good morning and welcome to canterbury cathedral on this first sunday after trinity as we say our morning prayers together there are many anniversaries connected with this day two of them special note uh charles babbage who's really thought to be the father of the computer having invented a mechanical version in the early 19th century and john logie bird the the great television person and those two have been influential in the way we've contacted each other during these months of lockdown but um also gk chesterton has a year's mind today but i shall be dealing with him and with father brown and everything chesterton stood for this afternoon it even song so we look forward to that one anniversary do need to remember here in canterbury cathedral is the uh murder today of archbishop simon sudbury five archbishops of canterbury were uh cruelly slain in office alphage by the danes and then uh beckett of course by the knights of king henry ii and then after that came sudbury who was murdered by the uh followers of what tyler in the tower of london today and decapitated there in the revolt the king richard ii the young king later met them on the green and the situation began to change um and then of course just to finish the list of five uh cranmer who was burned at the stake and lord who was executed on tower green we remember all of those but today sudbury who is as buried here well at least his headless body is buried here and the head is at sudbury um so we remember all of that but of course we say our morning prayers together and pray for all those in any kind of trouble the world over we pray for societies riven by conflict as well as fighting the pandemic oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise visit us with your salvation and sustain us with your gracious spirit o 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 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 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 [Music] our son this morning on this 14th day of the month is psalm 71 and we read some verses from that this morning [Applause] 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 a portent 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 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 o god when i am old and gray-headed till i make known your deeds to the next generation and your power to all that are to come your righteousness o god reaches to the heavens in the great things you have done who is like you o god therefore well i praise you upon the heart 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 today on this sunday morning we turn to luke's other book the acts of the apostles which is set as our lesson for morning prayer i'm reading from chapter 23 and starting at verse 12 but it's important to us for us to know that the roman tribune lysius has drawn paul out of the danger of the crowds and the council that he'd been making a defense before and brought him inside and was said to have him flogged when paul said is it legal for you to do that to a roman citizen which is absolutely was not so the tribune has made known to him that he himself had bought his citizenship for a large sum of money and paul says but i was born a roman citizen and the tribune grows a little afraid and a little respectful as well so he keeps paul in custody and paul the night he is in custody has a vision of jesus following night the lord stood by him and said take courage for as you have testified to the facts about me in jerusalem so you must testify also in rome so we go on from verse 12 of chapter 23 when it was day the jews made a plot and bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they had killed paul there were more than 40 who made this conspiracy they went to the chief priests and elders and said we have strictly bound ourselves by an oath to taste no food till we have killed paul now therefore you along with the council give notice to the tribune to bring him down to you as though you were going to determine his case more exactly and we are ready to kill him before he comes near now the son of paul's sister heard of their ambush so he went and entered the barracks and told paul paul called one of the centurions and said take this young man to the tribune for he has something to tell him so he took him and brought him to the tribune and said paul the prisoner called me and asked me to bring this young man to you as he has something to say to you the tribune took him by the hand and going aside asked him privately what is it that you have to tell me and he said the jews have agreed to ask you to bring paul down to the council tomorrow as though they were going to inquire somewhat more closely about him do not be persuaded by them for more than 40 of their men are lying in ambush for him who have bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they have killed him and now they are ready waiting for your consent so the tribune dismissed the young man charging him tell no one that you have informed me of these things and then he called two of the centurions and said get ready 200 soldiers with 70 horsemen and 200 spearmen to go as far as caesarea at the third hour of the night also provide mounts for paul to ride and bring him safely to felix the governor and he wrote a letter to this effect claudius lysius to his excellency the governor felix greetings this man was seized by the jews and was about to be killed by them when i came upon them with the soldiers and rescued him having learned that he was a roman citizen and desiring to know the charge for which they were accusing him i brought him down to their council i found that he was being accused about questions of their law but charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment and when it was disclosed to me that there would be a plot against the man i sent him to you at once ordering his accusers also to state before you what they have against him so the soldiers according to their instructions took paul and brought him by night to antipatris and on the next day they returned to the barracks letting the horsemen go on with him when they had come to caesarea and delivered the letter to the governor they presented paul also before him on reading the letter he asked what province paul was from and when he learned that he was from silesia he said i will give you a hearing when your accusers arrive and he commanded him to be guarded in herod's praetorium this is an important turning point in paul's ministry for several reasons first and foremost lysius the tribune has sent him away a huge amount of soldiers and horsemen have gone with him it makes one wonders whether they were ready to go on some other errand already or whether in fact lysius was so alarmed by the fact that he had been about to flog a roman citizen that he was determined that paul should reach the governor safely along the dangerous road to antipatrice and then at antipatrice on to caesarea just with the horsemen a much easier road but also a road which left behind judea and went on to gentile lands on to the port of caesarea the important place where the governor was the procurator felix a much much more important character than lysius the tribune it means that when paul leaves jerusalem from antipatris onwards he is leaving behind the predominantly jewish culture that he was grown up in and he will never see it again for from now on a different life awaits paul he is taken on to caesarea and there he will spend two years in imprisonment and then the journey across the mediterranean shipwrecks and all kinds of things until eventually paul reaches rome and there in rome we know that he spent some years in imprisonment until he was martyred during the persecution of the emperor nero who had blamed the great fire of rome in the year 64 on the christians we have a testimony from clement the bishop in rome following on from peter and possibly one or two more leaders of the christians there but clement himself became the bishop in the year 88 and was there until he himself was martyred by the emperor trajan in the 99 but what we have from clement is an authentic letter of his to the church in corinth which for many years was read just as the epistles are read in churches and some greek christian churches and coptic christian churches still have that letter of clement in their own scriptures it narrowly missed being part of the canonical scriptures of the new testament but it is an important epistle for all to know and that epistle of clement mentions the martyrdom of paul and infers the martyrdom also of peter at that time but what we're seeing is the freedom of paul to travel around to the churches that he has been going to and founding and encouraging is suddenly stopped he is a prisoner in both places it seems he has allowed visitors he's allowed to write letters but he is effectively restricted from movement he now has to reply to rely on other modes of contact other forms of ministry and rely also on his young messengers who are mentioned so many times even clement himself is mentioned in the epistle to the philippians this must have been a great shock but paul was someone who never minded a new challenge we find ourselves in the same place our cathedral church is still locked though happily tomorrow people in a limited way and with much social distance will be able to enter it again to say prayers and light candles and feel a certain sense of homecoming to that holy place we pray that it won't be long before public worship itself will start and to me the date july the 4th has always stood as a next review date as to when things like that may begin to happen again but meanwhile we've had to explore different kinds of ministry including all kinds of social distancing and the use of technology that's why i mentioned charles babbage and john logie badge as their sort of founding ancestors of the equipment we're using they'd be very surprised to see what's going on now but we've made use of it and we've kept in touch with each other and still letters and emails are things that we can send across the world but even more so we can see each other on screens it's not the same it's not the same the gathering of human beings for whatever reason where we can be intuitive about each other i stood yesterday outside the christchurch gate with bishop rose hanson wilkin the bishop of dover as she addressed all those hundreds who had come to establish that black lives matter it was a very peaceful very firm demonstration and the bishop's message from her own background was of course black lives matter because all lives matter to god and to us and anything other than lives committed to that great truth all lives matter in terms of damage and violence in society is getting in the way of that development bishop rose said the development of us as a great nation where all lives matter but we might say right across the world nations where all lives matter and no life is seen as any part of a discrimination but very necessarily where welfare welfare is everything so we commit ourselves today to all these things and we remember paul in his imprisonment as he launches out from his own judaistic culture to a greek culture in caesarea and on to a latin culture in rome it seems not to phase him it ought to faze us either we need absolutely to embrace new ways while respecting and understanding the old ways because we are built on that foundation all those years back as the letter of popes and clement the first shows us when he writes to the corinthian christians in his own years as the leader of the christians in rome we give thanks for that foundation as we say our prayers this morning [Music] here now the prayer list for those that we're thinking of across the world in our anglican communion and today we are praying for the church of the province of myanmar burma and the primate there stephen san mint ooh archbishop of myanmar and bishop of yangon we pray for all his people there pray for justin archbishop of canterbury for rose bishop of dover for tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parishes of the sitting born area deanery the villages and communities grouped around sitting born praying for all clergy with permission to help and officiate in those parishes at this time so as we pray for the welfare of all peoples and the unity of all peoples we remember the collect for this day oh god the strength of all those who put their trust in you mercifully accept our prayers and because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without you grant us the help of your grace that in the keeping of your commandments we may please you both in will and deed through jesus christ our lords are men and the psalm collect for psalm 71 faithful lord living savior in youth and in old age from the womb to the grave may we know your protection and proclaim your great salvation to the glory of god the father amen so we pray each in our own way and in our own language the prayer which our lord taught us to 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 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 as we say our own prayers unto god's most gracious mercy and protection we commit you the lord bless you and keep you the lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you the lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you his peace the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you and remain with you always amen