good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this saturday morning the 27th of november it's the last day of the christian year and it's at the moment we're in the middle of a hailstorm uh but i'm out here in the uh walled garden with all the creatures who've come to say farewell to this last christian year and we'll say our prayers together i'll get as much shelter as i can from this uh little shelter which were such a built for uh winnie and clemmy as you'll remember and everyone is having their breakfast at the moment but we will say our prayers together and wherever you are in the world please feel welcome to join us on this last day of the christian year before a new day a new christian year starts with advent sunday tomorrow oh 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 to 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 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 this morning is psalm 121. i lift up my eyes to the hills from where is my help to come my help comes from the lord the maker of heaven and earth he will not suffer your foot to stumble he who watches over you will not sleep behold he who keeps watch over israel shall neither slumber nor sleep the lord himself is your keeper the lord is your shade at your right hand so that the sun shall not strike you by day neither the moon by night the lord shall keep you from all evil it is he who shall keep your soul the lord shall keep watch over your going out and your coming in from this time force for evermore one of the short sounds which follow as we end the reading the long reading of the long psalm 119 but we're going now to a lesson not from the first four books of the old testament but the last of the five deuteronomy i'm coming to the very last chapter of deuteronomy chapter 34 and we'll read the whole of that it actually is a farewell to moses and deuteronomy is is like a a memory of everything as it's written through of law and the passage of the children of israel as they go through their journey through the wilderness until this moment we're now at that at the end of that 40 years of waiting at kadesh barnea and they're ready to enter the promised land but they will do so under different leadership so let me just back away a little bit from the rain and uh which is turning rather wet now the hail has stopped and read chapter 34 of the book deuteronomy then moses went up from the plains of moab to mount nebo the top of pisgah which is opposite jericho and the lord showed him all the land gilead as far as dan all naftali the land of ephraim and manasseh all the land of judah as far as the western sea the negeb and the plain that is the valley of jericho the city of palm trees as far as zoar and the lord said to him this is the land of which i swore to abraham to isaac and to jacob i will give it to your offspring i have let you see it with your eyes but you shall not go over that so moses the servant of the lord died there in the land of moab according to the word of the lord and he buried him in the valley in the land of moab opposite bespal but no one knows the place of his burial to this day moses was 120 years old when he died his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated and the people of israel wept for moses in the plain of moab for 30 days then the days of weeping and mourning for moses were ended and joshua the son of none was full of the spirit of wisdom for moses had laid his hands on him so the people of israel obeyed him and did as the lord had commanded moses and there has not arisen a prophet since in israel like moses whom the lord knew face to face none like him for all the signs and the wonders that the lord sent him to do in the land of egypt to pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that moses did in the sight of all israel so after all these weeks we say farewell to moses and the baton so to speak of leadership is handed on it's handed on to joshua the son of nun and notice how it says that joshua is filled with the spirit of wisdom and moses has laid his hands on him it's a gesture of going forward and the transmitting of power one thinks how in the old testament certain things are reserved for certain people to do and when that task is over then that task is handed on perhaps it's a good thing to be thinking about on this last day of a christian year as a new year takes up a new beginning tomorrow with advent sunday but for this morning we're going with moses to the very top of mount nebo pisgah means summit and on the summit the lord shows him in a vision rather like the pilgrims in in pilgrim's progress on the delectable mountains looking in the distance at the eternal city to which they will travel moses though is being released from the physical journey now but he is being given the promise which has been given to abraham isaac and jacob and the children of israel he's brought them thus far and we've seen what tribulation moses had to have as that went forward and now he's looking and there's that lovely description of everything he is seeing right across the jordan that's where they're going but not moses moses time is over and he will have rest his life now is in the vision and the rest and peace of the eternal kingdom a different kind of promised land and it's joshua full of strengths and human wisdom who will take the people forward we're told also in the book of numbers caleb is there to assist as well those two who went and spied out the land and wanted to go forward saying the lord is with us why on earth shouldn't we go now and for 40 years they've waited and now the time has come that they will go forward waiting is oftentimes a part of vocation but as we said yesterday coming almost to the end and conclusion and then leaving the job just not quite finished and at that point the whole enterprise is in danger of failing but now here we are with joshua taking the torch taking the battle of leadership and going to go forward and it's a good place to end this christian year one thinks in the uh testament as it will happen from then on perhaps of david who king david who thought it was his task to build the lord a temple in jerusalem that the battle had to be handed on to solomon that was his vocation it had been david's vocation to establish his royal line in jerusalem but his son solomon to build the temple and then one things of elijah and elisha how at that time elijah handed on the mantle of prophecy and that going up to heaven in fiery chariots as elisha his successor takes on the role well we can we can see how that happens throughout history in every nation that one will come with a particular vocation and then another will come with a different vocation to take it on the next step it might be in a completely different direction but at the same time there is a fulfillment to the foundation which has been laid by the first one and this is a day when uh with all this rainfall and uh spots of hail we think of going forward moses went to the summit i've come right down to the base and like the prodigal son and um i'm sheltering in the little uh shelter that was made for the winnie and clemmy who are standing here oblivious to all that's going on but the poor hens aren't they're rather wet but as we as we go on let's think of the the dates that we have today given to us as as part of our reflection on this day in uh let's see 1852 november the 7th 27th 1852 ada counties of lovelace died why should we be thinking of her you might say to me the answer is she was a mathematician of the first order and is known strangely as the first computer programmer 1852 she died she'd been born in 1815 and died of a cancer in at age 36 but by then she had done wonderful things as a supporter of charles babbage who was working at a mechanical general purposes computer the analytical engine and she was the one to recognize that the machine had applications beyond calculation and to have published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine 1852 if she could look forward and see what has happened to her particular discovery and the way it has developed how she would wonder it stands at the foundation of so many things that we do now and yet here is a first step having died at the age of 36 she handed on that baton to others and it's still being handed on and handed on and really what would we do without it today how would i be talking to you and you um responding to me by understanding everything that's going on visually as well as verbally and yet she at the beginning had that spark of an insight she went to uh metaphorically the top of mount nebo the very summit pisgah the summit and perhaps look forward and decided that here was something that was wonderful and that first computer program all mechanical at that time lies at the foundation of the work of many others as the battle or the torch was passed on and on and on resting on that foundation she was the daughter of lord byron the poet and she herself had many gifts but this particular gift of mathematics was very much hers and as she left this world at a very early age of 36 she left that almost a prophecy of how things would go forward the word algorithm is something probably which wasn't much used from then on in the 19th century even 20th century and on now here we are in this century and an algorithm is something which we rely on day by day in all kinds of different ways so thanks be to god for that peace of a particular journey which is handed on to someone else and now i want to go to someone who is fairly familiar familiar to us we've we've dealt with her many times before and referencing the things that she wrote today aged 94 in 2014 phyllis james better known to us as p d james died and she by then had had the most remarkable life we know her best for her in common terms her detective stories but she was the most amazing public servant in the health service and also in the home office and served the country in so many different ways let me just move back a little bit or everything is going to run um and i want to read something from one of her books in a moment it's not a detective story at all i knew her as a lay patron of the prayer book society representing that society on the liturgical commission as part of her life in older age but in 1991 she was called to parliament in westminster as a life peer she became baroness james of holland park where one of her houses actually was located and at that time she had really begun to write in a big way the two detectives adam dalglish and cordelia gray we remember as well but most of her works were set in fairly closed communities a publishing house a barrister's chambers a theological college an island a private clinic and in there she investigated the people as they went round and as you will remember as we've spoken about her before she had care of her husband connor who had come back from the second world war mentally ill and had to be for most of his time institutional lies but he would sign himself out and come back home and phyllis said at that time she had no idea what she would come home to face when he died in 1964 she then offered herself to public service i'm saying all these things but none of these things are talking about the book i want to talk about that she wrote it's called a time to be in earnest a fragment of autobiography she wrote it in the year 2000 here it is my copy it was a gift because i began to read it when i was staying at a particular house and it was on the bedside table and afterwards i mentioned how much i liked it and when i came back that house was in washington at the home of a friend barbie harper when i came back i found a parcel arrived with that book in it and so this book is the fragment of autobiography she said at the age of 77 she would take dr johnson's advice that it was time to be in earnest and write a diary every day for one year i'm going to read you what she says about this book a diary by definition is a daily record i very much doubt whether this proposed record of one year in my life will be a diary within the proper meaning of that word certainly i can't see myself recording the events of every day i feel too that many social events can't properly be mentioned since i have no intention of betraying confidences and some of the most interesting things i learn are said to me in confidence i love gossip in other people's diaries while recognizing that its interest is in inverse proportion to its truth but i suspect that this record will have little to offer in the way of titillating revelations and to look back on one's life is to experience the capriciousness of memory when i was very young and leaving church with my mother she told me that the hymn we had sung blessed are the pure in heart was sung at the funeral of a friend of hers who had died in childbirth with her baby during the great flu pandemic which followed the first world war now i can never hear it without thinking of that young mother and her child both dead before i was born no effort of will can banish a vague unfocused sadness from my thoughts every time that hymn is sung and the past is not static it can be relived only in memory and memory is a device for forgetting as well as remembering it too is not immutable it rediscovers reinvents reorganizes like a passage of prose it can be revised and repunctuated to that extent every autobiography is a work of fiction and every work of fiction is an autobiography so tomorrow and she was writing on the 2nd of august tomorrow on the 3rd of august i shall write the first entry in a record which i propose to keep for one year from my 77th to my 78th birthday will i persist in this effort only time will tell and will i be here at the end of the year at 77 that is not an irrational question but then is it irrational at any age in youth we go forward comparisoned in immortality it is only i think in age that we fully realize the transitoriness of life a time to be in earnest and a very important contribution by phyllis james to her work about adam dalgliche cordelia gray detective stories as she says every work of fiction is also partly an autobiography aman feels that and she's dealing with her detective heroes and heroines but at the same time as she investigates the areas of life that she wants them to operate in they're all about her own life and that book a time to be in earnest is a book that as she goes forward through that year day by day and she does get to the end of the year and she does chart every day but things remind her of things from the past and she reinterprets them from the top of mount nebo on the summit pisgah we not only look forward with moses to a new christian year but we look back at our own memories of other christian years and the way that we have fulfilled god's intentions for us and we look around as moses does with the landscape uh and we remember that him that we were thinking about with that verse that there is a land of pure delight to him is that verse could we but stand where moses stood and view the landscape or not jordan's flood or death stark shade or whatever the world is um would frighten us from that store from that that that shore if we could stand there and see it because we had the eternal vision as well we would not be frightened to go forward but it might not be us leading at that point and so at the end of her year she's given us many reflections many memories from her past but also intentions and thoughts about the future and using the characters that she has to write a fragment of autobiography as far as she can in earnest using memory as her tool well all those things are grist to the mill on this particular day to our thoughts and the psalm itself i will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help my help comes from the lord who has made heaven and earth it's a good way to finish this christian year and also to bless each other as we go along we're going to say our prayers now and bring your own memories and of this christian year bring your own intentions but look around to see those you need to encourage and those who encourage and love you and send you on your way rejoicing into the unknown territory of a new christian year we'll say for the last time they've collect for this week and today on this last day of the year i'm praying for the whole of our anglican communion and the whole of our diocese this afternoon we have a lovely 75th anniversary of strode park which is a house but it's also a foundation which since 1946 has helped people who have either had a stroke or in some way are mentally or physically are unable to cope with life without a little support they do so at home they do so in some of their houses and they do so at strode park itself but they're gathering in the cathedral this afternoon at evensong to give thanks for those 75 years and we should also be giving thanks this afternoon for the service of our former diocesan secretary uh julian hills and we're thinking of an individual service and vocation and we're thinking of a whole community throat park's service and vocation over those years so we pray for julian and his family and also we pray for all connected with strode park you can actually um look it up on the computer which ada counties of lovelace would love to have done if she could have done i'm sure but she's standing as the first computer programmer at the foundation and the beginning of that particular journey so let's pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover who will be with us this afternoon and also for emma bishop at lambeth and pray for all those who are important to you in positions of leadership in your own faith or encouragement in your own life let's say this prayer for the last time stir up oh lord we beseech you the wills of your faithful people that they plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works made by you be plenteously rewarded through jesus christ our lord amen say our father in whatever language you like to 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 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 it's a moment of reflection now on this last day of the christian year um oh and what you've been hearing is brewster the rooster not russell this morning but he's looking rather bedraggled and he's probably as he stands in front of me uh thinking the same about me this morning 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 those whom you would pray for on this last day of the year and into next year and yourselves of course at all times may god bless you amen oh there he is he looks different uh okay