homes and to any kind of reconstruction that has to be done there so we give thanks for that lessening of the danger but fires are still burning over there we think also of the united states secretary of state anthony blinken and the defense secretary lloyd austin who are flying to qatar this morning in an attempt to reopen diplomatic negotiations with the taliban and any efforts of that sort of course are bringing sides together and then that kind of conversation maybe will result in in in positive results and we pray that they will what else can we say uh in melbourne see we the giant wheel now the the great london eye is something we love to go on because it shows you in perspective the whole city of london it was set up as a temporary activity uh at the the millennium but now it will be unthinkable to take the london eye down well the giant wheel in melbourne has announced that it's permanently closing and so that view of the city of melbourne for people will be lost if that happens maybe it it won't but it's certainly been announced to be so perspective in cities is very important indeed and also an a very cheerful story of the missing toddler aj who'd gone missing from his home in rural new south wales and had been four days away and his family had practically given up hope the police were searching and searching and then aj who's three years old was suddenly found in a little creek drinking the water there having survived with a few um scratches on his legs and when his rescuers came he looked up and smiled and then climbed on to the the lap of the one who'd rescued him and that's a situation of great joy the family is together again and aj looks as bright as a button when you look into these pictures and see the films of him so pictures from across the world as we begin our prayers on this particular day o 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 refreshed 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 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 as i've said it's a lovely morning and not only the wildflowers but also the fruiting trees the mulberry tree also and the bay tree here are at their best on this september morning but i'm sitting beside this really ancient apple tree which is a tree of enormous character coming to the end of its fruiting days though this year it's rooted well but it's got character from the great trunk here and also character from the way in which its branches over the years have grown we shall come to that in our reflection as you'll see so for the moment let's read our psalm and we are reading this morning psalm 30 for this sixth morning of the month i will exalt you o lord because you have raised me up and have not let my foes triumph over me o lord my god i cried out to you and you have healed me you brought me up o lord from the dead you restored me to life from among those that go down to the pit sing to the lord you servants of his give thanks to his holy name for his ross endures but the twinkling of an eye his favor for a lifetime heaviness may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning in my prosperity i said i shall never be moved you lord of your goodness have made my hill so strong then you hid your face from me and i was utterly dismayed to you o lord i cried to the lord i made my supplication what prophet is there in my blood if i go down to the pit will the dust praise you or declare your faithfulness hear o lord and have mercy upon me o lord be my helper you have turned my mourning into dancing you have put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing o lord my god i will give you thanks forever we're returning now to our book of genesis after our special sunday lessons yesterday and today we're reading chapter 33 you will remember that jacob has been told that his brother esau is approaching with 400 men and jacob terrified because he's not seen esau since he stole his birthright all those years before and now they're in very different circumstances both of them but jacob is quite clearly very afraid and he's sent on all those presents those gifts in livestock one by one with a separation between them so that esau has is is going to ask uh what are these and the servants are saying to him these are gifts from your servant jacob jacob's seeing if he can in a way buy off the anger of his brother which has become huge in his own mind and he is quite literally terrified so let's go on from here chapter 33 verse 1. and jacob lifted up his eyes and looked and behold esau was coming and 400 men with him so jacob divided the children among leia and rachel and the two female servants and he put the servants with their children in front then leia with her children and rachel and joseph last of all jacob himself went on before them bowing himself to the ground seven times until he came near to his brother [Music] but esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept and when esau lifted up his eyes and saw the women and children he said who are these with you jacob said the children whom god has graciously given your servant then the servants drew near they and their children and bowed down leia likewise and her children drew near and bowed down and last joseph and rachel drew near and they bowed down esau said what do you mean by all this company that i met on my way here jacob answered to find favor in the sight of my lord but esau said i have enough my brother keep what you have for yourself jacob said no please if i have found favor in your sight then then accept my present from my hand for i have seen your face which is like seeing the face of god and you have accepted me please accept my blessing that is brought to you because god has dealt graciously with me and because i have enough thus he urged esau and esau received it but then esau said let us journey on our way and i will go ahead of you but jacob said to him my lord knows that the children are frail and that the nursing flocks and herds are occur to me if they are driven hard for one day all the flocks will die let my lord pass on ahead of his servant and i will lead on slowly at the pace of the livestock that are ahead of me and at the pace of the children until i come to my lord insane so esau said let me leave with you some of the people who are with me but jacob said what need is that let me find favor in the sight of my lord so esau returned that day on his way to seya but jacob journeyed to succos and built himself a house and made booths for his livestock therefore the name of the place is called sakos and jacob came safely to the city of shechem which is in the land of canaan on his way from padan aram and he camped before the city and from the sons of hamor shechem's father he bought for a hundred pieces of money the piece of land on which he had pitched his tent then he erected an altar and called it el elohei israel which being translated means the god the god of israel it's an extraordinary turnabout and yet jacob still can't quite believe it he has lived with this guilt and his fear deep inside him all that time when he was with laban when he came and found the love of his life rachel when also his sons began to be born not only from leia but from the servants of leia and of rachel and finally rachel herself conceived and bore his son joseph so that 11 sons are coming back but all that time jacob has been terrified of esau and the recrimination and what he has to face if he goes back home and at the same time he's dealt cunningly and in a way quite bravely with laban his uncle and with laban's sons and he has made for laban an immensely profitable estate and made that for himself as well so that jacob is shall we say well off in the goods and livestock of this world and plentifully supplied with with with children and the word of the lord has now told said to him time to go home and that's more or less saying esau has to be faced and jacob is terrified and see what preparations he makes in terms of the the bribes the gifts he's sent on ahead to start with and then his fear increases when he hears that esau has 400 men with him he's terrified that there will be conflict and destruction and that esau or 400 will be much more powerful than his and then it comes to the time when esau is there in the distance with the 400 and even then jacob is making provision so that he can approach esau in humility and penitence bowing seven times seven the perfect number we were talking about that yesterday with our sunday lesson from revelation uniting heaven and earth seven times as he approaches esau and he never calls him my brother he calls him my lord and refers to himself as your servant it's an extraordinary turnabout but there's an even more extraordinary turnabout coming which is reminiscent of a new testament story in luke's gospel for jacob comes in penitence but esau recognizing the figure of his brother races towards him and embraces him and kisses him with great joy that here he is with his brother again and it's quite clear that everything between them in ethos mind because esau has grown up and become immensely affluent in his own right and all the trouble that they had before is just put out of the way to esau here is his brother and he embraces him think then of the story that our lord tells and he would have known the story of esau and jacob very well of the prodigal son there in the pigsty knowing that the time has come that he must go home i will arise and go to my father and say to him father i have sinned before god and before you and am no more worthy to be called your son take me as one of your hired hands and remember he's not even allowed to to get the words out of his mouth for his father runs down the road and embraces him and kisses him and says to the staff bring the best robe and put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet for here's my son and esau is embracing him and really his every action of his is saying here's my brother and jacob can't believe it it's very hard to receive that kind of forgiveness which esau is simply discounting the past is something well that was in and here he is embracing his brother and everything that jacob tries to offer once esau has said who are all these people with you uh and he is is terrible these are the family which is with me now and you've seen some of the livestock and everything else but please accept these as presents and gifts and he said i don't need them we've both done well brother i don't need them but jacob's response is but i need you to accept them as a sign of your forgiveness so esau says fine i'll accept them let's go on our way together but still jacob is nervous and esau in the end goes on and back to seya and jacob then travels with his family to this place which is uh called succus which is simply a a word for a tent a shelter and that goes on also then to check him and um buys the land that he's going to push his tent on jacob is a wanderer with his livestock but he's making his way in the end to bessel we'll come to that tomorrow but for today let's concentrate on all of this which is going on the separation is in fact sensible because of the world's resources even at that time the resources of water the resources of fodder the resources of grey grazing and here are two massive groups of livestock and so certainly the separation in terms of land is sensible but at the same time esau has given jacob full forgiveness and there'll be a sign of that in tomorrow's session when we read uh further in the jacob's story before going on to the story of joseph on wednesday but it's a glad story this morning and the golden fields of all the niger with their with their plenty in the sunshine maybe reflecting that forgiveness and that that wonderful embracing of the brother the one saying in his heart and mind and activity you're my brother the other's still saying my lord can you forgive your servant but it seems in the end as you'll see tomorrow that they reconcile themselves and jacob's heart having received that forgiveness comes to terms with it but clearly he's still ashamed of everything that went on in the past with his brother well let's look at some of the things which have happened today as we go on with our thinking in 1997 on this day and most of you will remember it we had the funeral of diana princess of wales and everything stopped as everything everyone watched that occasion on their television sets 2.5 billion people worldwide is estimated watched that event and it's one of those events where you say i remember that day and i remember how it felt as i said cathedrals and churches had been piled high and public places piled high with flowers and other little gifts that people brought because they had no idea how to deal with their grief at that time and this day was the uh pinnacle of all of that as the procession with the two young princes uh walking through the streets of london to westminster abbey on that fine september day came to westminster abbey and the world watched fletcher has an extraordinary story about that day about he and his family traveling in the hinterland of turkey at that time with a guide who was taking them on a little journey round and going to a village which was without electricity but they were going for uh within the the mountainscape there and they were going for um a refreshment there which had been arranged by the guide who knew the people there and they got to the village and no one was no one was evident and the guide couldn't think why it was so empty what was happening and then in the end as they walked about in a place built of corrugated iron they heard a noise of a generator and looked inside and there was the whole village none of whom spoke english looking at a television set being driven by a generator both the television and the generator had been borrowed for the village to look and they were weeping at the funeral of princess diana and they ushered fletcher and his family inside who were honoured because it was considered to be very much more their occasion because she was an english princess and they sat with the the people there and the guide from time to time would translate to the people what was going on but extraordinary that that event even reached there and that was the the sign of the grief throughout the world 2.5 billion people this is the day also when luciano pavarotti died in 2007 we remember him for his huge tenor voice the belcanto tenor voice and late in his life he became really a world famous figure with just songs taken from italian mostly opera verdi and puccini oprah's like la boheme and tosca turin dot madame a butterfly and perhaps most of all nessundoma which became such a a well-known piece and i've sat in captain garden we both have with people who've been sitting next to us in that opera of uh turandot and they've come simply to hear nasandora dorma is quite a long way through uh none shall sleep because the princesses has decreed it but pavarotti an enormous figure in opera but also an enormous figure and voice with songs which caught imagination from operas really which so many would never see it was the song that mattered and all those songs we give thanks for today and that that enormous gift of of his tenor voice well today also just two more little dates um today in 1757 the marquis de lafayette was born now he's quite a figure in american history and in french history he was an aristocrat and as a young man went to be a soldier across in the army of george washington but washington was very admiring of uh lafayette's capabilities and in the end gave him independent commands and he was instrumental then of coming back to france and persuading king louis xvi whom he'd serve with faithfulness to send enormous resources across to fight with the americans against the british armies and lafayette himself was instrumental in that now later on all those resources which cost the king enormous amounts of money would have been very useful to france itself because uh it was a famine and a lack of money that was going to cause the king himself trouble but at the end of the war in the united states and when all that was settled after the declaration of independence then lafayette came back to france and as a young aristocrat was still serving king louis xvi quite faithfully but was wanting to see what you might call a constitutional monarchy there in france and washington said oh god he's got republican sympathies but he never did he actually served king louis the 16th very well but in various different ways he himself was made the the commander of the national guard he it was who on october the 6th marched the national guard out to versailles where the people had gone and were threatening the lives in great crowds of the king and queen and the queen particularly unpopular because of her foreign birth as an austrian and also unpopular because she was thought to be the one who would cause the king to spend so much money and france was literally broke at that time and lafayette led the queen out onto the balcony in front of all the crowds and kissed her hand and bowed to her with respect and then took the royal family with the national guard guarding them away from the crowds and back to paris to the louvre but his plans for constitutional monarchy never came to any kind of fruition and he himself had to flee at the time when the king fell in 1792 and he went to austria and then came back to france for the monarchy of louis the 18th whom he served all the way through till 1824 when louis died and he realized that charles the tenth the next king by his activity his dictatorial activity was going to really lose the pitch again that time lafayette went back by invitation of the american president a friend of his james monroe and was fated right across the united states and so many places are named after him and of course the great square in front of the white house is called lafayette square the statue of him there and then he came eventually back to france and in 1830 when another revolution occurred which was no surprise to him with the activities of chance the tenth he was instrumental and very powerful in france at that time as an influence of putting the monarchy of louis philippe in place and began to serve that king until his own death so lafayette is a figure of many nations and many times and someone who was trying to make a peaceful development forward by bringing people together and we remember him for that and lastly this is the day in 1939 that the book illustrator arthur rackham died now arthur rackham was an illustrator mostly of children's books and certainly before the first world war at first in black and white inc on paper but also later in color which was so so wonderful at that time he made illustrations of fairy tales of peter pan in in in kensington gardens of gulliver's travels of grimm's fairy tales and those wonderful drawings stay in the mind but at the same time when the great war broke out the the mood of the nation changed and fairy tales were no longer the the thing that they wanted to to to have and so instead he began to illustrate things like shakespeare's plays and and midsummer night's dream which has the same kind of quality esops fables things of that kind sometimes he used silhouettes so simply the the the black shapes of trees and people and everything is going on on a white background but mostly we know him for his wonderful colored illustrations to stories and the great thing about rackham is that when he is illustrating it's not just the people that have character or the animals that have character i'm thinking now of his illustrations for wind in the willows it's also the trees and the plants it's as though the whole natural scene is alive also and so i quite often say to myself or to other people this tree and i could say it about this one this morning this tree is very arthur rackham it has character all of its own it seems to speak to you both of its age but also of the quality of its character and its invitation to wildlife to come and enjoy its old spaces and branches very often we'll find lily sitting just in here and looking out on a summer's day at us knowing that she looks really good in there but rackham with the magnolia trees going under the branches you feel this is really arthur rackham and at the same time he he draws he illustrates and colors with a realism there's no with the wind in the willows and what one thinks of the the field mice when they come in singing their carols and i always think of that because their carol is joy shall be yours in the morning and that was a sentence from our son this morning uh the joy shall be yours the heaviness may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning the old translation was and the field might sing that carol joy shall be yours in the morning as a christmas carol for the birth of christ at bethlehem but when rackham draws the field mice then their boots and their clothes speak of the the resources that their families don't have and also the way in which the countryside around and the the characters are drawn shows not only a happy idealistic comfortable side and the h shepherds drawings show all of that with rackham there's also a darker side showing the reality of human kind and also the reality of nature in its characteristic but is as though the whole of the natural world is speaking from rackham's drawings and his illustrations and his beautiful color plates one can go through so many other things which he himself drew and made for us in in that christina rosetta's goblin market you have with the illustrations from rackham and there's a sinister side to all of that as well which he could portray to and the book of genesis doesn't actually spare us when it comes to sinister things and also sinister sides to human nature and deceitfulness and all of that and in the faces of the people and the animals that he is drawing there is that sinister side as well as the glory of everything there and the world speaking to us as it does on a morning like this so let's give thanks for the way in which arthur rackham could portray not only the story but the natural surround with all its character let's say our prayers this morning on this lovely morning here the 6th of september we're praying in the anglican communion for the diocese of embu in the anglican church of kenya and then in this diocese for archbishop justin bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambus and for the parishes of milton regis murston bap child and tongue and simon young in his ministry there and also the life of baptism tongue church of england primary school the schools are begun now they've begun now so that they will be at their lessons this morning bring your own prayers and intentions from across the world on this particular day as we say our prayers here's the collect for this week almighty god whose only son has opened for us a new and living way into your presence give us pure hearts and steadfast wills to worship you in spirit and in truth through jesus christ our lord amen [Music] as we say our prayer which our savior taught us in so many different languages and one of the great clauses in it forgive us our trespasses is we forgive those who trespass against us let's remember how hard sometimes we're back with jacob and esau it is for us to believe in another's forgiveness even harder sometimes than giving forgiveness ourself to another and causing another to believe that we mean it so let's say that prayer uh together right across the world 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 moment of silence now as little birds sing because robins have begun to sing again as also of the the the various forms of the tits here in the garden the little birds are singing not the big birds yet although you hear the sound of the egg song from the chickens in the background silence for our own proud oh hey it's the time of year when we are praying for all children going back to school here in this country um some have begun already many begin today and our own school here in the precincts comes back on wednesday um we were talking last night to our little niece arabella who has been massively excited because the lockdown has been quite hard in the sense of not being with friends but massively excited in going to middle school she said when i'm in middle school i shall be five and then i should be grown up well that's a nice thought and so let's have our blessing before we begin our day 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 upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen you