good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral as we gather to say our morning prayers today is up a cloudy morning completely dry but a cloudy morning and there's a full eight octaves of cloud above us covering the whole sky though blue sky may break through one feels uh a little later in the morning and last night was anything but cloudy if we had caused fresh and i to go up onto the roof of the corona the extreme end of the cathedral to the east and on that roof last night the sky was crystal clear and the bright half moon the waxing half moon was there in the sky slightly to the southwest and then orion shining in the sky in a way that we rarely see it winter stars with orion's belt and sword and uh are the the stars of orion shining around them with sirius below and our attention was on the planet mars which was slightly to the right of the half moon for we knew that that day the nasa spacecraft had landed and the little rover was beginning to send back pictures of the planet mars and so to to see it from all those miles away it was launched last july and it arrived yesterday is a wonderful aspect of human endeavor we'll talk more about that in our reflection but for the moment we look at the wonder of the sky but also the wonder of the earth i'm sitting in the vegetable garden and it's being prepared now for the new growing season the snows for the moment have gone they kept little plants uh warm and around me and bluebell leaves are here and daffodil leaves we've got all kinds of little plants growing up but there are green artichoke leaves which have not been affected by the snow and frost at all and under the bin here rhubarb is being forced on so that we can have some early no sign of any asparagus yet but over on this side things being prepared with some well-pruned roses um inside the box hedges so feel welcome wherever you are as we say our prayers on this winter morning and we give thanks for the glories of creation oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise hear our voice o lord according to your faithful love according to your judgment give us life blessed are you god of compassion and mercy to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of our sin your light breaks forth like the dawn and your healing springs up for deliverance as we rejoice in the gift of your saving help sustain us with your bountiful spirit and open our lips to sing your 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 as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm our morning psalm on this 19th morning of the month is psalm 96 sing to the lord a new song sing to the lord all the earth sing to the lord and bless his name tell out his salvation from day to day declare his glory among the nations and his wonders among all peoples for great is the lord and greatly to be praised he is more to be feared than all gods for all the gods of the nations are but idols it is the lord who made the heavens honor and majesty are before him power and splendor are in his sanctuary ascribe to the lord you families of the peoples ascribe to the lord honor and strength ascribe to the lord the honor due to his name bring offerings and come into his courts o worship the lord in the beauty of holiness let the whole earth tremble before him tell it out among the nations that the lord is king he has made the world so firm that it cannot be moved he will judge the peoples with equity let the heavens rejoice let the earth be glad that the sea thunder and all that is in it let the fields be joyful and all that is in them let all the trees of the wood shout for joy before the lord for he comes he comes to judge the earth with righteousness he will judge the world and the peoples with his truth so we take up the story in st john's gospel that we left yesterday of jesus conversation with the woman at the well and we take it up from verse 27 of chapter 4 just then his disciples came back they marveled that jesus was talking with a woman but no one said what do you seek or why are you talking with her so the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people come and see a man who told me all that i ever did can this be the christ and the people went out of the town and were coming to jesus but meanwhile the disciples were urging him saying rabbi eat but he said to them i have food to eat that you do not know about so the disciples said to one another has anyone brought him something to eat jesus said to them my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work do you not say there are yet four months then comes the harvest look i tell you lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life so that sarah and reaper may rejoice together for here the saying holds true one sows and another reaps i sent you to reap that for which you did not labor others have labored and you have entered into their labor many samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony he told me all that i ever did so when the samaritans came to him they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days and many more believed because of his word they said to the woman it is no longer because of what you said that we believe for we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world wonderful part of st john's gospel explaining parts of this conversation but leaving the conversation of the woman at the well who's never named and walks out of the gospel at the end of this chapter or before the end of this chapter giving us so much to ponder so much to think about because of course we ourselves are part of that conversation and as we've said in the gospels jesus is always speaking to us confronting us with the sentences he is saying in saint john's gospel as we said at the beginning when we began our our reading of chapter three of saint john on monday with the conversation with nicodemus jesus is always walking working on two planes metaphorically in heaven above with all the clouds passing over me so fast this morning and then just echoes of the blue sky and metaphorically jesus talks about up there in heaven but he's talking about an eternal dimension which humanity has the capacity to receive and imagine and we get glimpses of that this morning meanwhile down here on earth we are actually sitting in the vegetable garden and looking at the way the earth can produce harvests and flowers and fruitfulness and jesus uses those images as well this morning do not say four months more and then comes the harvest well we might say the same kind of thing this morning about some of these things like the artichokes or the asparagus or later on with the vegetables in the vegetable garden itself or the fruits or flowers and all of those things are part of our understanding of the earth which is our home but at the same time as we go on our lenten journey and i remember remind you of our project to pluck us a sprig of thought and turn that into some kind of action and market for this day as we do that we think of our capacity not only to think and invent new things but also to imagine and we come also on this occasion to the way in which the samaritan people and think how many barriers jesus is crossing in order to be talking in this way and receiving an invitation from the samaritans at saika as he stays with them a further two days i think the disciples were fairly shocked at that because they were galileans of a of a sort who were rooted in the earth with all the kind of prejudices that that seems to grow up in different cultures and they're learning to break out and bounce themselves but see how so often in saint john's gospel jesus speaks in terms which are metaphorical and entering into the concepts of the kingdom of heaven while at the same time those who receive it like the woman saying yesterday when he offered her living water and she said but how can you give me that you have no bucket you're back on earth again we bounce from earth to heaven to earth so often it's in john's gospel and for every one of us it's a lifetime's contemplation and study and also too we have a new title given in psycha at this samaritan village by the people who have heard him gladly not just through the woman's words though she was the evangelist who brought them to jesus and now because of jesus's own words they begin to understand and realize that they have before them here's the title the savior of the world that title one knows how images can crop up in one's mind instantly and the minute i hear that the savior of the world my mind goes once again to the national gallery in edinburgh where there is the most marvelous el greco painting of jesus the savior of the world one hand with the globe looking so beautiful and one hand in blessing and that that painting has stayed with me from the very first viewing of it in teenage years and that was a really important sight the savior of the world but all our titles since john has already given us son of man in jesus own words because that was the title he gave to himself the emblem of our humanity in its totality and also son of god the evangelist gives us that and it's quite clear that the evangelist in writing is wanting us to accept and embrace the same christ that is speaking to the woman of samaria and opening out the fruitfulness of earth into the fruitfulness of heaven and eternal things which will transform her life and then come back to earth so that she in life and in words and in all sorts of ways may be as we can an evangelist speaking of the news of the savior of the world but on this day there are many things to think about i started on the corona of the cathedral looking at the sky last night in all its clarity i've always been fonder of winter stars i mean when it gets dark in the evening and one has time to look and it's difficult in canterbury because of all the ambient light and floodlights and everything else the university lights on the hill shining all night long it's very difficult indeed to see the stars with clarity but looking south from the cathedral roof is still probably the best way and south early in the evening as it gets dark and goes on to midnight for winter stars is one of the most attractive sights in the heavens particularly on a night like last night normally if there's a moon it disturbs the crystal quality of the stars but the moon was bright but the sky is so clear that as i said orion and the pleiades both mentioned of course in the book of job as wonders of creation uh were just so clear in the sky that one stood in wonder but at the same time humanity has a capacity to wander and explore but at the same time to think in particular and small ways i am looking at the fragments and pebbles and stones and good earth of the vegetable garden but also yesterday on our news bulletins we saw the earth or whatever one would call it the the stones and fragments of the red planet which the rover machine is now exploring to find traces of whether had there's ever been water on mars all the kinds of things that humanity wants to explore and whether any kind of life ever existed there i know when we grew up reading comics with dan dare the martians were people who were coming now we know so much more about the red planet and we shall gain more knowledge but still it doesn't take away the wonder and dimension of the winter sky bad of me to say that summer stars are much less interesting um but it it is so when looks into the southern sky but winter stars in all their clarity if you can bear the cold are the ones to look at and it's interesting to to see that yesterday the prime minister announced a new agency a high-risk science agency to look for ground-breaking discoveries it's to be called we're told reminiscent of the opera aria advanced research and invention agency to fund high-risk high-reward scientific research and we know how important scientific research which this nation has always excelled in but one remembers also that the the the uh nassau spacecraft is full of uh inventions from many different nations and it's it's a wonder of the cooperation of the world that that is up there with um cameras from spain and and uh even uh the the parachute from a little family firm in devon a firm that began just after the second world war uh a collection together of of nations with all kinds of of inventions in order to reach out into space to find particular things hopefully for the benefit of humanity we've seen how important scientific research is in the vaccines which have been developed so quickly and it's a a wonder to to to contemplate that and the gifts that humanity has this morning but the sense of being on earth and in our minds and in our spirits to journey at the invitation of jesus into another dimension to receive the gifts of the spirit and also to allow our own creative gifts to flower for the encouragement of each other becomes something wonderful and something in our project we can note down when we contemplate just one aspect of what we're thinking today what else do we have on this 19th of february apart from perseverance landing yesterday and the results coming through today well we have uh in um 1408 the battle of brahma moore when henry iv defeated the percy family in the north and uh consolidated his reign in england percies were supporters of richard ii who was a a great supporter of this cathedral church but then henry iv is buried here so one can't be too picky in uh great historic places because you have dimensions of different sides politically though in fact dean percy was one of my predecessors and his portrait is in the library and looks for all the world to me like one of jane austen's clerical heroes like mr tilney or someone of of that kind in in northanger abbey uh and then in 1717 now this is really important um the actor david garrick uh was born and i feel a kinship to him in two ways because he was born in hereford and then he was educated because his family had moved in litchfield when i was ordained and so his name was common there but his real name really is in london where for years he was the manager and chief actor at the theater world drury lane and he it was who really brought shakespeare to the mind and hearts of the english people at that time um alexander pope when he first the poet when he first saw garrick act said that young man never had his equal as an actor and he will never have a rival and then nicholas tindall a clerical writer about garrick's life said the deaf hear him by seeing his action the blind see him by hearing his voice garrick was a new kind of actor who acted his humanity into every part and all that began with his representation of the tragic figure of richard iii a person who is very false as well as his qualities were all mixed up and of course he came to a very tragic end but we give thanks today for the capacity of someone like garrick the first actor to be put into poet's corner when he died at westminster abbey i think only two have followed but i might be quite wrong i think sir henry irving and sir lawrence olivier but there may be more since then because i'm i'm not up to speed but certainly garrick was the first and the capacity of us to act parts knowing that we are inspiring people with reminiscences of characters but the real part of course we have to act is our own role on this stage and uh hamlet's soliloquy reminds us of that so let's give thanks for david garrick on this day and the way in which he calls the deaf to hear him by seeing his action and the blind to see him by hearing his voice a wonderful sentence about him great friend of dr samuel johnson who lamented his too early death uh then we see in ways in which we can actually destroy our earth the oil tanker sea empress was grounded near milford haven in 1996 on this day and soon after 3 500 seabirds were washed ashore dead and the fishing around that was was for years uh damaged we see what we can do in terms of creativity and scientific discovery and how easy it is sometimes by accident to destroy the fragility of the earth so all those things on this morning and if we're giving thanks for actors we remember that in 1985 the soap opera which many of us enjoy we certainly do eastenders was screened for the very first time talking of a human community with all its faults and joys and and community activity which at the moment we are so constricted and restricted in carrying out so we have to remember our friends and reach out to them in imaginative ways of encouragement as we keep saying so don't forget to pick your spring what has moved you and use it creatively today and note it for this first friday of lent in your chart we're praying today for the diocese of arakania in the episcopal anglican church of chile and we remember all our friends there and at the same time we are praying in our own diocese for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambeth and today for the benefits of kale hill with westwell beautiful part of kent enclosing the diocese the sorry the parishes villages of charring charring heath edgerton hothfield little chart pluckley and westwell we have all kinds of friends there and we remember particularly our close friends chris and martin who live at the in the parish of hosfield and chris of course is our vet who looked after the uh both tiger and uh monkey when he was uh sick towards the end and and fought a heroic battle to save him and uh we remember also that that benefits of kale hill and westwell is expecting a new parish priest a new incumbent the reverend sandra marsh this spring say we pray for sandra as she prepares herself for this ministry let's send say the special collect for this time of lent bring your own prayers and intentions to this almighty and everlasting god you hate nothing that you have made and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent create in making us new and contrite hearts that we worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness may obtain from you the god of all mercy perfect remission and forgiveness through jesus christ our lord are men so as we think of the title savior of the world we pray the prayer our savior taught us and his disciples to pray use whatever language you would normally use 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 now as the birds sing so well this morning thrashes and robins all around us [Music] christ give you grace to grow in holiness to deny yourself take up your cross daily and follow him 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 [Music] so [Music] you