good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of thursday the 5th of august as we come together to say our morning prayers welcome wherever you are in the world we are sitting this morning in the orchard of the general garden and around me apples and pears on the trees are swelling to full fruitfulness it's in fact a lovely summer morning though cooler than one would expect here in august and there's also the uh forecast of rain later in the day one can almost smell it in the air but for the moment we have a quiet time of dry weather and a nice blue sky with the fruit trees all around us to say our morning prayers i wanted to remind you that one year ago today the huge explosion which completely devastated the city of beirut in the lebanon happened and there are news bulletins of course remembering that but also citizens wondering why after such an explosion which was the result of some kind of carelessness no one 200 people lost their lives and many many more were wounded and and injured and enormous devastation to the city and and no one yet has been held accountable for what happened so we remember the citizens of beirut and the lebanon today and also the extreme importance of those who look after safety precautions in any community and any city so let's begin our prayers on this day and bring your own concerns and your own images that you would want to pray for 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 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 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 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 psalm this morning is psalm 25 one of the psalms for the fifth morning of the month to you o lord i lift up my soul o my god in you i trust let me not be put to shame let not my enemies triumph over me let none who look to you be put to shame but let the treacherous be shamed and frustrated make me to know your ways o lord and teach me your paths lead me in your truth and teach me for you are the god of my salvation for you have i hoped all the day long remember lord your compassion and love for they are from everlasting remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions but think on me in your goodness oh lord according to your steadfast love gracious and upright is the lord therefore shall he teach sinners in the way he will guide the humble in doing right and teach his way to the lowly all the paths of the lord are mercy and truth to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies for your name sake o lord be merciful to my sin for it is great who are those who fear the lord then will he teach in the way that they should choose their soul shall dwell at ease and their offspring shall inherit the land the hidden purpose of the lord is for those who fear him and he will show them his covenant my eyes are ever looking to the lord for he shall pluck my feet out of the net turn to me and be gracious to me for i am alone and brought very low the sorrows of my heart have increased oh bring me out of my distress look upon my adversity and misery and forgive me all my sin look upon my enemies for they are many and they bear a violent hatred against me o keep my soul and deliver me let me not be put to shame for i have put my trust in you let integrity and uprightness preserve me for my hope has been in you deliver israel oh god out of all his troubles it's a wonderful sound and it suits our purpose today as we continue our reading of the book genesis because today we come across shame and blame and guilt and fear and the necessity of taking responsibility for oneself every culture in the world has stories and legends which try to encapsulate truths in picture forms and the legends of so many in european legends have come to us some of them north legends some of them greek legends which have been then taken over by roman legends and personalities are given to qualities both good and evil but at the same time at the the root of our christian culture and the culture of the monotheistic faiths judaism islam are the stories collected together in the book of genesis collected by unknown hands and told it first by unknown people back in the midst of time those first 11 chapters are trying to explain puzzles to human nature within the capacity of a human being to do so much good and harm but even those concepts need explanation at the deepest level we began our book of genesis with that massive canvas almost in a liturgical liturgy form day by day the seven days the lights the darkness the perfection of everything that the creator is giving as a gift and now other hands have taken up the story other minds other hearts other spiritual imaginings and yesterday we began that other story today i'm going to read the whole of chapter three no guess then why we're sitting in the apple orchard and uh this is chapter three i'm going to read it all the 24 verses of chapter 3 in the book of genesis now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the lord god had made he said to the woman did god actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden and the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden but god said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden neither shall you touch it lest you die but the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die for god knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like god knowing good and evil so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise she took of its fruit and at and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he at then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths [Music] and they heard the sound of the lord god walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the lord god among the trees of the garden but the lord god called to the man and said to him where are you and he said i heard the sound of you in the garden and i was afraid because i was naked and i hid myself god said who told you that you were naked have you eaten of the tree of which i commanded you not to eat the man said the woman whom you gave to be with me she gave me fruit of the tree and i ate then the lord god said to the woman what is this that you have done the woman said the serpent deceived me and i ate the lord god said to the serpent because you have done this cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field on your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life i will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel to the woman he said i will surely multiply your pain in childbearing in pain you shall bring forth children your desire shall be contrary to your husband but he shall rule over you and to adam he said because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which i commanded you you shall not eat of it cursed is the ground because of you in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return the man called his wife's name eve because she was the mother of all things living and the lord god made for adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them then the lord god said behold the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever therefore the lord god sent him out from the garden of eden to work the ground from which he was taken he drove out the man and at the east of the garden of eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life beautiful and perfect gifts given in the canvas of creation in chapter one so why shame and blame and why guilt and fear and why all this hardship and death these stories attempt to wrestle both in picture form and also from the writers at that time at a deep level with the theology the thinking but all of it set in a way that is picturesque and one can imagine those stories being told like so many many of the stories passing on and on and on yet at a deep level they are dealing with the capacity of a human being to choose now we've got here right at the beginning the way in which blame is passed and as one reads the uh story the concepts of good and of evil are there and in our culture though these fruits don't grow in all areas of the world for an apple tree needs a good frosty winter for its sleep in order to create what we're having now so in areas of the world where there is no winter of that kind then these kinds of apples don't grow but traditionally in our culture it's been the apple that has been seen as the sign of fruitfulness of the orchard the garden of eden yesterday was given in chapter two a geographical location with the rivers running around it two of them tigris and euphrates are names that we know well but at the same time here apple is not mentioned but fruit of the tree is mentioned but what is mentioned and is the giveaway for the lord god once again using the two words god and lord combining the way in which the writers wrote in in those days and giving us um as i said yesterday and the last indominus deis a different concept always the one in chapter one but then a variety as one comes onwards to the god of abraham isaac and jacob mostly known in the jewish faith as as yahweh and um the old word jehovah which we have from that but here we have the lord god both words and the lord god knows in this telling of the story because for the first time adam the human being and the woman has been created in this story to be the companion and and help mate of of adam have hidden themselves and are afraid there's been no fear in the other story in chapter one and the perfection of eden knew no fear and now fear has entered in why because a command has been broken and here again one comes to one of our human um temptations that the moment something is forbidden it becomes oh a thousand-fold more tempting and delicious and and you have this aspect of human life here with the the the should we call it the apple though as i'm saying in many cultures it will be a different kind of fruit so really it's the fruit of the tree and what the fruit of the tree is giving is the capacity to choose for humanity of good and evil love and the capacity to choose between life and death is still held from them even that explanation is given in this picture language that we're getting the tree of life which is then taken away from the capacity of humans to have it it's been a search and at the end of all the scriptures right at the end of our book of revelation the tree of life reappears with its fruits for the healing of the nations but for the moment we've come to the point where the tree of life is going to be withheld for the reasons given here and at the same time we come to the shame i hid myself because i was naked the shame culture none of that in the perfect picture of eden or in the canvas of chapter one nor in chapter one is there any forbidding of the eating of any tree all trees are are given for food in chapter two it's quite different that you mustn't eat of the tree of of knowledge of good and evil and they have and now there's shame but there's also the temptation to attribute blame to shift accountability take it to beirut if you like uh in an image but the the apple is a sign of that and when the lord god says who told you and how do you know this and adam points two ways in blame in his shame he blames not just his wife but god himself the woman you gave me the the the uh the implication is if you hadn't then and there's a series of blames going on all around and they're personified in picture but we know the feelings only too well when we feel shame we want to attribute blame and the sense of taking responsibility for oneself is a godly concept and receiving the gift of forgiveness and new life and the gift of a new day is a holy concept but here is a much more natural thing going on in the quality of our humanity there are things all around us i don't want to pick an apple off the tree because they're nowhere near ready yet there is a blush coming onto some of the trees ahead and my favorite apple tree which you can't see at the moment ahead of me uh is is beginning to turn its apples red it's a wonderful tree though those apples don't keep very long they're better eaten within a few days of picking them and best of all when you pluck them straight from the tree but it's not the way things are so much now i well remember in infancy having to go uh and be pushed along by my mother in those years of rationing to a large apple orchard farm near nearby about a mile away and the time of year for the apple harvest to the nation which had come out of the second world war and was being rationed is still a wonderful scent in my nostrils and mother's excitement of going there we had apple trees in the garden but this was a great mountain of apples and people would come and cue and take from the apple orchards in that way now it's so much easier one simply goes along and goes to the supermarket and and picks them up here's our apple basket for picking things and the little tool a traditional tool made of apple wood which just brings the branch nearer so that you can pick it and fill the basket but inside um here let us place the way that we normally now get apples everyone with supermarket in huge quantities and if one wants to begin to blame i'm only using these as symbols blame in terms of our stewardship of the earth then it's the capacity i've got here also a bottle of pure apple juice um it's the capacity of humanity to take too much and concentrate that too much in areas of wealth but at the same time to destroy areas of the earth and all of this we know only too well and it's been brought home to us over and over again by the changing climate but also within the capacity to think and imagine during the pandemic these stories seem age old and certainly the way they're told comes from a very different kind of culture but what we're dealing with is the unity of humanity and the attempt by one section dominance sometimes it's been a patriarchal male dominance and and at other times it's been a dominance of of one culture over another all these things are temptations but at the root of our humanity is this temptation when we're told you can't do that to think then it must be really worth trying and the only thing that really helps people with that is the experience a guided experience of how dangerous things are otherwise the whole of humanity turns into greedy children needing to be given lessons on how to balance the beautiful gifts which creation gives us but also the gateways to our spiritual part and the illustration to our mental part to open up our physical mental and spiritual creativity these are huge concepts but then these chapters of genesis are in ancient times wrestling with problems that beset any way of thinking whether it be philosophical theological or just the problems of human life of war and peace of life and death they're all here but as we read them we go from one situation to another i brought also with the shame culture in mind one of these you know what that is it's a fig leaf and uh the fig leaf becomes again a way of attempting to hide shame and guilt the apple the symbol of temptation the fig leaf the symbol of shame all these things have nothing to do with the perfect picture given in chapter one by a hand putting it together so many of these things were collected together at times of exile and ordered in times of exile and the history of the ancient scriptures sees times when parts of the nation are carried cruelly away into exile and in the years of exile whether it be babylonian exile or even the exilic stories of of of egypt told very early on in the scriptures it's then when there's a yearning for home and all that that means and it will be the same with people going away to war surrounded by horror but ordering thinking and being imaginative we were talking yesterday about the poets actually writing in the great war so that the apple becomes a sign of perfect fruitfulness becomes also in some of our stories like um snow white with the the the um wickedness poisoning the apple there's even a case next door here at the the house which was a guest house called meister omas where uh it's it was thought that a guest there a cardinal there was poisoned by an apple being given by secret services from from other nations and these things are part of our human story throughout history well we shall get on tomorrow but meanwhile we we leave humanity and let's think of that that name because we want to personify so adam the human being means human being and and also adama means dust of the earth so the play on words these are hebrew words but at the same time adam called his wife eve in our language here now that comes from a hebrew word about life and living but at the same time the greek word which most of the the early church will be reading because they read the old testaments in the greek translation and that word is zoe beautiful word so zoe means life and so you you have human being and life and this the reaching out for the gift of life and the extension of life in this life uh then is the quest of all that's going on but the gift of opening that out much further into infinity and eternity and the restoration of the tree of life and the concept of eden is the gift of uh god giving himself to us in human terms in a new covenant in the way in which jesus offers that so let's uh remember all of that and give thanks for these particular stories which cause us to know something more about our humanity i just want to mention one date today and that is the fact that on the 5th of august the year 2000 the actor sir alec guinness died and he was one of the the great actors uh starting his acting he was born in the year 2000 and then the uh sorry uh 1914 but um he uh began his acting career in the mid-1930s early 1930s and began with shakespeare and and was in the old vic company he played hamlet at the age of 22 but of course we know him best for his parts in so many different films some of them comic personifying people there's one which you will know and a lot of them david lean films um one that you will know called kind hearts and coronets where he plays every member of the ascon dascoin family that dennis price is murdering off so that he can inherit the dukedom at the end and uh guinness's portrayal of each of the asgoinduscoin family whether it be an admiral a general a clergyman or even a suffragette high in her balloon up in the air and uh the the wonderful line when uh dennis price says uh uh having killed uh lady whatever her name is agatha asko and dascoin by bursting the balloon uh and she fell to the earth and i think the couplet is i shot an arrow in the air she fell to earth in barclay square and one by one they go but it's not for that that that he is remember remembered most he did the the uh the the films he did great expectations oliver twist um the bridge the bridge over the river kwai sorry for which he got an oscar playing the tragic uh character of colonel nicholson just such a hero but yielding at the end to temptation because what he had created was about to be destroyed and and and that with it with its tune uh of the whistling marching tune that we we tend to know uh lawrence of arabia he appeared in dr dr zhivago a passage to india all of these things and we'll remember him also as george smiley in the le carre spy films on television but he never gave up the theater and kept acting shakespeare roles but then became internationally famous with the star wars trilogy as obi-wan kenobi and guinness voice was the secret of it all somehow there was a tranquility and a calmness about his voice though he could act other parts of evil most of the parts he played were of great wisdom and depth and sometimes of innocence he played in fact pope innocent the third in zepharelli's film about saint francis brother son and sister moon and played king charles the first in the film cromwell but what i wanted to mention was that guinness became a very he was he was always a a member of the church he became a very devout christian and he and his wife who had a jewish background both converted to catholicism in the 90s late mid 1950s but it was when his son matthew who was born in 1940 at the age of 11 got polio that guinness found himself praying ardently and uh in all his acting career and the all the the things that were surrounding him the business he would find a church to go into whichever country he was he was being filmed in whether it be france or in in what was in ceylon all of those places making films like the bridge over the river choir he would find a place to pray and we're told that he began every morning with the verse from psalm 143 verse 8. i'll read it to you but you will know it well it says let me hear of your loving kindness in the morning for in you i put my trust show me the way i should walk in for i lift up my soul to you one imagines him praying that when he feared for matthew his son's life with polio long before there was any kind of of vaccination or or help with an inoculation for polio it was a deadly disease but matthew did survive and at the same time guinness and his wife went on to become very devout christians and here's a little tag in his spiritual knapsack cause me to know your loving kindness in the morning psalm 143 verse 8 so we give thanks for him and his ability to portray so many different characters in so many different situations on a day when we've been shown shame and blame and fear and the inability to take responsibility because of shame and blame and fear and so the blame comes in even sometimes to one's own friends because one is afraid to take the responsibility for oneself let's say our prayers then on this day and we remember today in the anglican communion the diocese of dornachal in the united church of south india we're praying in our own diocese of course for archbishop justin for bishop rose of dover for bishop tim at lambeth and praying especially today for the area of the north downs in kent which the villages there which we shall name day by day throughout the week um are gathered together in an area deanery called the north down scenery and we're praying today for all those clergy who many of them in retirement have permission to assist and officiate in the many churches of that beautiful area of kent bring your own prayers and intentions as we say the collect for today almighty god who sent your son who sent your holy spirit to be the life and light of your church open our hearts to the riches of your grace that we may bring forth the fruit of the spirit in love and joy and peace through jesus christ our lord amen as the sun floods into the orchard we say together 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 amen moment of silence now for your own prayers on this day so 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