good morning and welcome to the Deery Garden in Canterbury Cathedral on this morning of Thursday the 26th of August as we come to say our morning prayers we've come to a particular place in the Deery Garden because of this great block of stone It's a Wonderful block of stone which for hundreds of years stood as part of the cathedral you can see by its carvings it was removed from the Cathedral at the end of the 19th century and brought over here as new stone was carved to put in its place years and years of weathering across the centuries cause us to have to do that often but the stone that is brought down is often also used in great blocks to be carved again for other places and at that time of course our stonemasons carved a Pulpit for Washington National Cathedral and that Pulpit is still called The Canterbury Pulpit so it gives us to think of our friends in uh Washington National Cathedral praying for Dean Randy and and Melissa and the family there and at the same time uh we are thinking of the way in which things can be renewed but used again so this huge block of stone was brought Here and Now is covered in Moss but you will see how we can use it this morning in our Reflections the scenes across the world still give us enormous cause for concern and necessity for prayer it's all we can do in some of them and yet we believe that this chain of prayer across the world in many thousands of us in this Garden congregation is they're underg guarding those situations and we think of those who are involved at the moment in situations of flood in Venezuela people losing their lives there also lack of water in the Lebanon which has decreased catastrophically and that has its implications for the production of crops the working of industry in all sorts of ways the imbalance of the planet's resources and at the same time the constant necessity to share and look after our planet we're still keeping in mind after urgent requests but we don't need to be reminded really of Burma Myanmar and the desperate situation that so many are facing there because of the actions of um forces of power from the government causing a great sense of fear there of war in Afghanistan I hardly need to say it and the images of the citizens of Kabul and of the airport there which seem to grow worse day by day we think of those still involved in fire those fighting the pandemic and it's almost too many pictures to keep in our minds but we also keep in our minds on this day the fact that the Paralympics are happening in Tokyo and that's a sign of the world coming together and a breaking down of barriers let's begin our prayers and you will have other pictures in your mind as we begin our prayers this 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 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 good morning Leo someone's in need a bit of warmth and comfort it's not the warmest day is it you're we're going to our Psalm now and we're in the middle of Psalm 119 the longest of the Psalms but cut into sections and the section for this morning begins at verse 105 your word is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path I have sworn and will fulfill it to keep your righteous judgments I am troubled above measure give me life oh Lord according to your word accept the Free Will offering of my mouth oh Lord and teach me your judgments my soul is ever in my hand yet I do not forget your law the wicked have laid a snare for me but I have not strayed from your Commandments your testimonies have I claimed as my Heritage forever for they are the very Joy of my heart I have applied my heart to fulfill your statutes always even to the end so we turn to our reading from The Book of Genesis and today we're in chapter 22 it's probably one of the most well-known stories powerful stories and it seizes our imagination in a great way it's still the story of Abraham chapter 22 verse 1 after these things God tested Abraham and said to him Abraham and Abraham said here I am God said take your son your only son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Mariah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you so Abraham Rose early in the morning saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac and he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar then Abraham said to his young men stay here with the donkey I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you and Abra Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son and he took in his hand the fire and the knife so they went both of them together and Isaac said to his father Abraham my father and Abraham said here I am my son Isaac said behold the fire and the wood but where is the Lamb for the burnt offering Abraham said God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering my son so they went both of them together and when they came to the place of which God had told them Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said Abraham Abraham and he said Here I Am the angel said do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him for for now I know that you fear God seeing you have not withheld your son your only son from me and Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns and Abraham went and took the RAM and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son so Abraham called the name of that place the Lord will provide as it is said to this day on the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided and the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said by myself I have sworn declares the Lord because you have done this and have not withheld your son your only son I will surely bless you and I will will surely multiply your Offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore and your Offspring shall possess the Gate of his enemies and in your Offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice so Abraham returned to his young men and they arose and went together to Beba and Abraham lived at Beba so we just put this down and remove some of the discomfort for our friend here who clearly is wanting a little bit of tender love and care on a cold morning and we'll come back to the things I'm putting down a bit later on but um I wanted to now being being obtuse Neo Leo will always do the thing you don't want him to do in this let's think about this chapter of Genesis 22 verse 1 to 19 it's a chapter of total obedience which people come back to again and again in illustration What Sarah must have been thinking as she saw Abraham and Isaac going off we're not told but notice that Abraham spares everyone else the young men are left with the donkey what his heart must have been feeling it was a time when Way Way Back humans sacrifice was known in other communities around but Abraham is being asked to do something which was not in his culture or custom at all and yet he's being asked to give up everything even the long awaited promise of God and on his journey he sets out prepared to give up that which he loves most and to give up any promise of a future as he'd imagined it for his own line and Isaac goes along beside him and they get to the Mountaintop I don't need to tell the story again you will know it's when the hand is actually raised for the knife and the angel of the Lord says stop it's enough here is the Lord's foundation stone for the blessing of now the promise given all nations probably although the image is very famous and we've seen it carved on so many churches uh and in paintings and also I've said to you before that in the Obama GA Passion Play which I remember seeing in 1980 when the Tableau of the Old Testament is shown before the acting out of the New Testament scene before Jesus carries his cross the tblo is of Isaac carrying the wood for his own sacrifice and see constant here I am it's almost like the little boy Samuel here I am coming to Eli and Eli realizing it's the voice of God and telling him go back and then when the the voice comes again Speak Lord for your servant hears the words here I am is there all the time and we come back to all kinds of resonances with that I am statement and here I am Isaiah in the temple saying here am I send me in that Vision again of Heaven and the voice of God calling him but this is the most Stark and it's the one where afterwards we have the little lesson which is used often in the nine lessons and carols the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven and because of that obedience you've not withheld your son your only son that in blessing I will bless you and through your seed all the nations of the Earth shall be blessed what a promise and what a vocation and what a responsibility this indeed is a sign of total sacrifice and willingness to give up everything to go forward how often that reflects in gospel scenes of folk who have come willingly enough but then when the moment comes there are cases of saying well let me go back and and uh bury my father first uh uh let me go back and say goodbye all of that and Jesus is those who put their hand to the plow and turn back are not worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven perhaps the word yet should be put in there because always there is a sense of continuity there are so many threads to this this morning and we can begin to see how this picture becomes so very important but the best thing about it all is the foundation stone built in Abraham himself many of you will have gone to Jerusalem and there on the Temple Mount which for three of the faiths of the world Judaism and Christianity and Islam is the holiest of all spots for that place with its Stone if you've seen it is Mount Mariah and in Jesus's time of course it was the place of sacrifice for his own people but Jesus himself is going through the sense of the mission being for all nations so that when God's only son is lifted up with arms outstretched and this time not Spar it is that all nations will be drawn to him with barriers broken down I wish I could say more this morning but you will have so many of your own thoughts and carry that into your own lives as I will too there are some dates and one of them reminds me of a time when I was really joyful in 1978 for on the 20 6th of August 1978 and I'd only been the the Rector of Tisbury in Wilshire a short time um I suddenly realized that a new pope had been chosen after the death of Paul I 6 here was John Paul I 1 and on the 26th of August 1978 he was proclaimed with we had flown our flag on the Parish church for the death that halfast the flag uh of uh Pope Paul II and now we were giving thanks with our Catholic brothers and sisters and I've spoken before of the Catholic priest the Jesuit priest who was so influential to me in those days as well and a good friend uh Father John tranmer and we were rejoicing with him and his company at the announcement of a new pope a pope who was known as IL Papa delizo The Smiling Pope he was a patriarch of Venice an easy speaker in the best sense of the word an educator and a man that was never without a smile and that's not been forgotten uh it took away some of the severity and he took as his motto the word humilitas humility and began to live that out and 33 days later he died of a heart attack in the night and our flag was at half mast again and there was a sense of metaphorically scratching one's head and searching one's mind and heart about the purposes of God in this he had given a a bright shining smile IL Papa delizo and a sense of welcome and a breaking down of formalities rather on in his in his greetings to all the young people in St Peter square and now suddenly here we were mourning him after 33 days and then another Pope was given to us in John Paul II John Paul I first had taken the name of Pope Paul his predecessor and Pope John the predecessor before and now Pope John Paul II takes the names of his predecessor and uses them and carries out a completely different Mission the first non-italian pope for so many centuries but nevertheless one whom we shall never forget for his ministry lasted so many many more years than the 33 days of The Smiling Pope IL papad Del cizo for whom we give thanks today but Ponder the purposes of God as with Abraham and Isaac and people with hearts breaking on that day when he was found to have died and then on this day and this to me is an immensely cheerful anniversary for on the 26th of August 1958 the composer Rafe forn Williams died and we have so many things to give thanks for in his long life of composition and I'm not going to describe his life we could take all morning doing that because here again rather like the story of Abraham and Isaac is a story which affects the the life of the Church of England and the the uh music of the Christian Church throughout the world and all people who enjoy music to such a great degree I think probably his his piece which he called Romance when he set it for violin and Orchestra in 1921 after the horrors of the Great War the lck ascending is one of the most favorite pieces of all and again and again wins if people do surveys about what's your favorite orchestral pce that is high up there but I want to speak first about the way in which he affected the singing of our hymns for he was a young man who was very keen on musical integrity and at the same time was lamenting and this he was really wrapped over the knuckles for by uh by CV Stanford whose music we sing because there had been a a kind of Reliance on Continental influences particularly German composers in the way in which English composers wrote and Sir Edward Elgar would have have acknowledged that though something of the English Countryside and everything else was in elgar's work but VOR Williams wanted to carry it much much further and perhaps he began to do that first by being the musical editor as a young man at the very early years of the 20th century starting in about 193 of the English Himel an Enterprise of collecting hymns which would have that Integrity that he wanted and where did he go and he was the musician remember not the not the Wordsmith not the provider of lyrics where did he go for the tunes he wanted there well of course he went for music from the past and there's much plain song in that English Himel with its green covers he went to the corals of JS bar and that was using very much a German Foundation of music of huge Integrity of the singing of the corals and there are many of those he went let's say to the music of the the Welsh Nation the Welsh chapels and there are wonderful Welsh hymns which sing so well kumr guide me oh thy great Redeemer Pilgrim in this foreign land which people love singing their Welsh tones abaris swith uh uh so many of them named in in that way JZ you Lover of My Soul let me to thy bosom fly and all of those Tunes which VOR Williams was quarrying but he wanted English tunes and where could he find them but in folk songs and he found them still being sung in the fields and in the public houses of England as people drank their beer and sang songs particular to their area and he and others his friends collected those songs and he made them into so many tunes and for all those things of his collecting of the tunes and his putting all of that together in the green hym book with our own cultural songs being uh collected and set together in a new way that we might sing them to himym tunes and that to me is a hugely positive thing because I've said in the past it's the way we remember words by having Tunes attached them in our heads but there are two tunes of vau Williams which are completely his own and are probably his most popular Tunes one of them is a tune called c nom and we sing it to the hymn for all the saints who from their labors rest who thee by faith before the world confessed thy name oh Jesus be forever bless blessed Allelujah and that magnificent processional hymn was given its best tune C Nomine Without A Name by vau Williams we have a a wonderful choir and some of you who've been listening to Coral even song have heard them actually twice this holiday uh called C Nomine with us at the moment and we give thanks for their music but when when I hear the words c nom I shall think of them of course from now on but but the conductor actually shared me with me some of their honey which he and his wife have in their hives in uh farther up in England a more Northerly place than here so different kinds of flowers and plants but I shall think not only of them but of course of that tune C nominee for all the saints for all the saints who from and we give thanks for for Williams for that but best of all for me is his tune which is given to come down oh love divine seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardor glowing I think it's one of the best hymns in the hym book a wonderful prayer in words alone of the work of the Holy Spirit but he composed a tune which was worthy of it and he called it after the place he was born where his father was the parish priest and had died when Bourne Williams was in infancy it's almost a tribute to his father's Ministry down amne a village in glera and we give thanks for that memory of VOR Williams's own roots and the thankfulness he gave to his home his mother then had to take them and and and look after the families growing up as they left down amne but he never forgot it and named That Tune after the ministry of his father what else can we say for with we could go on a great deal de with his great sea Symphony which one or two critics have said is like an autobiography of the influences shown in there he lived a long time but loved writing songs songs to English lyricists like AE Housman on wilock edge or George Herbert his five mystical songs giving us all kinds of seasons of the lurgical Year let all the world in every corner sing my God and King an Anthem as which VOR Williams has set in in that wonderful um collection of mystical songs and also Songs Of Travel I've got the album here and the words in Songs Of Travel are by Robert Louis Stevenson and to play them on the piano and to sing them and putting that down has gained a little snail who's walked across it to leave his track here to show that the Earth is never really quiet I'll put him back on the stone where he's climbed onto my music book and left a nice silvery Trail which is wonderful so we give thanks for for that but if I'm to give thanks for anything on the piano a song which never in my mind tires when I'm playing it and singing it it's set for a higher voice than mine so I'm not going to risk s singing it to you this morning but those piano I'm talking about lynon Lee and those Tunes speak of the Orchards and Countryside of England remember the first verse words it's a Dorset song within the woodlands flowery gladed by the oak trees Mossy moot The Shining grass blades Timber shaded now do quiver underfoot and birds do whistle overhead and Waters bubbling in its bed and there for me the apple tree does lean down low in Linden Lee that was a song being sung in the ins and public houses of Dorset at that time but made into a beautiful song by vaugh Williams vau Williams loved the words of the King James Bible and his second wife Ursula War William said he never tired of reading them nor the Pilgrim's Progress but I'll speak again about that in a moment or time I just wanted to say that we remember him for fantasias on Thomas Talis and also orchestral Arrangements of the Psalms you'll hear the work of the world beginning next door at the moment so please uh don't take any notice of that um and when Queen Elizabeth II came to be crowned then that orchestral arrangement for Psalm 100 all people that on Earth Do Dwell was for the first time a great Fanfare of uh of uh uh uh joy for the service and it's used so many times here when that hym is being sung oh taste and see how gracious the Lord is his Anthem was also used then but I wanted to talk about Pilgrim progress because I think there's a lesson that I would want to learn from Bor Williams all through his life he had been wanting to write an opera the Pilgrims Progress he put it together in pieces and uh then in the end it was performed at the time of the Queen's coronation and that beginning of the 1950s at Cent Garden it never really s eded because so many things succeed as the fruit of immediate inspiration and that immediate inspiration is something which you find in so many of the short pieces that succeed for Williams it was a disappointment but I take um a lesson from it that in working things through and patching them together and trying to stitch a great Magnum oppus sometimes you f fa in a way that you don't when you actually have a time of inspiration and intuition coming forward and so we give thanks for those moments today let's then say our prayers on this particular day we praying as we pray for the Anglican communion today for the where are we the dasis of Egypt the Episcopal Anglican province of Alexandria a name deep in the history of the church and in the the dasis itself as we remember Archbishop Justin and Bishop Rose of DOA uh and also Bishop Tim at lambus we are praying together in living in faith and love now I want today within the dasis to pray for the work of food bank which I'm a patron of and which provides resources for families who are really finding a struggle in providing food for their families and so Food Bank becomes an intention throughout of sharing resources which we've spoken about throughout the world so let's say the colic for the day and bring your own prayers and also as we think of Mount IAH let's pray for the Peace of Jerusalem as the psalmist says Almighty and everlasting God you are always more ready to hear than we to pray and to give more than either we desire or deserve pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ your son our Lord amen so in whatever language you like to use we say 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 amen let's take a moment now to say our morning prayers I should be doing so in much Silence with the noise of a leaf blower or something going on next door [Music] [Music] heart [Music] 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 well now we can give you some breakfast and you've had a fairly chilly morning and the word makes you want to go down okay let's go inside Leo [Music] is sh [Music] char [Music] [Music] will [Music] human his [Music]