good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of the 16th of january it's a saturday morning and so we've come here out with winston and the boys today not with clemmy and the girls but i've actually stepped inside the chicken run now those of you who keep chickens at the moment will know that chickens have their own form of lockdown during these months since the beginning of december or before because of a suspected outbreak of of avian flu we hope that those restrictions will soon be over the chickens actually don't mind much because they've got a dry enclosure they're not allowed to fraternize or sororitize with wild birds at all um and there's a thrush sitting on the top here but uh there's a complete covering over the chickens and that keeps them dry as well as protected at this time so we're sharing their lockdown at the moment winston and the three boys are not uh restricted in any way uh and so they're outside in uh the rain at the moment we woke early this morning to a white world of snow but that snow since in the last half hour or so has turned to quite heavy rain which has been our companion as you know for most of this week i'm going to let the chickens and and uh ducky are white duck out now to have their breakfast and then when the the rush has settled down we'll begin our prayers let me go and open the hatch and be ready for whatever but i'll take their food down for them a bit farther on here we go come on girls off we go come on here we are come on come on just come on put some in the water ducky she likes to swim and eat the corn here we go this is all nice and dry for you okay good let me get through we can start our prayers massive amount of excitement around winston wondering what's happening hi there so wherever you are in the world please be happy to bring your own prayers and join us your own concerns at this time a time of pandemic the world over and the the fact that we are praying for each other virtually becomes even more important and sending messages as i always say of imaginative encouragement to one another across the world we begin our prayers and then our reflection and after that we can think about other things that have happened oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your light springs up for the righteous and all the peoples have seen your glory blessed are you sovereign god king of the nations to you be praise and glory forever from the rising of the sun to its setting your name is proclaimed in all the world as the son of righteousness dawns in our hearts anoint our lips with the seal of your spirit that we may witness to your gospel and sing your praise in all the earth 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 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 son on the 16th morning of the month is psalm 80. hear o shepherd of israel you that led joseph like a flock shine forth you that are enthroned upon the cherubim before ephraim benjamin and manasseh stir up your mighty strengths and come to our salvation turn us again o god share the light of your countenance and we shall be saved oh lord god of hosts how long will you be angry at your people's prayer you feed them with the bread of tears you give them abundance of tears to drink you have made us the derision of our neighbors and our enemies laugh us to scorn turn us again o god of hosts show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved you brought a vine out of egypt you drove out the nations and planted it you made room around it and when it had taken root it filled the land the hills were covered with its shadow and the cedars of god by its boughs it stretched out its branches to the sea and its tendrils to the river why then have you broken down its wall so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes the wild boar out of the wood tears it off and all the insects of the field devour it turn again oh god of hosts look down from heaven and behold cherish this vine which your right hand has planted and the branch that you made so strong for yourself that those who burnt it with fire who cut it down perish at the rebuke of your countenance let your hand be upon the man at your right hand the son of man you made so strong for yourself and so will we not go back from you give us life that we shall call upon your name turn us again o lord god of hosts show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved the son of man whom you made so strong for yourself as we saw yesterday it was the title that jesus used of himself but he also said i am the true vine and so the verse cherish this vine which your right hand has planted and the branch that you made so strong for yourself becomes a psalm of prophecy and we remember that at the end when jesus was talking to his disciples after the resurrection before the ascension he says that all has been fulfilled which was spoken in moses and the prophets and the psalms so here we are again with a verse that we can dwell on we come to our reading our little section of st mark's gospel which is the gospel for the day and we've come to chapter 2 and jesus is still in capernaum and walking by the lake of galilee jesus went out again beside the lake and all the crowd was coming to him and he was teaching them and as he passed by he saw levi the son of alpheus sitting at the tax booth and he said to him follow me and leave i rose and followed him and as jesus reclined at table in his house many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with jesus and his disciples for there were many who followed him and the scribes of the pharisees when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors said to his disciples why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners when jesus heard it he said to them those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick i came not to call the writers but sinners a tiny gem of a story which will be continued in a different way by mark tomorrow when he threads the next jewel or bead or pearl whatever you like to call the pericope the little story which is putting that on the line but for today just this one the short story of the call of levi it may well be that levi is the same as the tax collector matthew those sort of things we can't tell each gospel tells the story in different ways and luke gives us the story of levi matthew the story of matthew the tax collector who may well be the same person for oftentimes people go under two names with simon peter and the the way in which people are called in those days but that's not what we are on this morning we're on the fact that here is levi sitting at the tax desk and the tax desk in capernaum the customs office at capernaum was a really important point for capernaum being not only a great trading center and a sophisticated city as far as galilee was concerned on the shore of the lake was also very near the border between the area ruled by herod antipas and the area ruled by his brother philip and so at borders customs uh are are collected taxes are collected and here's levi in what was probably a very lucrative task tax collectors were known to be extortioners and and cheats and and people who feathered their own nests and therefore they had a bad reputation but here levi has obviously heard something of jesus whom he no doubt knows already because jesus with all the crowds at capernaum and the home base at capernaum is a well-known figure so that when jesus comes and says follow me levi we don't know what preparation of hearing and and musing on his own vocation and what will happen later levi immediately gets up and follows jesus and then there's a corollary and in this gospel we don't know whether the pronoun of the ownership of the home that jesus is is actually eating and drinking with them all in is levi or the house that jesus is using but luke makes it quite clear that it's levi's house and by the size of what's happening it looks as though it's the house of a very affluent person as the tax collector at an important customs house would be let's then take luke's word that it was levi's house and all of them are sitting around eating and drinking and the scribes of the pharisees again begin to be critical and in their criticism they say how is it that he can be with all these sinners unking people tainted people people who really aren't respectable all of those things jesus hears what they're saying and he replies with something that quite possibly was a proverb at the time those who are well don't need a physician it's the sick who need a physician and then he adds that which adds to that a sentence of his own vocation i came to not to call the righteous but just the sinners they're the ones who need me and the barriers are broken down for full forgiveness and entry into the kingdom we shall find that throughout the gospel of saint mark and this little passage gives us two insights about the willingness instantly of levi turning finding the moment of realization it's as we might say his damascus road we're having great excitement from ducky liking the water um it's his damascus road experience he rises from his tax desk and the account books are turned on to him and jesus is saying let me come and uh it's your turn to repay come and follow me and he does and then there is great joy and levi goes on from there well we're going to look at the dates that might be important the 16th of january and days gone past and some of them are immensely significant let's start with the earliest in 1604 on this day at the hampton court conference which james the first very early right at the beginning of his reign called to try and settle the differences between puritans and the anglicans the they weren't called anglicans that the church of england the under represented by the bishops and deans of the church of england in their representation uh mostly clergy who were there and puritan divines and scholars and to hear the puritans grievances and the puritans actually wanted the bishops they wanted episcopacy abolished and uh james the first in a famous thing says no that's not on the table no bishop no king his great phrase but what was on the table and proposed on this day in 1604 january the 16th was that they should settle down in their different ways all as scholars and make the best possible translation of the bible from ancient sources that they could possibly achieve from the greek and from the hebrew and in that way they would achieve something very solid other things they didn't achieve but they did achieve this and they settled down in six different committees two in oxford two in cambridge two in westminster and divided the bible up between them and in 1611 the authorized version of the scriptures which was the only one allowed to be read in churches that's why it's called authorized but is normally nowadays called the king james version of the bible was given as a gift to those who spoke english and that book has become one of the most important books ever published it's in the language of the time of shakespeare and therefore it has an enormously beautiful poetic quality we use different translations now to exact a better translation and meaning but very often we go back to this one for the beauty of its language as well and the lovely thing is of course to compare things and uh i find that the different translations stay in one's mind but for different ways but this morning we are thinking with thanksgiving of the publication of the king james version of the bible first suggested and proposed in 1604 and then in 1605 this is very different uh don quixote was first published in madrid now we've uh i'm being bathed here and baptized um we we've done the la mancha root of don quixote and if you look at it it's like french knitting with string on your fingers because the wonderful tales of don quixote actually take him from here to there to there to there to there to there and across it goes the camino which is a straight line of pilgrimage different types of journeys i find don quixote immensely hard to read and in the end i actually read it by buying a cheap version and cutting it up into little bits and reading 10 pages at a time in a slip in book or however long this section i wanted to read was and in that way i got to know it and loved the book on the way through bulk can sometimes be off-putting but bulk in the bible we deal with by reading little sections and remembering little sections and and that's a great way forward so if i'm going chronologically today i suppose the next day would uh the ninth date would be 1932. i'll come back to that in a moment and then in 1950 uh no no 1912 i've missed one out on this day robert falcon scott arrived at the south pole this is a desperate story because of course they had arrived through that terrible journey and the the weather that year in the antarctic was perfectly awful not what he planned at all and when he got there he found that the black flag which roald amundsen the norwegian explorer had arrived first had planted on that spot and he knew what it was the moment he saw it and he wrote in his diary great god this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority he didn't arrive first they then had an 800 mile trek back to their base camp where there would be uh all the fuel and food they needed on their way home but about i think about 11 miles from that the the weather closed in on them and as you well know the the survivors in their tent then died at that point and were found later when the weather cleared so we remember that date and then we remember in 1950 very different the the i remember how important the radio the wireless as we used to call it was in those days and the children's program listen with mother a daily program which which was on the radio for 32 years and there's a phrase from that that we all knew when we were growing up because when the story began they would say are you sitting comfortably then i'll begin i might say the same this morning though i'm being baptized by ducky as i'm sitting comfortably here with you and it always ended you remember with the 4a piano duet the dolly suite which became ingrained in our memory as part of that radio program if you if you ever listened to it uh and then um in 1979 david attenborough's program life on earth began and on television we saw for the first time the beautiful natural history which david attenborough showed us but with the intention always of of um our need to protect the natural environment and now i want to come back to that 1932 date because on that day diane fossey was born and she became the great champion of lowland mountain gorillas in rwanda and uganda and if you've seen the film guerrillas in the mist then you will know the tragic end her her battle against poachers uh finished with her being murdered and no one was ever found to do this she was her body was found outside her camp and it was thought that that those she had fought all those years had had murdered her and so i would if you've never seen gorillas in the mist do do do watch it but i warn you it's a a tragic film but the mountain gorillas themselves are the most fantastic guerrillas and and creatures that will make you want very much to support the the area in which they're growing now recently we've had uh advertised here the bleen woods nearby here are the largest spot of ancient woodland in northern europe and they're intending there to reintroduce a small herd of european bison which haven't roamed here for ages they're they're quiet quiet creatures and um what is being asked for because they the bison actually manage the landscape and make it ecologically rather better and they're asking for two rangers to come and and be the the rangers for european bisons in the ancient woodland of bleen nearby well that would be a wonderful initiative then last of all i'm going back to 1928. this was the date in 1928 of thomas hardy's funeral and it happened in two places in westminster abbey at two o'clock in the afternoon the funeral happened there thousands of people outside and inside the poll bearers included such names as rudyard kipling george bernard shaw uh j.m barry and john gallsworthy ramsey mcdonald the leader of the opposition and stanley baldwin the prime minister ae houseman the poet there were 10 pallbearers and the ashes of of thomas hardy were placed in poet's corner but hardy had asked to be buried in stinsford his melstock in dorset where his parents were and he wanted that dorset funeral in fact his executors decided the nation needed him to be buried in westminster abbey so the ashes were taken there but his heart at exactly the same time in dorset was buried under the dorset sunshine in westminster it was gray and mizzling with winter rain but in dorset it was actually sunny and the birds were sick and so the two female funerals happened together well let's go on then and say our prayers on this particular day we are praying today in the anglican communion we pray for justin our archbishop for the diocese of ahada in the church of nigeria and we pray for the bishop and people there and here in this diocese for the sitting area deanery all the the parishes around the town of sittingbourne which isn't too far from us at present and we pray for mike retch the area dean now and all his clergy and people in that area so bring your own prayers as we pray for bishop rose of dover and tim at bishop at lambeth and we will say together the collect for this week for the last time because we shall have a new colleague for sunday tomorrow eternal father who at the baptism of jesus revealed him to be your son anointing him with the holy spirit grant us who are born again by water and the spirit that we may be faithful to our calling as your adopted children through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language 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 moment of silence now while we say our own prayers this is very much weather for the ducks but at the same time winston and the boys not liking the rain much have gone into the nice warm shed over there and gone to sleep in the straw that you jackie are enjoying this immensely so the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and with 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 are men so you're having a nice wet day and so have i had a nice wet day near the batch is more font i shall go and say our morning machines in the cathedral with the other clergy now all right