good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of sunday the 10th of april it's the most beautiful morning and the sun is already quite high in the sky as these days grow longer and longer but still it's early and there were signs of an early frost on the lawn and the sun itself will easily burn that off but it's now making lovely shadows from shining through the leafless elances tree because the trees are being very shy and coming out this year it's been cold weather nevertheless these patterns on the lawn look like little paths right across it on this morning and this is the morning of palm sunday when we begin our own journey together we begin it as a garden congregation right across the world and at the same time we begin it in our own communities and here in the cathedral itself so that the sun is is rising to introduce this particular week this holy week as we call it when our concentration is more than ever on the person of our lord jesus christ the word made flesh as the fourth evangelist says to us and in the prelude to his book i'm sitting on the path here to give a sense that this is indeed a journey a journey for jesus himself both physically but also in heart and mind and spirit and it becomes apparent that his humanity finds this a very difficult journey behind me are palm trees and the largest of them uh trachycarpus which we planted oh i don't know 15 16 years ago and it's grown up and needs no protection it's it's hardy and has its wonderful fan shaped palms reminding us of other areas of the world which we know but here this morning it's a sign of those palms waved in triumph over the christ as he comes into the holy city and we shall read one of the accounts of that coming into the holy city as our gospel reading this morning but at the same time of course we keep in mind other cities especially those in ukraine now reduced to heaps of rubble where tragic deaths have occurred and from those cities people are still fleeing at the advice of their president as a large attack is expected in the eastern area of ukraine all of those themes we keep in mind and we remember our own prime minister going to kiev to give a sense of reassurance and support to president zielenski yesterday so all these things you will bring in your prayers and minds and hearts as we begin the journey but essentially this is a journey of drawing apart ourselves to share the journey of jesus through these days of holy week and we'll do that together so let's begin our prayers on this palm sunday morning oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise let your ways be known upon us your saving power among the nations blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief your only son was lifted up that he might draw the whole world to himself may we walk this day in the way of the cross and always be ready to share its weight declaring your love for all the world 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 and 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 on this tenth morning of the month is psalm 50. the lord the most mighty god has spoken and called the world from the rising of the sun to its setting out of zion perfect in beauty god shines forth our god comes and will not keep silence consuming fire goes out before him and the mighty tempest stirs about him he calls the heaven above and the earth that he may judge his people gather to me my faithful who have sealed my covenant with sacrifice let the heavens declare his righteousness for god himself is judge hear o my people and i will speak i will testify against you o israel for i am god your god i will not reprove you for your sacrifices for your burnt offerings are always before me thy will take no bull out of your house nor he goes out of your foals for all the beasts of the forest are mine the cattle upon a thousand hills i know every bird of the mountains and the insect of the field is mine if i were hungry i would not tell you for the whole world is mine and all that fills it do you think i eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats offer to god a sacrifice of thanksgiving and fulfill your vows to god most high call upon me in the day of trouble i will deliver you and you shall honor me but to the wicked says god why do you recite my statutes and take my covenant upon your lips since you refused to be disciplined and have cast my words behind you when you saw a thief you made friends with him and you threw in your lot with adulterers you have loosed your lips for evil and harnessed your tongue to deceit you sit and speak evil of your brother you slander your own mother's son these things have you done and should i keep silence did you think that i am even such a one as yourself but no i must reprove you and set before your eyes the things that you have done [Music] you that forget god consider this well lest i tear you apart and there is none to deliver you whoever offers me the sacrifice of thanksgiving honours me and to those who keep my way will i show the salvation of god the sentence in that psalm which is given to us if we read it in a an antiphonal way with a refrain every so often in this book that we're using the sentence is offer to god a sacrifice of thanksgiving and that becomes the absolute clue to all of this verse 14 offer to god a sacrifice of thanksgiving and fulfill your vows to god most high that's a knapsack sentence indeed to keep in one's mind right through holy week and that sacrifice of thanksgiving will be for one another whenever we notice that we need to be christ to each other at any point in this holy week or of any day of the year of course we're going to turn this morning not to the gospel of saint john but to the gospel of saint luke it's of course essential that we read one of the stories of the entry into jerusalem and quite recently in our regular reading of st john's gospel we read of how the fourth evangelist told that story in a particular way because that evangelist was ordering the material above all else to give us many messages that he wanted us to hear and now this morning i'm turning to saint luke we're in chapter 19 and i'm beginning at verse 28. it begins with the words when he had said these things and what has he said he's just told the parable of the ten talents as matthew calls them and it's the way in which the uh the the the gospel tells the story of things which are entrusted to the servants of the lord and then the lord goes away and then comes back to find out how each servant has used those particular gifts and then to reward them when the lord sees exactly how those creative gifts throughout life have been used you will know that story well and it's that story that he's just told in luke's gospel at verse 28 so those words mean he's said these things the telling of that parable after the lovely story of zacchaeus in jericho verse 28 then of chapter 19 and when jesus had said these things he went on ahead going up to jerusalem when he drew near to bethfuji and bethany at the mount that is called olivet he sent two of the disciples saying go into the village in front of you where on entering you will find a coat tied on which no one has ever yet sat untie it and bring it here if anyone asks you why are you untying it you shall say this the lord has need of it so those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them and as they were untying the cult its owners said to them why are you untying the cult and they said the lord has need of it and they brought it to jesus and throwing their cloaks on the cult they set jesus on it and as he rode along they spread their cloaks on the road as he was drawing near already on the way down the mount of olives the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise god with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen saying blessed is the king who comes in the name of the lord peace in heaven and glory in the highest and some of the pharisees in the crowd said to him teacher rebuke your disciples he answered i tell you if these were silent the very stones would cry out and when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it saying would that you even you had known on this day the things that make for peace but now they are hidden from your eyes for the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground you and your children within you and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation and jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold saying to them it is written my house shall be a house of prayer but you have made it a den of robbers and he was teaching daily in the temple the chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him but they did not find anything they could do for all the people were hanging on his words luke makes this in to a happy story for the disciples it must have been a hugely thrilling experience to go with the crowds from bethany to the city of jerusalem the holy city for these galileans from the country province of galilee who had come up for the most important feast of the year the feast of the passover and here as they approached bespoji and bethany the lord gives them an instruction and we read it as luke gave it that they are to go into the village two of them luke doesn't tell us which two john has told us that it's peter and john but in fact luke simply leaves that and it's two of the disciples who go and they're told to untie the cult and bring it to jesus and if anyone says while you're untying it you say the lord has need of it in mark's account which is earlier we get the added words and he will return it immediately in matthew's account because matthew absolutely going on the prophecy of zechariah there are two there's the the the donkey and the the foal of the donkeys so there are there are two beasts that are being brought and we ourselves in our procession this morning normally have two beasts they're normally called william and mary the two lovely donkeys who come here to lead the procession and at that time um they untie the cult and bring it to jesus and jesus makes it clear this is how he will enter jerusalem there's nothing in st luke's gospel about the fulfillment of prophecy because sin luke is someone who himself is probably of greek origin and joins this early church quite late through joining paul's mission well away from the holy land so he's had much to learn and in his two volumes the gospel of saint luke and the gospel and the acts of the apostles that enormous chunk of the new testament that his writing covers he is attempting to give the same insights to those who know nothing of the old testament law as we call it the five books of moses the prophets the psalms instead he helps people see what's going on with his own insight and then they spread their cloaks on the donkey and cut palms from the edges as a sign of triumph and uh and of a victory and a shouting for the christ who is coming into the holy city and they're on the way down from the mount of olives and there is the city before them and they're coming into the city with that shouting of hosannas and all the noise and some of the pharisees and maybe these are even some of the pharisees who are supporters of jesus which we read about in john's gospel some of them supporters who are afraid to make that known publicly in case they themselves be cast out of the synagogue and others who've joined him but they're filled with a sense of not horror but we ought to be a bit more respectful to this holy place and jesus says to them if my friends here keep silent the very stones of this holy place would shout out we don't know whether sint luke wrote this gospel and pieced it together after the destruction of jerusalem in the year 70. so many of the details in his gospel about the way in which jerusalem jerusalem will be hedged around by enemies and siege works set up against it actually came to pass in a devastating and and horrific way in the year a.d 70. we don't know we can't tell but what we do know is that he shows jesus weeping over the city let's look first though and think of sin luke's gospel how it began with the um in those first two chapters another donkey with with mary and and and joseph coming to bethlehem a different journey but on this occasion let's think how it began in those two chapters which luke gives us almost as a poet at the beginning of his gospel there is a song of the angels in heaven sung to shepherds at the birth of the messiah in bethlehem and making them the first to go and worship in the stable and what do the angels sing well they sing glory to god in highest heaven and upon earth peace and good will and what do we get here the disciples as they approach the holy city of jerusalem with jesus riding on the donkey shouting blessed is the king who comes in the name of the lord peace in heaven and glory in the highest they're actually singing the song of the angels and luke will be very well aware of that this gospel is very carefully put together to give us all kinds of signs and insights as every one of the four accounts is in a different way and then when jesus sees the holy city which he himself and that the glory of the temple before him the temple in which he in luke's gospels a little boy of 12 sat questioning the doctrines of the law and amazing them by his own answers here he weeps over it it's a poignant image and how many times have we you and i wept over the image of a city in the last few days and few weeks cities in absolute rubble with death in their streets and violence all around them in ukraine and our eyes fill with tears at the capacity of humankind to do harm as well as to do good this song of the angels has yet to be realized and yet this is the gift we're being given and the gift also of seeing jesus himself weeping over a city where the signs of conflict and war are already apparent and he prophesies forward as he weeps what will happen the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground you and your children within you and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation here is the time of the visitation when the christ comes in total humility as their king to proclaim peace and good will in the song of the angels if they will but listen to his words this is luke's message as he puts this all together and then immediately not as in sin mark where this happens on the next day he immediately enters the temple and says it is written and in luke's gospel my house shall be a house of prayer in mark's gospel the words are added for all nations and then that you have made it a den of thieves and notice too in luke's gospel he only casts out those who sold he doesn't cast out those who bought because that would take us beside mary and joseph who had to buy the two young pigeons as a sacrifice according to the law before they could offer their son when he is presented in the temple and taken into the arms of simeon and anna in this gospel so luke advisedly almost leaves out jesus's condemnation of those who are buying for many of them are humble people who have come to fulfill the law as they then have it and to offer their firstborn or to make an offering these people are different from those who are selling and he puts that down to the the the uh what should we say the the money grabbing instincts of authority at that time and he's saying that you get out of here because it's written my house shall be a house of prayer and then perhaps we would want to add mark's sentence for all nations mark the earliest of the gospels what i'm showing you though and what we're learning together as we have been is the fact that each of these gospels is written by an evangelist who is trying to give us the evangel as that person has received it and they are very different and these gospels have been written up from stories which have been handed through from one person to another from the live realization of jesus's human ministry and many of these are memories and they've been handed through and each community belongs to the tradition of a different strand of what's been handed down jesus himself must have told these stories many times as he went around and they would all have been delivered in different ways because as the group surrounded him he would have used parables and adjusted them as we do and made them right for the people who were listening and now here's luke with the material that he has gathered in a particular way and we'll think a little bit about that more later in our reflection in a moment but what we do know is that throughout the the gospels of each of the evangelists their own character begins to make itself known how they have received the good news how they order the good news how they use the sentences of jesus and place them in in in parts of the gospel where they most put forward the message that they want to give we've seen that over and over again in the fourth gospel in the last few weeks and months as we've gone through step by step seeing the signs always in the present tense i am the good shepherd i am the true vine i am the way the truth and the life i am the resurrection and the life and to martha do you believe this that's john here's luke and luke shows the compassionate healing side of his nature traditionally he because of the the reference to him in the epistles of saint paul of the beloved physician traditionally seen to be a healer but also having joined the mission late and fascinated by all that was going on mark with all the immediacy of his gospel the earliest of them all and matthew ordering it as his own jewish background would have it done according to the law in blocks of teaching in different ways but we've read that from luke and that compassion and the willingness for peace and goodwill and the tears of jesus weeping over the city of jerusalem twice we've seen him weep recently in john's gospel in that verse jesus wept at the tomb of his friends so that people say to one another see how he loved him and here the people pause for a moment as jesus weeps over the city of jerusalem and the potential it could have been to be a vision of peace which is what his name means and is always the reflection of the community of the kingdom of heaven an eternal dimension but here jesus sees nothing but controversy and violence and he weeps as he reaches this point in his journey well i've got one date to share with you today and it's a name that some of you may know and some not i actually was caused to know it by a christmas gift given to me in the year 2000 and it was a book it is a book by the philosopher ac grayling on the life and times of william hazlitt and it's called the quarrel of the age and on the front a beautiful self-portrait of hazlitt for hazlitt himself was an an amateur and at times if if we mean getting payment for his painting a professional painter but it wasn't what he was essentially and in the preface um hazlitt was born on the 10th of april this day 1778 and he spent a rather muddled life journeying and wandering and really having perceptions about what was going on and the preface here or rather the fly cover of the book says william hazlitt is england's greatest essayist he was also a painter a controversialist a radical and a philosopher whose critical writings about literature the theater and art were ardently admired in his day so hazlitt actually is someone we ought to know about but who dropped out of public favor and his writings were almost found again at the end of the 20th century and to read them is something which is a little bit like reading the way in which st luke writes but hazlitt had to find all that and he found it by what looks like a chaotic childhood what i must say is that he was born in maidstone on this day in 1778 our county town of maidstone he was born in maidstone um at mitre lane and so we think of him as one of our own but not for long his father was a unitarian minister of a liberal persuasion and before that he had had the family living in marshfield now marshfield is well known to me because it was very near home in gloucestershire but it seemed that the family of the hazlitts could never never settle down and father was always moving them around so from mitre lane in maidstone very early on the family was moved to bandon in county cork that also a most beautiful place if those of you who know it in uh western ireland uh abandoned but not for long then they went to the united states where father tried to find a job as the minister of a a unitarian congregation there in boston he failed to be chosen and so in the end in 1787 when william the young william was nine they came back to wem in shropshire they seem to be following life around really for me and wem is well known to me it's a bit north for the diocese of of hereford uh and uh it's part of that sort of litchfield area as far as i remember but i remember that the town itself very well that the diocesan boundary crosses shropshire between litchfield and hereford and also not far from rosebury and when living in wemb which they did and the young william began to receive an education there he wrote an article for the shrewsbury chronicle which was published when he was 13 years old already someone like um saint luke who could write things down and be attractive in his writing and then his father decided for him that he was going to be a unitarian minister and sent him off to hackney in london to the unitarian seminary where he learned greek and latin and maths and history and government and science and theology and philosophy and there he read the philosophers for all the time young william was not somebody who liked to be constrained if his father said do something in all likelihood he'd make a show of doing it but at the same time his mind would wander and to things that attracted him and as he became attracted then he hero worshiped certain people some of them were literally and he never got to know them but he would follow them around in terms of where they had been and jean-jacques russo was one of those he read early on and milton his paradise lost which was introduced to him with other literature by a retired anglican priest in old age the anglican priest and this young william was actually soaking up everything everything that he could learn he went to the unitarian uh chapel in showsbury and heard coleridge preach and instantly he was captivated he wrote i could not have been more delighted if i had heard the music of the spheres for the first time poetry entered into his life and at the age of 20 he was invited to netherstowy by coleridge where then he began to meet people like william and dorothy wordsworth and de quincey and those attached to the romantic poetry and the sense of freedom bliss was it in that dawn to be alive if you remember and to be young was very heaven all of that but coleridge spotted in hazlitt already the fact that he was a sharp observer and he collected things in his mind and heart from all over and coleridge wrote about the comments that hazlitt would suddenly make i could not have been more delighted i'm sorry that's the wrong one he sends well-headed and well-feathered thoughts straight forwards to the mark with a twang of the bowstring coderidge saying hazlitt's summing up of a situation became like an arrow sent right to the bullseye and the twang of the bowstring and for coleridge to say that was really quite something at the same time uh hazlitt had to find something himself to do he went to live with his brother john who was a portrait painter an artist and picked up skills in that he was clearly very versatile in all sorts of ways he painted his own self-portrait and that's this portrait which i was showing you on the book here very fine portrait and at one stage in his career was sent as a commission just to earn money to the louvre in paris i think in about 1802 and he went and painted copies of the pictures in the louvre to bring back for people to buy and sell and copy themselves and at that time also the family moved again down to winterslow near salisbury and that takes us down to the countryside of wiltshire there but meanwhile hazlitt had discovered shakespeare and he began and became you know absolute hero worship shakespeare at that time he went from place to place in this way began to write essays not necessarily a critique but of characters in the shakespeare plays and why they attracted him so much and this set of characters in shakespeare plays was published in 1817 and people instantly caught on to it it was what they wanted he himself was giving them why he liked them and explaining it and allowing them to choose why they like them and it brought them in that personal way back to the shakespeare plays just as charles and mary lamb had had uh written lamb's tales from shakespeare and they were friends of of of hazlitt at the coderidge time of his life and then in 1818 he did the same with the english poets from chaucer through and came back to his love of milton in 1816 he'd made friends with keats john keats and was passionately admiring of keats he would go from one thrill to another while his own personal life was in chaos really passionate relationships wrong relationships in all sorts of ways but nevertheless when he began to write then he could explore humanity right to its depths and he did that in a book which became very popular called the spirit of the age putting 25 people of importance and saying why they became important and those people in contemporary portraits were the people that whose names people would know philosophers social reformers poets politicians he set them out in his own way and people received his insights in that way and those books those sets of essays little character studies not of himself ever but but giving so much away about himself by how he wrote uh those became really really popular the spirit of the age but then with his second marriage and a certain amount of stability isabella his second wife who was a widow and had an income of her own and allowed him to take a european tour with her and this was eye-opening we're in the year 1824 by then and 1824 was after the napoleonic wars although napoleon because he'd taken life by storm and europe by the the the the hands and and sort of reshaped it in in hazlitt's mind he'd always been a lifelong hero but set that aside for now because the peace which had been recreated after the defeat of napoleon was what gave them the opportunity to travel and really enjoy the cities of europe he was overwhelmed by paris he utterly loved paris when they arrived i didn't know what isabella was doing all the time but he was going around soaking up absolutely everything with an energy which was new and an optimism which was new they went to rome they went to venice and again he fell utterly in love with venice rome was too busy for him whereas venice was utterly beautiful and for him that was probably one of the high points but then they made their way back through the swiss alps and there he wanted desperately to go where uh jean-jacques russo had set his novel of 1761 la nouvelle eloise which had always been a novel that he himself had prized and so they came to vavy where that novel had been set and there they found a tranquility which was generally missing in his life and he wrote about that time isabella and he hired the top floor of a farmhouse looking out over greenfields and mountains and the lake below and he wrote very unusually about himself this is a bit of autobiography days weeks months and even years might have passed on much in the same manner we breakfasted at the same hour and the tea kettle was always boiling a lounge in the orchard for an hour or two and twice a week we could see the steamboat creeping like a spider over the surface of the lake below a volume of a scottish novel or a french novel amused us till dinner time then tea and a walk till the moon unveiled itself apparent queen of the night or the brook swollen with a transient shower was heard more distinctly in the darkness mingling with the soft rustling breeze and the next morning the song of peasants broke upon refreshing sleep as the sun glanced among the clustering vine leaves or the shadowy hills as the mist retired from their summits and the sun looked in at our windows he's writing about the late spring of 1825 with a tranquility which comes out because he didn't stop writing essays in in in that time and notice how the meals pace themselves as in jane austen in georgia and england the breakfast a fairly substantial meal and then a sort of mid-afternoon dinner followed by tea and all of that as dinner later and later in the 19th century but at that time this is a georgian perspective and uh what i wanted to say about this was all of these things because he came back to london and he wrote sketches in as he published notes of a journey through france and italy and his papers lay around everywhere so when he died they were collected his son william collected many of his papers his sketches and essays his collected works they were they were published posthumously and even his life of napoleon bonaparte which like word was worth a huge epic poem uh the recluse which he he never really completed were published in four volumes for hazlitt the life of napoleon between 1828 and 1830 he never saw them completed in terms of publication but at the same time that's what not what people's liked about him they liked reading these sketches which tuned in and gave glimpses of his life well why does that remind me of a particular situation for us here fletcher and me it's because in the spring of 2020 we found ourselves uh forcibly locked in to this garden and this house and on that occasion there was a tranquility the world was battling the pandemic and there was that danger all around and we too had a duty to battle the pandemic but one morning and you know well when that was march the 25th in 2020 fletcher had the idea that morning prayer should not stop because the cathedral doors were locked to us but in this particular garden we could say our prayers and at the same time he could bring a camera out and perhaps one or two members of the congregation might like to join in and there it all began but that year 2020 had the most beautiful spring and lovely summer in that lockdown and all traffic noise and all aircraft noise and the vapor trails in the sky had stopped and the garden became the most beautiful place each morning we would open up morning prayer and it's when we first met you and gradually that congregation throughout the world grew and grew but that spring and summer gave us another gift and it was the gift that the lectionary caused us to journey in those beautiful days in aspects of the different parts of the garden and the way in which everything began to develop and flower and then the season would change it gave us right through that spring and summer the gospel of saint luke day by day and the acts of the apostles a huge swathe of the new testament set down and interpreted by one particular mind heart and pen remember luke joined the journey late i don't mean our journey i mean the journey of the christian church the early church and he like haslet in 1824 when they found tranquility in that orchard in the swiss alps he like haslet found that it was safe to travel because of the peace imposed by the pax romana the roman empire which meant that people could rely on the um peace being kept to a great degree and travel in a measure of safety right across eastern mediterranean and right to italy and and and on if they wanted to spain because the roman empire kept a sense of order and tranquility there and also the greek the common greek of the eastern mediterranean gave them a common language which i'm sure was understood by our lord as a carpenter and was understood certainly by his apostles and the early church used that greek that common greek not only for the reading and writing of the new testament but the translation into greek of the old testament too luke used that but he never says anything about himself we learn of saint luke from the way in which he sets out the insights of the gospel and that sense of the song of the angels and the journey to bethlehem linking up with the song of the angels being heard in the mouths of the disciples as they begin the journey into jerusalem and our lord weeps over the potential violence of the city and then cleanses the temple which he at the age of 12 in luke's gospel had calls his father's house and now he's saying it is written my house shall be a house of prayer but you have made it a den of thieves and for mark not for luke for luke took it for granted it was for all nations because he himself came from another nation and then had to learn all of this but one can see him going around i imagine him interviewing people and sometimes gaining the scraps of the stories as they've been told to those eyewitnesses in the holy land or in other places like ephesus he would be someone who interviewed and then set it down seemingly not giving us an autobiography but certainly giving us glimpses of his character and the way he received the evangel the good news and passed it on in his writing so thanks be to god forcing luke and the way he tells the story and also for the distinctive nature of each of the gospels as they're given to us and the glimpses of people like saint luke and mark that we receive and of course john that we receive in the new testament and in the epistles themselves when their names are mentioned sometimes but essentially also we would want to say thanks be to god for that journey through sint luke and the acts of the apostles which we all took together after that lovely spring of 2020 in the middle of the world wrestling with the pandemic brought tranquility to the garden and our ability to share that and to share the evangel within the context of so many dates and times and people that we brought up and evoking memories in art and music and all sorts of things in your own minds and of course you've shared that with us by your thousands of emails which have come through and always we're able to read them and then we have to pass on to the next day because it has been the most wonderful journey as well so we're thinking of many journeys our own christian journey uh i mean our own as the thousands and thousands who are here with us this morning um but at the same time um our own individual journey and sometimes a collective creative journey as hazlitt found everyone adding to what he wanted to say bursting with things and i just wish that we had a few of luke's um salt stained seawater notebooks from shipwrecks and everything else that he's describing on the way round but what we do have is a large chunk of the new testament which gives us that evangel and certainly our house is actually littered with little sheets from every day that i scribble on from about quarter to five in the morning in order to think now what are we going to do today in the garden and this morning it is very tranquil like that first spring that we shared together in 2020 and the gospel of luke being shared with us but there's a sound of an aircraft above and that would never have been the case in that time of total tranquility we're still facing the pandemic we're still having to put people's lives on the line in front line medical care was still um not in a state of tranquility but still if i look back to jesus weeping over the city we're still weeping over what humankind can do to cities as we weep over the cities of the eastern ukraine and the bloodshed and life which has been lost there but all these things in this garden we've been able to as i say undergird with prayer and we do so again this morning as we start holy week we'll start in the cathedral in the chapter house this morning with the procession of palms and the donkeys but at the same time we've begun it tomorrow this morning on this path which is only a continuation of the path that we've taken together over the last two years so thank you for it let's say our prayers on this morning and we are praying in the anglican communion for the united church of north india and that's a good thing because of course we were some of us in mumbai cathedral on friday when i was asked to do a bible study on some rather uh tricky verses of the sermon on the mount and many of you joined in but you can still do that if you want that has now come online uh and uh so that is is good to do um and the music of course of mumbai cathedral we've used quite often so uh in the diocese today we are asked i was going to finish off the the parish from yesterday but in fact we're asked to pray for every parish as they begin holy week and of course we do that and i don't just mean the anglican parishes i mean also communities of faith throughout this diocese and every christian community and every christian soul here and i would ask you to do the same wherever you are in the world we do that but we pray of course for our archbishop justin and bishop rose of dover and bishop emma at lambeth here is the collect for today palm sunday followed by the colic for lent and then the our father which we'll say together in our various languages almighty and everlasting god who in your tender love towards the human race sent your son our savior jesus christ to take upon him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility and also be made partakers of his resurrection through jesus christ our lord amen and the collect for lent itself almighty and everlasting god you hate nothing that you have made and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent create and make in us new and contrite hearts that we worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness may receive from you the god of all mercy perfect remission and forgiveness through jesus christ our lord amen so each in our own language and in our own way 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 so a reflection and time for yourselves on this palm sunday morning [Music] uh ah fun [Music] so [Music] [Music] that was an historic uh recording uh from canterbury cathedral before my time of the hymn ride on ride on in majesty that him will be sung this morning and it's always a moving moment to have entered the cathedral and in the cloister we sing of course all glory lord and honor to the redeemer king and that um is when the palms are carried having been blessed in the chapter house but then i find that i get to the altar and stand at the head of the nave looking right down and all the people come in first and singing still and the organ playing and the choir singing to let them take seats there and then when everything and everyone is in their place the aisle is clear and him right on right on in majesty is sung and up the aisle absolutely in my eye line comes the donkey with the children and sometimes two donkeys with the children and to be honest it always moves me to tears to see these gentle and lovely creatures which are so much a sign of our gospel message of jesus riding on in majesty but coming in meek humility to be the one who gives his life as a ransom for many and to teach us not to be served but to serve and make that sacrifice of thanksgiving which the psalmist asked for um in our psalm this morning psalm 50. christ crucified draw you to himself to find in him a sure ground for faith a firm support for hope and the assurance of sins forgiven 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 are men well let's look at the cheerful aspect of a riddle which um our minds can puzzle out in the beauty of this garden this morning uh two that were asked yesterday and where are we the first one was if you remove some from me you will cause trouble that's that's one i didn't think either of us would have got it's actually the word troublesome and flesh is making a face if you take the word some from troublesome you're left with trouble so i i call that quite difficult this is the easy section of the book but i'm rather thick and then then the other one which um maybe was just as hard i am called a celebrity fish but i am neither and the answer is starfish oh you got it yes you come flesh i got it before i said it yes it's a starfish which is not a fish and it's not a celebrity but it is this morning okay well then uh my two for this morning my voice is tender my waist is slender and i am often invited to play yet wherever i go i must take my bow otherwise i have nothing to say i think that's not too difficult and the next one is you always follow me and i am rare what am i say those two and uh let's just look at our lovely book of lost words as well and let's see where we were yesterday we were with heather and now we come on h to not a terribly popular character in this garden the heron we have to keep a net over our fish ponds here's the acrostic down the page here hunts helen here haunts heron huge hinged heron gray winged weapon eeked from iron and reeked from blue and beaked with steel heron statue seeks eel rock still at weirsil stone still at we're sill dead still at we're still still still at we're sill until illicit we're sill helen magically unstatues out of the water creeks long legs heron old priest heron from here on in all sticks and planks and rubber band all clanks and clicks and rusty squeaks now headen hauls himself into flight early aviator heavy fire free free sorry heavy freighter and with steady wing beats boosts his way through evening light to roost well all of that is true we've seen herons all over the place uh and when they take off it's extraordinary but their eyes are as sharp as sharp and so often when we've not put the net back quickly enough onto these ponds they appear as if by magic here's a helen actually in flight with the moon behind and their early morning too so that you sometimes find if you don't net your fish ponds that they've already been before you got up i think that's the picture for the heron this morning yeah that goes on to the next one so enjoy your holy week in all sorts of different ways and may it be a blessed one for all of you so [Music] here [Music] me oh [Applause] [Music] you