good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this monday morning the 22nd of november welcome wherever you are across the world first let's say our prayers for the people of wisconsin the little town near milwaukee where the desperate uh carnage really of a vehicle plowing in to a sunday before thanksgiving parade yesterday crashing through barriers and killing people and wounding people in the middle of such a celebration and we we pray for that community that township there and pray for all those who are attempting to comfort and give relief at this time of shock right across our world we're also thinking of tensions in many european cities uh where people are resisting and and are demonstrating against further restrictions in some way connected with the pandemic so that this pandemic is is still very much a live issue and we pray for those areas of tension and again for leaders in their positions and also in a moment of note of thanksgiving we pray for her majesty the queen who yesterday attended the uh christening in the parish church in windsor great park of two of her great grandchildren uh august and lucas and the whole family gathered so uh a a wonderful thing to think of the queen actually being there at that time and we pray for her today as we start now i've got people around me waiting for a matter of breakfast because we are here it's a monday morning so we're in the walled garden and the meadow and so let's feed the creatures because they've done their work quite well in terms of clearing the ground and seeds will spring up many of which are here waiting to spring up from last year come along come on here we go come on you can give thanks for the gardeners because that's what they are at the moment and we look forward next year to many many more beautiful flowers coming up in the midst of the grasses and everything else which grew last year and we will say our prayers then on this meadow monday morning 22nd of november is since cecilia's day the patron saint of music and we shall think very much of that in our reflection and also we'll be returning to the exodus today to the story of the children of israel with moses and aaron but meanwhile we begin our prayers bring your concerns and your your special intentions as we gather together oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your faithful servants bless you they make known the glory of your kingdom blessed are you sovereign god ruler and judge of all do you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of this age that is passing away may the light of your presence which the saints enjoy surround our steps as we journey on may we reflect your glory this day and so be made ready to see your face in the heavenly city where night shall be no more blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever our psalm on this i'm sorry i've missed our best sentence the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind thus 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 [Music] amen our psalm this morning is psalm 107. it's a long psalm and normally as we will do as we normally do and and and read sections of it oh give thanks to the lord for he is gracious for his steadfast love endures forever let the redeemed of the lord say this those he redeemed from the hand of the enemy and gathered out of the lands from the east and from the west from the north and from the south those who go down to the sea and ships and occupy their business in great waters these have seen the works of the lords and his wonders in the deep for at his word the stormy wind arose and lifted up the waves of the sea they were carried up to the heavens and down again to the deep their soul melted away in their pedal they reeled and staggered like a drunkard and were at their wit's end then they cried to the lord in their trouble and he brought them out of their distress he made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were count then were they glad because they were at rest and he brought them to the haven they desired let them give thanks to the lord for his goodness and the wonders he does for his children let them exalt him in the congregation of the people and praise him in the counsel of the elders the lord turns rivers into wilderness and water springs into thirsty ground a fruitful land he makes a salty waste because of the wickedness of those who dwell there he makes the wilderness a pool of water and water springs out of a thirsty land and there he settles the hungry and they build a city to dwell in they sow fields and plant vineyards and bring in a fruitful harvest he blesses them so that they multiply greatly he does not let their herds of cattle decrease he pours contempt on princess and makes them wander in trackless wastes they are diminished and brought low through stress of misfortune and sorrow but he raises the poor from their misery and multiplies their families like flocks of sheep the upright will see this and rejoice but all wickedness will shut its mouth whoever is wise will ponder these things and consider the loving kindness of the lord [Music] it's a psalm of pilgrimage it's a psalm of fruitfulness a psalm of the dangers of those who journey of voyagers a psalm of the behavior of humankind causing fruitful land to turn into desert and salty wastes but also a psalm of the way in which with the right kind of stewardship the earth makes itself fruitful again and produces harvests so we're turning now to chapter 33 of the book of the exodus and i'm reading verses 1 to 23. this begins with the command to leave the holy mountain sinai the lord said to moses depart go up from here you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of egypt to the land of which i swore to abraham isaac and jacob saying to your offspring i will give it i will send my angel before you and i will drive out the canaanites the amorites the hittites the perizzites the hivites and the jebusites go up to a land flowing with milk and honey but i will not go up among you lest i consume you on the way for you are a stiff-necked people when the people heard this disastrous word they mourned and no one put on their ornaments for the lord has said to moses say to the people of israel you are a stiff-necked people if for a single moment i should go up among you i would consume you so now take off your ornaments that i may know what to do with you therefore the people of israel strip themselves of their ornaments from mount horeb onwards now moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp far off from the camp and he called it the tent of meeting and everyone who sought the lord would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp whenever moses went out to the tent all the people would rise up and each would stand at their tent door and watch moses until he had gone into the tent when moses entered the tent a pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent and the lord would speak with moses and when all the people saw the pillar of clouds standing at the entrance of the tent all the people would rise up and worship each at their tent door thus the lord used to speak to moses face to face as someone speaks to their friend when moses turned again into the camp his young assistant joshua the son of none would not depart from the tent moses said to the lord see you say to me bring up this people but you have not let me know whom you will send with me yet you have said i know you by name and you also have found favor in my sight now therefore if i have found favor in your sight please show me now your ways that i may know you in order to find favor in your sight consider too that this nation is your people and god said my presence will go with you and i will give you rest and he said to him if your presence will not go with me do not bring us up from here for how shall it be known that i have found favor in your sight i and your people is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct i and your people from every other people on the face of the earth and the lord said to moses this very thing that you have spoken i will do for you have found favor in my sight and i know you by name moses said please show me your glory and the lord said i will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name the lord and i will be gracious to whom i will be gracious and will show mercy on whom i will show mercy but he said you cannot see my face for no one shall see me and live and the lord said behold there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock and while my glory passes by i will put you in a cleft of the rock and i will cover you with my hand until i have passed by and then i will take away my hand and you shall see my back but my face shall not be seen it is an extraordinary lesson it begins as a consequence of the anger and impatience of the creator with what is declared to be a stiff-necked people that finds an echo in moses himself but then we have those passages of what we might call intercession and the sense of moses wherever the camp is made from then on as they leave sinai or as it's later called horeb in that in that lesson wherever they camp outside the camp and there's a reference to that of course in the epistle to the hebrews outside the camp we find moses setting a tent a tabernacle very much a traveling tent and tabernacle and that is where he goes to converse with god and that lovely sentence as with a friend we remember jesus with his disciples saying i call you servants no longer but i have called you friends and we get that lovely sentence first here in exodus 33 speaking as if to a friend moses will go there and the people rather ord and cowed are no longer in festive jewellery they're made to be in clothes of penitence coming to the opening of their own tents in the encampment and watching moses go past to go to the tent of meeting and others can go that but when moses goes it is moses alone who goes and there is an aura around the tent while he is there and he's guarded by young joshua again who's beginning to become quite a character in all of this i'm reminded of moses when he's going into the tent um of what our lord himself says in that sermon on the mount a different holy mountain and the new covenant being taught by the anointed one he says when you pray don't make a great fuss about it go into your room and shut the door those are the words go into your room and shut the door so that your father who is in secret receives you in secret it's a piece of instruction in the middle of all those intentions of prayer it comes in the same passage in matthew 6 when our lord gives the prayer that we say together as we say the prayer our savior taught us our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name and it's that holiness that that prayer brings to the private place find a place where you can go in and shut the door and converse with god in silence maybe not in words sometimes in words sometimes in anguish sometimes laying the whole of yourself open but at the same time there is a similarity between the instruction given in the old covenant and the instruction from the mountain given at the beginning of the gospel of saint matthew in the new covenant go into your room in secret shut the door meaning no disturbance find the place find the time of day that's best for you and i know that we're very different some of us are good in the morning some of us are good at night some of us are better in the middle of the day and some are so busy that they have really to carve out that time but in each of the covenants it's essential and we find then that promise and here's another kit bag sentence i will be with you and give you rest and the lord is is talking about they're traveling they're journeying on and you might not you might you might take that as a physical journey you might take it as the spiritual journey of the chosen people to be god's messenger of good news to the whole of the world to all the nations of the world you can take it in so many different ways but nevertheless that marvelous sentence i will be with you knows his worrying he won't know the way show me the way i will be with you and give you rest he will allay moses worries and anxieties in the middle of all that crisis of leadership and moses goes to the tent of meeting as if to embrace that rest and he speaks with god with the lord who when he says i know you by name moses and then moses is is asking later if he might see the glory of god and is told no that is too great for humankind but i give you my name and the name given has a huge association with the present tense in the first person singular of the verb to be i am i give you my name and it reflects back to the burning bush again and forward to all those sentences which jesus speaks saying i am in so many different ways and perhaps i am the way the truth and the life is one to take on board this morning as we think of that journey of the children of israel and god's promise to be with them i can't do it without you says moses god in order to give moses a sign says you cannot face the brightness of my glory but there is a place by me and i will stand you on that rock and set you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand as that glory passes by and when it has passed by you will glimpse it well glimpses of glory are things which in the secret place or suddenly taken unawares we find in so many different ways and the moment of course one thinks of the rock and the cleft i think of top ladies him are rock of ages cleft for me let me hide myself in thee and there's a famous place in somerset at barrington comb where it is thought that top lady had that vision in the cleft of the rock as he sheltered from a thunderstorm hiding in the cleft of the rock as the water poured down from the sky and the storm ranged about him and in that cleft of the rock he was hidden and then emerged afterwards to find an earth refreshed all of those images are really wonderful in this chapter 33 which began with anger and ends with that constant friendship of moses with god which takes away some of the pain of all he's been suffering as a leader as he goes on with the people there are stormy times still ahead but we see that the tent of meeting has now come into it and people can go there and set their concerns before their god well this is since cecilia's day the patron saint of music 22nd of november uh cecilia was an early roman martyr and uh i was in the calendar from quite early on uh the the the dates given in our anglican calendar here our church of england calendar is around the uh 230 a.d and she herself is the patron saint of music because during all her persecutions and all the things which went on and her life story is one of trouble um though her husband who uh was at first uh a pagan um became a christian and himself was was martyred and as we uh as we think of her we think of that sentence in the the ancient writings about her cecilia sang and made music in her heart to god in a way to really protect herself to enter into the secret place even when she was surrounded by violence and persecution this is a day when strangely a little cluster of musicians with their dates either their years mind when they died or their birth date come together and their their um english musicians yesterday we talked about one on the eve of since cecilia henry purcell i'm not going to deal much with him today but i do want first of all to to say about his ode to sin cecilia which is one of his great works and in that ode to sit cecilia there is a praising of music as well as the patron saint of music but i wanted to to remind you that yesterday we were talking about his anthem they that go down to the sea in ships and how that anthem was written for a particular base with the most enormous range from the d above bass clef to the d below it and the whole first line they that go down to the sea in ships which we've read this morning in psalm 107 started on the high d and by the time at the end of the sentence you'll write down on the low one that was purcell and we give thanks for his connection with this day but also this is a day and i'm not going to deal with him much either because we've done it recently um it's the day on which siratha sullivan died in 1900 the 22nd of november since cecilia's day and sullivan's not only known for his comic music but also for his hymn writing and his anthems and religious music at the time those are less fashionable these days but um i still like hearing red as sung rather that the the long day closes and in his time the lost chord was something in his songwriting that was forever being sung but i think that his his hymn tunes um in the hymn book are still uh much sung but let's move on from him having dealt with him very recently on an anniversary to ws gilbert and go to the one whom we really think about today on this day because he was born on this day in 1913 and that is benjamin britton who was a central figure of 20th century british music and we give enormous thanks for his music in the end he received a peerage right at the end of his life was honored mightily by this nation and we remember the way in which that music developed and fed so much into the life and worship of the church we have here um the beginnings of his time when he was writing and i'll come back to that in a moment but he went on of course to be a great opera composer but quite often he's dealing with stories of people who are on the edge of society and vilified by others peter grimes albert herring billy budd and then his opera the turn of the screw or death in venice his great war requiem for the consecration of coventry cathedral the way in which that was something which was to break down the barriers of war and so much of his church music i remember at school singing his tdm in sea which begins not as a mighty crash of drums and trumpets we praise the o god but very softly and as that begins softly britain said he thought that the approach the approach to the almighty should be soft unlike brewster the rooster here behind me who's doing his alto crow this morning so we remember also his little church offers which took took place in churches and gave biblical stories noise flood abraham and isaac the prodigal son all of those that we could remember but it's none of those i want to think about this morning i want to think about a voyage which uh britain and the poet w h orton made in the in the very middle of the second world war across the atlantic to come back to england they'd gone to the united states but now they're going to come back to england and they boarded a merchant ship and the merchant ship as part of a convoy had to weave its way through in a zigzag passage because submarines were everywhere in 1942 and they could have been sunk at any moment and in the bowels of that ship first of all benjamin britain rewrote his hymn of sin cecilia which had been confiscated by the new york customs the original score so he wrote it down again in the ship and at the same time he wrote and this is extraordinary his ceremony of carols set to a heart all that beautiful christmas music so lovely and yet composed in the depths of a a fairly old merchant ship chugging along in convoy in danger of being torpedoed at any moment and right down in the barrels of the ship britain with all that lovely music of the ceremony of carols going on in his head and his hymn of since the celia and that hymn which he wrote to uh him to to sin cecilia the uh the him which he wrote was written to the words of w h orden now i'm i'm tempted to read the words of the ordin this morning but we've read them before and this weekend we've had sung twice in the cathedral once on saturday evening at evensong by our king school of canterbury cathedral crypt choir as our choir was getting ready for the christmas oratorio and we've also had it sung uh again last night at a at a school service and this is a completely different hymn to sin cecilia it's written by the composer herbert howells i think it was written in the year 1960 when howls uh was actually the master of the um musicians company that i went to address a couple of weeks ago and that was a special commission to celebrate the year of his mastership but he took a wonderful script written by the widow of ralph former williams sylvan williams wrote a poem for him to set and it's called a hymn for sin cecilia and it's that poem i want to read because i think it shows how the heart can sing as cecilia said to music within itself but how a particular morning as the sun rises or a particular evening as the sun sets or a particular landscape or situation can cause heaven and earth to be joined so enjoy these words as i always enjoy them as their song sing for the morning's joy cecilia sing in words of youth and praises of the spring walk the bright colonnades by fountain spray and sing as sunlight fills the waking day till angels voyaging in upper air pours on a wing and gather the clear sound into celestial joy wound and unwound a silver chain or golden as your hair sing for your loves of heaven and of earth in words of music and each word a truth marriage of heart and longings that aspire a bond of roses and a ring of fire your summertime grows short and fades away terror must gather to a martyr's death but never tremble the last in drawn breath remembers music as an echo may through the cold aftermath of centuries cecilia's music dances in the skies lend us a fragment of the immortal air that with your acquiring angels we may share a word to light us through time-fettered night water of life or rose of paradise so from the earth another song shall rise to meet your own in heaven's long delight i think it's the most wonderful set of verses from uh syllable williams and howl's matched it with beautiful music too so on this since cecilia's day we pray for all musicians and give thanks for them and pray for our own ability to make music and quietly in the confines of our secret space if we're shy about our singing just to hum tunes and feel that music is joining us with the worship of the courts of heaven remembering god's promise to moses face to face sheltering him from too much glory but letting him have glimpses of that glory and saying don't be afraid i will go with you and i will give you rest let's then say our prayers on this monday morning as a new working week begins we're praying today not only for all musicians but in our anglican communion for the diocese of ibadan north in the church of nigeria and within our own diocese for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover for emma bishop at lambeth and for the area deanery the villages and communities of romney and tenterdon and we pray for all those clergy who are given permission to officiate many of them in retirement who go out to help the life of the parish churches there and we of course are praying for any of our own concerns which i mentioned some of them at the beginning but you will have your own so let's first say the prayer for sin cecilia's day and then the collect of the week almighty god by whose grace and power your holy martyr cecilia triumphed over suffering and was faithful unto death strengthen us with your grace that we may endure reproach and persecution and faithfully bear witness to the name of jesus christ your son our lord amen and the prayer for this week stir up we beseech you o lord the wills of your faithful people that they plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works may by you be plenteously rewarded through jesus christ our lord amen and together thus 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 for your own reflections so what uh [Music] oh [Music] so [Music] so so the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and if 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 foreign oh hello all right and you are still here behind me hey all right