good morning and welcome on this monday morning the 6th of july once again there's a fierce wind despite the blue sky and the sunshine and it's a chilly july morning but you're welcome from wherever you are watching us throughout the world this has been a special weekend because services have also begun again in the cathedral itself and they will continue during the week but we shall also continue to stream the services of morning and evening prayer daily for you wherever you are so we begin our morning prayers oh 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 oh come let us sing to the lord let us heartily rejoice in the rock of our salvation let us come into his presence with thanksgiving and be glad in him with psalms for the lord is a great god and a great king above all gods in his hand are the depths of the earth and the heights of the mountains are his also the sea is his for he made it and his hands have molded the dry land come let us worship and bow down and kneel before the lord our maker for he is our god we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand today if you hear his voice harden not your heart says it meribah on that day at masa in the wilderness when your forebears tested me and put me to the proof though they had seen my works forty years long i detested that generation and said this people are wayward in their hearts they do not know my ways so i swore in my roth they shall not enter into my rest 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 son on the sixth day of the month the morning psalm is psalm 30 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 and 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 profit 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 morning 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 so we turn to the gospel of luke for our regular reading and today we are in chapter 17 and beginning at verse 20 and reading to the end of the chapter once jesus was asked by the pharisees when the kingdom of god would come and he answered them the kingdom of god is not coming in ways that can be observed nor will they say look here it is or there for behold the kingdom of god is in the midst of you then jesus said excuse me then jesus said to his disciples the days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the son of man and you will not see it and they will say to you look there or look here do not go out or follow them for as lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other so will the son of man be in his day but first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation just as it was in the days of noah so it will be in the days of the son of man they were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all likewise just as it was in the days of lot they were eating and drinking buying and selling planting and building but on the day when lot went out from sodom fire and sulphur rain from heaven and destroyed them all so will it be on the day when the son of man is revealed on that day that the one who is on the housetop with his goods in the house not come down to take them away likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back remember lot's wife whoever seeks to preserve their life will lose it but whoever loses their life will keep it i tell you in that night there will be two in one bed one will be taken and the other left there will be two grinding meal together one will be taken the other left there will be two in the field one will be taken and the other left and the disciples said to jesus where lord and jesus said to them where the dead body is there the vultures will gather it's a story which begins and remember they're on the road to jerusalem going towards the final act of the vocation of jesus as our messiah acted out outside the city wall following all that they have done to his physical body and fulfilling his own intuitive prophecy about how it will be they're there and the pharisees are challenging him so when will the kingdom of god come and jesus says to them quite clearly the kingdom of god is here among you now the very first hymn that i was ever asked to write long time ago now in the first of my hymns which went into the hymn book into hymns ancient and modern and all of that i used the sentence it came from mark's gospel as the very first sentence of the hymn of jesus's coming into galilee in his ministry and the first time he spoke in sin mark's gospel in that ministry he said the kingdom is upon you repent and believe the gospel sorry we've acquired a friend this morning and that became the first line of a hymn the kingdom is upon you the voice of jesus christ fulfilling with its message the wisdom of the wise it licensed with fresh insight all of those things came at that time but i'm bound to say that first in the eagerness to put that forward i wrote the kingdom is upon you the voice of jesus christ confounding with its message the wisdom of the wise and i remember the old dean of salisbury sydney evans saying you are talking about the wisdom of this world which of course is foolishness with god but i think your hymn really means that jesus message is fulfilling that secret wisdom which has been given to god's prophets and those who were wisely looking forward to the coming of his kingdom and so i went home and changed the word to what it stands now fulfilling with its message the wisdom of the wise and then creating new dimensions of faith for all to find as the last line of that first verse it's a present reality this is why i use the vanity psalm 95 this morning which was always the traditional beginning of the first office of the day but in it it has that line today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts today the present moment is everything and heaven's message heaven's voice heaven's plan for you can come suddenly it can come suddenly up upon communities it can come suddenly upon nations it can come suddenly upon the whole world jesus is talking about the way things are in this present life we remember that at the beginning of this pandemic how quickly it overtook us and i remember one day we were in the ordinary rhythmic life of the cathedral the next there were no people there and we were streaming live our services the next we ourselves were locked out and on the morning of the 25th of march the feast of the annunciation when the angel came to mary we found ourselves here in the garden improvising worship in this way and that's three months ago and since then of course we've grown used to it but the suddenness of all that meant that we all in our different ways across the world had to respond to the moment and jesus is talking about the kingdom of god being there for us now in all its freshness now and then he begins to talk about the sense of ordinary life going on a beautiful description of life and he searches back in the scriptures to the days of noah he searches back to the days of lot he he could have gone anywhere but he describes the rhythmic quality of ordinary life and people expecting that really when they're in the middle of it to go on forever not expecting at any moment that something very different might happen to call them into a completely different vocation and then that question which the disciples ask at the end so lord where and jesus in this way and i see him looking around at the pharisees who have been criticizing and carping about his message and he is coming to jerusalem to find fruit in the temple which he doesn't find remember he likens it to the fig tree and i'm sitting here in front of the massive fig tree full of leaf at the moment it's a day when we're giving thanks for all kinds of things but botanical last week we remembered the birth of joseph hooker the great director of q he took over from his father and this is the anniversary of his birth in 1785 sir william hooker who for 24 years was the director of kew gardens and built the magnificent palm house but the fig tree behind me full of leaf is no good unless there's fruit on it and jesus is talking about the smell of corruption which exists whenever something which was fresh and wonderful suddenly dies in its fruitfulness those of you who have traveled in the desert or in the scrub land of africa or areas of heat will know that when you look up in the sky there are always kites and buzzards wheeling overhead they sense when something is dying and useless not useless for them and so here's a metaphoric image which jesus is so good at talking about the way in which today if you hear god's voice don't harden your hearts god's gifts come fresh every day seize them listen for the kingdom of heaven is here and now don't let them grow stale or old or unfruitful or even rotten pluck those gifts fresh every morning for new every morning is the love and the gifts of god are given fresh each day so as we say our prayers on this particular morning we think especially of the diocese of north queensland in australia pray for keith ronald joseph and his ministry as bishop there and all his people the diocese of ogu and aninri in nigeria and the bishop there emmanuel agu and all his people and the diocese of kaduna in nigeria and timothy yahaya the bishop there and his people we pray for justin our archbishop give thanks for the weekend that he has spent with us as worship began again in the cathedral pray for rose bishop of dover also with us yesterday and tim bishop at lambeth and we remember in our diocese today the parish of marden saint michael and all angels vacancy there as a parish priest so let's pray for those looking after the ministry there and the reader sarah emmanuel and all the people of martin so as we pray for all those whom we would want to pray for today we use the prayer for this week oh god the protector of all who trust in you without whom nothing is strong nothing is holy increase and multiply upon us your mercy that with you as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we finally lose not the things eternal grant this heavenly father for our lord jesus christ's sake amen and the psalm collect for psalm 30 that wonderful psalm with the phrase joy comes in the morning new every morning here's the connect lord you hide your face when we trust in ourselves strip us of false security and reclose us in your praise that we may know you as the one who raises us from death as you raised your son our savior jesus christ amen so we say together the prayer our lord taught us to say in whatever language and in whichever way we usually say it 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 keep silence for a moment to say prayers special to us for those whom we would pray for on this day [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 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