good morning and welcome to the dinner garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of wednesday the 14th of july 14th of july a hugely important day for the people of france and so we send our our prayers and affection to all our french friends on this particular day this bastille day 14th of july and also it is a day on which we remember the uh 19th century english priest poet and tractarian a word i'll explain a bit later on uh john keeble and i'll explain also why we keep this day as his because it's not either his birthday or his year's mind but we'll think about that in our reflection the reflection will take us to the fifth discourse in the gospel of saint matthew which is a discourse about the rise and fall of empires and the troubles of time in the world and nothing in human life or human building being permanent i'm sitting on the wall like humpty dumpty and i hope i don't have a great fall like humpty dumpty but there's a nice big tree fern below me to catch me if i go and give me a soft landing and on my right your left as you look at me there's a lovely american oak in full leaf and on my left a lovely bay tree in full leaf and so we're going to say our prayers on this particular day with several themes in mind but wherever you are in the world please bring your own concerns and themes and also hopes and fears to our prayers on this this very special day o lord open our lips and our mouth 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 does 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 14th morning of the month is psalm 71 and it you might say um it's a sound which echoes that him through all the changing scenes of life here's psalm 71 in you o lord do i seek refuge let me never be put to shame in your righteousness deliver me and set me free incline your ear to me and save me be for me a stronghold to which i may ever resort send out to save me for you are my rock and my fortress deliver me my god from the hand of the wicked from the grasp of the evil doer and the oppressor for you are my hope o lord god my confidence even from my youth upon you have i leaned from my birth when you drew me from my mother's womb my praise shall be always of you i have become important to many but you are my refuge and my strength let my mouth be full of your praise and your glory all the day long do not cast me away in the time of old age forsake me not when my strength fails for my enemies are talking against me and those who lie and wait for my life take counsel together they say god has forsaken him pursue him and take him because there is none to deliver him oh god be not far from me come quickly to my help o god let those who are against me be put to shame and disgrace and let those who seek to do me evil be covered with scorn and reproach it as for me i will hope continually and will praise you more and more my mouth shall tell of your righteousness and salvation all the day long for i know no end of the telling i will begin with the mighty works of the lord god i will recall your righteousness yours alone oh god you have taught me since i was young and to this day i tell of your wonderful works forsake me not oh god when i am old and grey-headed till i make known your deeds to the next generation and your power to all that are to come your righteousness oh god reaches to the heavens in the great things you have done who is like you o god what troubles and adversities you have shown me and yet you will turn and refresh me and bring me from the deep of the earth again increase my honor turn again and comfort me therefore will i praise you upon the harp for your faithfulness so my god i will sing to you with the liar oh holy one of israel my lips will sing out as i play to you and so will my soul which you have redeemed my tongue also will tell of your righteousness all the day long for they shall be shamed and disgraced who sought to do me evil so you come to our passage of saint matthew which is a fearsome passage it's the fifth collection of the sayings of jesus which matthew has collected into discourses and here is really the the last discourse although there's one short one post-resurrection but for the moment we're beginning chapter 24 and i'm going to read the first 31 verses of that it's fearsome reading jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple but he answered them you see all these do you not truly i say to you there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down as he sat on the mount of olives the disciples came to him privately saying tell us when will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age and jesus answered them see that no one leads you astray for many will come in my name saying i am the christ and they will lead many astray and you will hear of wars and rumors of wars see that you are not alarmed for this must take place but the end is not yet for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places all these about the beginning of the birth pains then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake and then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another and many false prophets will arise and lead many astray and because lawlessness will be increased the love of many will grow cold but the one who endures to the end will be saved and the gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come so when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet daniel standing in the holy place let the reader understand then let those who are in judea flee to the mountains let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take their cloak at last for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days pray that your flight may not be in winter or on sabbath for then there will be great tribulation such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now no and never will be and if those days had not been cut short no human being would be saved but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short and then if anyone says to you look here is the christ or there he is do not believe it for false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray if possible even the elect see i have told you this beforehand so if they say to you look he is in the wilderness do not go out if they say look he is in the inner rooms do not believe it for as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west so will be the coming of the son of man wherever the corpse is there the vultures will gather immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened the moon will not give its light the stars will fall from heaven the powers of the heavens will be shaken and then will appear in heaven the sign of the son of man and all the tribes of the earth will mourn and they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory and he will send out his angels with loud trumpet call and they will gather his elect from the four winds and from one end of heaven to the other it's just the beginning of that passage we'll read the rest tomorrow but it's talking of so many different aspects of human history anyway it's why i'm sitting on the wall it's talking of the way in which the stones which people build up and make integrate monuments and places of great glory even glory given to god are transient and in times terms in the creators terms temporary works of creativity very important works of creativity for those who at that time are there either protected by them or helped by them but transient and the psalm was saying exactly the same thing don't put your trust in these things the only rock the only fortress the only protection the only thing which is there forever is god himself and the way he shows himself in the humanity of jesus is giving us all these clues now it's very clear to all of us that matthew is interpreting these clues for his own time again there seem to me to be signs of the city of jerusalem having fallen in smoke and dust and ashes from the huge incursion of the roman armies which destroyed it at that time the clue to the fact that matthew is speaking is that that little phrase let the reader understand jesus certainly wasn't saying to his disciples let the reader understand this is an interpretation by the evangelist of what jesus said to the disciples in terms of not trusting in earthly strengths and fortifications even earthly popes for there's always a time when one has to pick up the stones and move on i'm sitting here on the steps of the bastion and around me are the flints of the roman walls which were built to protect the city of canterbury there had been fortifications here for thousands of years before the romans the kantyaki tribe had this as their capital but the romans when they came and took over england in their imperial might they used these fortifications to build their own walls then later it became the royal palace of king ethelbert and queen bertha when augustine arrived there is nothing of that left now but the walls remain and were used as fortification but so much of king ethelbert and queen bertha is left for bertha was so important to the sowing of the seed of our own faith and the way which we receive the good gifts of the creator and ethelbert formulated in his texas references the foundation of law in later much later magna carta but texas refences set out precepts for the very first time to order society in that way and at the same time ethelbert remains with the land grants he gave for this cathedral church of canterbury and next the cathedral church of rochester and next the cathedral church of saint paul in london the fortifications and the palace aren't there time has moved on and things with the vision of others have taken that forward well today is the 14th of july and the 14th of july is bastille day the bastille was a huge medieval fortress in paris and was seen as a sign of royal authority we're told that it had already outlived its usefulness and that the royal authority was already determined to take it down and make of that a royal park but for the moment in 1789 it stood there and to the crowds of paris it became a symbol of royal authority which had become hated because here were people without resources looking for help and in their minds receiving none and the whole thing burst into flame on this day there are many portraits of this happening and we will know that when they broke in well hardly broke into the the the bastille because the governor the marquis de lone who who lost his life on this day was beheaded and his his head was carried through the city of paris in triumph but when he opened the gates eventually uh and his his force was fairly fairly small inside there were seven prisoners in there one of them completely deranged the family had asked that the bastille to keep him it was it was something of the past but the pulling of that down was symbolic of the destruction of the asean regime added as it had been poor louis the 16th had spent so much money in helping the american revolution and then been favored with catastrophic harvests and there really was nothing left in the royal coffers and when the uh the the person who went to investigate what was happening in paris came back and met the king the king said i i think something like is it is it a riot and the the answer was no no sir it's a revolution these things burst out unexpectedly and here they are prophesied in so many ways as we go on through the way in which walls these walls were used for many many years as the fortifications of the city of canterbury nowadays they're no longer fortifications they are boundaries for a long time the boundary of the city and then in medieval times they became the boundary of the monastic community and now they're the boundary of the cathedral community and provide quiet shelter for all coming here and they go in a way all around us till you reach the queen's gate the gate by which queen bertha used to go to mass even before augustine arrived at the little church of st martin history rising and falling and different uses as we go through and yet terrifying and the smoke of the burning of the temple and the city of jerusalem would have blotted out for days the sun and the moon and the stars but so many of these pictures are pictures being used by jesus and then taken on and reinterpreted by matthew for his own community in their fears and to christian communities facing desperate persecutions all of that has gone on through history and while we think of the fall of the bastille in 1789 there was a long time to go in sort of months and weeks before the the don anseong regime came tumbling down completely but the next 10 years would see that happen and then later on in 1815 there was a certain restoration of things but the 19th century was full of risings and fallings in revolutions and things which looked so permanent the second empire of napoleon iii looking so permanent coming tumbling down in the siege of paris and the burning of the hotel de ville after the the franco-prussian war in 1870 all these things are the passage of time expressed in this little apocalypse as we read it even into the 20th century 1958 on this day king faisal ii of iraq who was a young man of 23 he'd taken the throne of iraq in in 1939 or something like that at the age of three and now a revolution suddenly broke out uh fermented by the army at that time and on this day not only young faisal but the whole of the royal family and palace servants were shot against the palace wall faisal already capitulated but this this is what happened and sometimes these things happen the execution of the king or the the assassination of royal families or or leaders to show a complete line has been drawn where the body is where the corpses the vultures will gather as jesus says all these things are the context of human history but at the same time our fortress our rock as the psalmist says and as the the apocalypse says this little apocalypse here [Music] is god god himself who gives himself totally even to death for the sake of the whole world throughout time and throughout human history but we have to be reminded sometimes that it's not human things which will remain and yet they can give a legacy even when they seem to have tumbled down so on this day also let's uh remember something gloriously creative to start with and that is uh in 1910 the death of the ballet master of the imperial court marius pettibach at 92 here it was who um in his long career gave us in choreography lovely valleys don quixote la bayada and the the recreation of ballets like giselle and copelia and la fiumal garde in the imperial valley now the marianski ballet of of russia and i think it came to a complete uh triumph when the connection with tykovsky was established so that the three cornerstones which petrified use with ivanov's help um are of course the sleeping beauty and the nutcracker and swan lake this remains even though the russian empire had only a short time still to go until the revolution of 1917 empires rise empires fall and there is much violence but certain things remain well on this day another beginning happened i said that we are remembering john keeble who all his life after he left oxford all his life was a parish priest sought for no preferment was a parish priest a faithful parish priest first for his father in uh furford and and during his father's work as a curat there and then in the parish of harsley near to winchester but at the same time he was a foundation stone of the realization of a new confidence and a new authority in the church and it was on this day in 1833 that keeble already known for his poems in the christian year which had been published in 1827 and already the professor of poetry very unlikely one really in his thought in his thoughts a professor of poetry at oxford but that was a non-residential post on this day he was invited back to preach the acai's sermon in mary the virgin church and he preached a sermon declaring that the authority of the church came not from governments but came from god and the church had seemed to forget that it was mildly done and yet it was a clarion call a trumpet call for the church to awaken to its true vocation and others gathered around him people like john henry newman and edward woovery pusey all all of them gathering around him they became famous figures and yet keyboard was the true foundation stone and his foundation stone was a quiet ministry to different communities using the book of common prayer but also his own verses which became hymns and also the gifts of the creator in his poetry most of his hymns and and we quote so often because i love it so much new every morning is the love our awakening and uprising proof through sleep and darkness safely brought restored to life and power and thought new mercies each returning day hover around us as we pray new perils past new sins forgiven new thoughts of god new hopes of heaven but that's not the first verse new every morning of the poem the first verse begins in a contemplation of what he was looking at on horseback going to say the morning office for his father in the parish church and writing those verses of of nature and creation down and the same thing happens with his evening hymn son of my soul thou savior dear it is not night if thou art near o may no earthborn cloud arise to hide thee from thy servants eyes that too began with some verses about the lovely sunset that he was watching being obscured by a cloud and the inspiration then came to write the verses of the hymn this quiet parish priest who believed in the gifts of god being given to his community throughout his ministry in gospel and psalms in the way in which he reflected both in church and in their homes by giving himself to his people all of that was a ministry which of course kiebel himself was a human being whose life would end and yet the gifts given went on in the life of the church and as an inspiration to others and we give thanks for that on this particular day of the rise and fall of empires and the quiet pastoral ministry of john keeble and the gifts he had of looking at creation and converting that into an assistance for our own expression and realization of the truth so let's say our prayers on this particular day and give thanks for the way in which although empires tumble and fall and works of creation are finite nevertheless if they're good they leave a legacy and we now have time to pray for the people of france and their present government as we pray for all governments but pray for the day of celebration today and at the same time we are praying in the anglican communion for the diocese of chenguru in the eglise anglican rwanda a french-speaking part of our anglican communion and at the same time we pray in this diocese for archbishop justin and uh for rose vicious dover for tim bishop at lambeth and the united y benefits in the the diocese well as with yesterday let me name the villages because that will give you a much better idea of how things are the united y benefits contains the villages of borton aleph brook elmstead hastingly hinks hill pettam waltham and y and we pray for ravi holy linda cross and lorraine lawrence in their ministry and the readers there paul burnham maureen burnham kevin rawl and lucy carville bring your own prayers and concerns on this day and thanksgivings and i'm going to use first the collect the special prayer for this john cable day and then i'll say that the collect for this week father of the eternal word in whose encompassing love all things in peace and order move grant that as your servant john keeble adored you in all creation so we may have a humble heart of love for the mysteries of your church and know your love to be new every morning in jesus christ your son our lord amen the colic for this week god you have prepared for those who love you such good things as pass our understanding pour into our hearts that love toward you that we loving you above all things may obtain your promises which exceed all that we can desire through jesus christ our lord amen so let's 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 moment of silence for our own prayers as this fresh wind blows through the leaves of the trees it's 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 now and always are men as i said i'm sitting beside this american oak which we planted uh not too long ago really in terms of tree time under the ash tree because the ash is threatened with dieback many people will have enjoyed the shade of the ash tree we've got two lovely ash trees in the garden over a very long period indeed and so in order that uh things can remain the same but with different species uh we have planted the american oak which now will grow up and eventually take the place of the ash tree and give the same kind of pleasure and shade to all those who come here in the future it's so often the case that as uh is said in the leopards things have to change in order that they remain the same so have a good day on this day of uh times when we're thinking of how legacies are left and develop and it's for us to pick them up and use our creative gifts to develop them further foreign