good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this lovely saturday morning of february the 20th the sun has come up on a sky which only has the thinnest veil of clouds and the wind is very light only in the treetops are the twigs moving around it's saturday morning so we have the company of one two three four five six little girls not only clemmy and the four girls but also lily our little tuxedo cat as americans would call it and here jellicle cats uh t.s eliot used to call them black and white and she's out having her breakfast with us being very brave with the with the pickets the the cats are all a little bit uh strange at the moment because they're missing monkey and uh they're just repositioning themselves and and getting used to that so wherever you are please feel uh welcome here in the garden as we say our prayers on this lovely saturday morning bring your own concerns we continue to say our prayers together we pray for his royal highness prince philip who's uh still in hospital but as a precaution and so we keep him in our prayers and we also pray for our friends in texas suffering that intense cold at present still and other areas of the world which are in our hearts and our minds which we'll come to in our reflection but for the moment let's say our lenten prayers this first saturday in the lenten season oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise hear our voice so lord according to your faithful love according to your judgments give us life blessed are you god of compassion and mercy to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of our sin your light breaks forth like the dawn and your healing springs up for deliverance as we rejoice in the gift of your saving help sustain us with your bountiful spirit and open our lips to sing your praise blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this 20th morning of the month is psalm 103 bless the lord o my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name bless the lord o my soul and forget not all his benefits who forgives all your sins and heals all your infirmities who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with faithful love and compassion who satisfies you with good things so that your youth is renewed like an eagles the lord executes righteousness and judgment for all who are oppressed he made his ways known to moses and his works to the children of israel the lord is full of compassion and mercy slow to anger and of great kindness he will not always accuse us neither will he keep his anger forever he has not dealt with us according to our sins nor rewarded us according to our wickedness for as the heavens are high above the earth so great is his mercy upon those who fear him as far as the east is from the west so far has he set our sins from us as a father has compassion on his children so is the lord merciful towards those who fear him for he knows of what we are made he remembers that we are but dust our days are butter's grass we flourish as a flower of the field for as soon as the wind goes over it it is gone and its place shall know it no more but the merciful goodness of the lord is from of old and endures forever on those who fear him and his righteousness on children's children on those who keep his covenant and remember his commandments to do them the lord has established his throne in heaven and his kingdom has dominion over all bless the lord you angels of his you mighty ones who do his bidding and hearken to the voice of his word bless the lord all you his hosts you ministers of his who do his will bless the lord all you works of his in all places of his dominion bless the lord o my soul return once again to the gospel of saint john and we take up john's account from where we left off at the end of the conversation of the woman of samaria at the well and then his two days of teaching and giving of the good news to the people of saikan the samaritans there who ask him to stay in their town so for two days he does so i'm starting at verse 43 of john chapter four after the two days jesus departed for galilee for jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his hometown so when he came to galilee the galileans welcomed him having seen all that he had done in jerusalem at the feast for they too had gone to the feast so jesus came again to cana in galilee where he had made the water wine and at capernaum there was an official whose son was ill when this man heard that jesus had come from judea to galilee he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son for he was at the point of death so jesus said to him unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe the official said to him sir come down before my child dies jesus said to him go your son will live the man believed the word that jesus spoke to him and went on his way as he was going down his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering so he asked them the hour when he began to get better and they said to him yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him the father knew that was the hour when jesus had said to him your son will live and he himself believed and his household this was now the second sign that jesus did when he had come from judea to galilee it's an interesting little passage because of course it it shows the way in which in john's gospel moves jesus moving from jerusalem back to galilee going through samaria staying for two days with the samaritans the barriers of the cultural differences of the jews and samaritans making absolutely no difference to him teaching the samaritans with gladness having the conversation with the woman at the well in samaria and giving us those wonderful words god is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth giving us all kinds of signs outside the great signs which are listed in st john's gospel and reflected on by the evangelist but here too we see how our own minds are full of memories and knowledge of the other three evangelists and let's think first of the earliest of those because we've just been doing that since mark there is a a very complicated connection between mark and john both have different primary sources but at the same time there is a consciousness that the evangelist writing the fourth gospel is very aware of the evangelist who wrote the earliest though in our new testament the second gospel and we shall come across this again and again and yet at the same time we have to stay with the account which this evangelist is giving us and jesus is now once again in home territory and of course when we come to galilee and those words that you said about the prophet is is not without honor except in his own hometown and the evangelist assumes that we know that he said that from where well we know that he said it in mark's gospel and a little bit of excitement going on here um we know that he said it in sydney's gospel that gives us one of these clues we have to keep reminding ourselves that the gospels are not biographies they're not chronological stories they are located in real places in real time with real people but at the same time there is a deeper underlying message which each evangelist matthew mark luke john is trying to give us and it's that message which we have to contemplate within the context of our own real places amongst our own real people the gospels are interested in present tense and the imagery that jesus is using is for the present his present at that time in that particular location in galilee or in judea or in samaria or in caesarea philippi or in the decapolis all of those places as he points out things little images but the psalmist is using exactly that and his head is full of the psalms as well as the countryside and his own people as ours should be too as we reflect on them morning by morning in the rhythms given to us on this occasion the story and there may be many healing stories of this kind but the story is almost like a a mirror image of the story of the centurion given to us in luke's gospel and at the same time we enjoy the fact that we have the various different elements of the story same kind of enjoyment that these are having because they they sniff the spring coming there's the first time really since the ground became soft and the flowers are running and this running around is something that these are enjoying this morning and it's it's heartening to see it because to us too there is this coming together of the way in which the seasons work on us and our lectionaries take us through the seasons and day by day in lent of course we're doing that together both in lessons and in psalms but the glorious aspect of st john's gospel as pieces of other gospels and different primary sources which are only his the glorious way in which he does it let's remind ourselves again is always on two layers there's the present tense located on the earth itself and all the imagery of the earth and its plants and its creatures and its life and its humanity and the way that we relate all of that is the stuff he uses in order to point us to the other dimension which metaphorically he keeps saying is up there rather than down here but he's talking about an eternal dimension and our capacity to tune in to that in infinite terms which is a glorious god-given capacity which we use not only when we're reading the scriptures or in prayer but let's remember the balance of our lenten chart as we go through the days the ideas we'll pick up are sometimes things which will things which will give our creative powers of the body room to to to express themselves and then note down that that happened on this particular day the 20th the first saturday in lent or it might be our minds that are active or it might be our spirits jesus works on all those planes but the gift he desires to give is a divine gift recreating the image of god in our humanity with the unique quality of each one of us and that little passage gives us ample opportunity to think about that well this morning um as we think of the 20th of february there are things to think about there's one specific thing i want to think about at the end and spend a little more time on uh first of all if i do it chronologically then in 1472 orkney and shetland were seeded to scotland as a dowry for princess margaret as she came across to marry the king of scotland at that time and so they were seeded from norway and they have of course they've become part of the united kingdom since then and then where are we next uh i'll leave the next chronological date till last because it's the big one in 1816 uh this is fun rossini's barber of seville was premiered in in rome and the wonderful uh song the the barber's song figaro being sung in that true rossini music and then at the same time we have in 1835 the great earthquake in concepcion so an earthquake darwin himself was uh noticing and and the the way the earth shook was something that he recognized and thought what amazing things the earth contained because he'd never experienced an earthquake before i've only ever experienced tremors while sitting in san francisco tremors it moved a glass across the table but no one there took any notice at all of it and were used to it different things in different parts of the earth and then in uh let's see 1839 benjamin war was born and he was the co-founder of the london society for the prevention of cruelty to children now the national society for the prevention of cruelty to children but at that time a beginning and queen victoria became its first patron uh what else do we have in uh 1899 louis zabroski the english race driver was born with his big connection with canterbury and the uh the connection here as well and with the car used for chitty chitty bang bang and but we've we've told this story before but we remember him and all of that so um then in 1895 the same year uh frederick douglass the great social reformer orator abolitionist writer and statesman died highly respected in washington dc as a statesman no one could believe that he had once been a slave but it made his abolitionist message all the more powerful 1947 lord louis mountbatten became the last viceroy of india sent specifically to oversee the transition to independence at that time so we pray for the indian people at that time too and now in 1804 hobart in tasmania was founded now we've mentioned that on several occasions but it's a special place to us because uh flesh's uncle died there quite recently and his aunt is still there so we think of her and pray for her this morning and remember him in 1861 on a stormy day on this date the steeple of chichester cathedral blew down is a lesson to us all or who keep the fabric of these places and then in 1899 cornelius whitney was born and the whitney museum on the high line or between the high line and the hudson river in new york is a great museum which was opened in 2015 in its new location it has existed before designed by renzo piano and we remember going there because our former canon uh librarian's wife rosie irvine her brother-in-law was on the staff at a senior level sorry her brother was on the staff at a senior level there and showed us round on the day that in the afternoon the obamas were coming to open the the new uh um whitney museum but it if you're if you're there it's full of modern and wonderful art and then uh lastly i just wanted to say before our main thing in 2018 on this day the queen made a surprise visit to the london fashion week so a different kind of creativity and that we remember as we prompt ourselves to take something from all that we're doing this morning and be creative with it today body mind or spirit well now the date i wanted to remember was in 1547 edward vi was crowned in westminster abbey he was a boy at the time henry viii died leaving this rather weak and frail and as they said in those days sickly child to be the king and he was in the hands of protectors but at the same time we remember that in his reign the two prayer books which cranmer had uh crafted together and that's become the foundation stone of anglican episcopal worship as it's gone on through many different transitions but in 1549 and in 1552 during the short reign of edward the six those two prayer books and they're really different in the way they are put together those there's only three years between them great theological differences but we give thanks for it and at the same time we remember that in the 1559 prayer book of elizabeth the first by then edward had died queen mary had a reign and elizabeth the first brought another prayer book in in 1559 which then would last all the way through till cromwell abolished it and charles ii brought in the 1662 prayer book which of course again became a foundation stone for several centuries before it was changed i wanted to remember that in 1881 mark twain published his first historical novel which was called the prince and the pauper and it's his uh sort of what would you call it an imaginative story about the reign of edward vi those of you who know it or have have seen a series as i remember seeing long long ago on on bbc television and then getting the book to read it will know that it's a a story where the young prince edward before king henry viii dies goes outside and finds a poor boy called tom canty who by chance had been born on the same day as himself that's not apparent to him of course but they look very similar and he draws him into the palace garden and you remember how the story unfolds they change clothes and um then when they go into the garden again the soldiers push prince edward now thinking he's tom canty out and he goes out to have to live the life and it's a pretty tough one a rough one with the the abuses suffering from the drunken father of the counties and then all kinds of things happening to him and meanwhile poor tom canty is thought to be deranged by saying i'm i'm not i'm not prince edward and so on you remember that king henry viii dies during that time and it's at the coronation time that uh tom canty comes back and he's the one who knows as prince edward rather comes back and he's the one who knows where the great seal of england is so he becomes once again the king but the lessons he learns while he is amongst the poor and being treated like them become lessons in mark twain's mind of mercy that every statesman needs so right at the beginning of his book the prince and the pauper he sets the speech from shakespeare and we know it well it's one of shakespeare's most beautiful speeches given by porsha in the venetian courthouse here it is just to jog your memory the quality of mercy is not strained it drops as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath it is twice blessed it blesseth him that gives and him that takes tis mightiest in the mightiest it becomes the thronid monarch better than his crown his scepter shows the force of temporal power the attribute to or and majesty wherein does sit the dread and fear of kings but mercy is above this scepter's way it is enthroned in the hearts of kings it is an attribute to god himself and earthly powers thus then show likes gods when mercy seasons justice a beautiful and great speech to all people who hold authority over others when mercy seasons justice and we remember that as one of the qualities of the kingdom of heaven and a way in which we ourselves through forgiveness and mercy and acts of all kinds of encouragement we can be divine in our humanity even today as jesus keeps reminding us in every gospel so let's say our prayers on this particular day and we begin today with the thought that we're praying for on the 20th of february the diocese of the arctic in the anglican church of canada that's a double canadian connection with mark twain's novel being first published in canada in 1881 so let's think of the diocese of the arctic as we begin springtime and then uh we think also of our own diocese for of justin our archbishop of rose bishop of dover of tim bishop at lambeth and today we're praying for the whole of the area deanery of dover we were praying praying for some of his villages yesterday and the day after and next week we shall go on with that but today we pray for the whole area of that around dover itself for the area dean and debauchery and all those who serve that deanery in ministry and in ordinary life bring your own prayers as we say the lenten collect 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 mercy perfect remission and forgiveness through jesus christ our lord amen so together in whatever language you'd like to use the prayer our lord 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 for our own prayers on this day [Music] [Music] christ give you grace to grow in holiness to deny yourself and take up your cross daily and follow him 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 yesterday was friday and i should have said we were attaching uh some music friday at five music from our um cathedral school our king's school here and it's a piece played by oscar on our newly restored organ in the cathedral you can find that at the end of yesterday's morning prayer for now have a lovely day