good morning and welcome to the deanery garden in canterbury cathedral on this tuesday the 20th of april i'm sitting in the higher reaches of the orchard near to the beehives that i'm surrounded by a riot of spring flowers the last of the daffodils the absolute flowering of the primroses here and many other wildflowers around them uh pulled the white pullman area and the blue bugloss and fruiting trees which you'll see as the the time goes on but also near to the primroses the green nettles which are um very much native to england many of you in different parts of the world won't know these rather pretty looking leaves yet to us as children they are a sign of danger because they have a very powerful sting even if you simply brush your hand against them you have the the an enormously powerful sting and we're taught as children first to avoid them and the secondly if we get stung instantly to find a dock leaf which normally the dock plants grow near to nettles and if you pluck a dock leaf and rub it in your hand and put it onto the nettle sting there's instant healing and salve the sting will stay around for a bit but the sharpness of it all is taken away by the natural healing of the doc leaves so the two plants are complementary but i always have to warn people from nations where nettles don't grow that these pretty looking flowers are very dangerous to bear skin as you walk past them and give a powerful sting we keep them because they are beautiful uh food for butterflies and the butterflies we'll talk about those in our in our um uh reflection bit later on but the caterpillars of the butterflies and the butterflies themselves feed on the nettles and so in that way we just keep a few nettles around but we always have to warn people walking through the gardens that they're there so let's think a little about what's around in forest garden terms i've just got about every layer that we've spoken about around me we've got the high trees of the sycamore and this birch tree here and the even the yew tree is very tall but you're not seeing those i'm looking at them at the end of the garden we've got uh lowering lower trees these fruiting trees of pear and asian pear in full flower and an apple tree a fine uh small apple tree a lower fruiting tree here which is in in garden about to flower so the sequence will go on as the daffodils end so the apple blossom flowers and i've got shrubs aplenty around me with the lilac here and also the lanisra fragrantissima the fragrant smelling honeysuckle which isn't climbing it's a it's a herbaceous plant here there are climbers about and there are then herbaceous plants well we've been talking about those already and then there's ground cover and below the ground uh other kinds of of things going on and all of those the tubers below the ground all of those providing fruit and food and shelter as the the garden forest unfolds at this time of year of spring when everything is flowering and blossoming this is a day of new beginnings and i'm saying this before we start our prayers when i look back to last year on the monday of the third week of easter we began the gospel of saint luke chapter 1 and we went all the way through saint luke as you'll remember chapter by chapter and then took up his second volume the acts of the apostles which carried us through the lovely spring and summer of last year and this year uh i'm looking around at the the gospels and the lectionary doesn't do this for us but we have spent time on the gospel of saint mark and we've spent time on the gospel of saint john and as i said last year we did both of luke's wonderful works gospel and acts of the apostles the one that we've missed isn't matthew and in this third week of easter this year as a new beginning starts and here's a new project to go on with which uh and we've been so much enjoying some of you have shared your notebooks with us either online or even local people have lent their notebook with pictures and drawings and paintings some aren't books there all kinds of ways of simply remembering the days of lent well now here's a new project starting day by day and the project is the gospel of saint matthew and because we're putting that over the lectionary then the days which interrupt it won't interrupt the sequential reading we can read it as a whole book day by day and note what is there i'll come to that into the reflection yesterday was in dolphins day special lessons tomorrow is saint anselm day special lessons friday isn't george's day special lessons but it won't matter today we'll start saint matthew and on thursday carry on and every day then except sunday we will then go through the gospel of saint matthew and i hope you will find it a fruitful thing to do and a many lad thing to do in bearing creative fruit body mind and spirit as we've done and you may want to use the same methods of just making a a sentence of note of what struck you during the day or um just plucking a thought and and keeping that going notebooks of that kind on looking back on them five ten years time looking back it will give something like a clue to this very different time that we're experiencing during this pandemic let's begin our prayers we'll come back to all those thoughts in our reflection o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise in your resurrection o christ let heaven and earth rejoice alleluia blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as once you ransomed your people from egypt and led them to freedom in the promised land so now you have delivered us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of your risen son may we the firstfruits of your new creation rejoice in this new day you have made and praise you for your mighty acts 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 does 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 butters 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 so we open our scriptures on this morning at the beginning of the gospel of saint matthew and the beginning of the new testament and the first 17 verses of saint matthew's gospel are rarely read in church because they are they form a list a list of names and yet those names and genealogy are important to us and some from the old testament you'll recognize and some will speak about afterwards but you'll see how matthew orders them and why he begins in this way so hold on tight and we will read the list chapter 1 of st matthew verses 1 to 17 the book of the genealogy of jesus christ the son of david the son of abraham abraham was the father of isaac and isaac the father of jacob and jacob the father of judah and his brothers and judah the father of perez and zehra by tamar perez the father of hezron and hezron the father of ram and ram the father of aminadab and aminadab the father of nashon and nashon the father of salman and salman the father of boaz by rahab and boaz the father of obed by ruth and obed the father of jesse and jesse the father of david the king and david was the father of solomon by the wife of uriah and solomon the father of rehoboam and ray haberm the father of abijah and abijah the father of assaf and asaf the father of jehoshaphat and jehoshaphat the father of joram and joram the father of uzziah and uzziah the father of josem and josem the father of ahaz and ahaz the father of hezekiah and hezekiah the father of manasseh and manasseh the father of amos and amos the father of josiah and josiah the father of jaconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to babylon and after the deportation to babylon jekynia was the father of shayal teal and shayal thiel the father of zerubbabel and zarababel the father of abyad and abhyad the father of eliakim and eliakim the father of azor and azor the father of zadok and zeda the father zadok the father of akim and arkhim the father of elliot and elliot the father of eliasa and eliezer the father of matan and matan the father of jacob and jacob the father of joseph the husband of mary of whom jesus was born who is called christ so all the generations from abraham to david were 14 generations and from david to the deportation to babylon 14 generations and from the deportation to babylon to the christ 14 generations well there we are perhaps you see why it's never read in church but i hope you'll begin to see the fascination of the names both men and women who appear in that list and we see also what matthew the evangelist is doing he it is believed by scholars writing somewhere after 70 a.d again there's a measure of disagreement about the the the time he wrote but round about that time when temple worship stopped in 1780 and the romans destroyed the temple matthew seems to be writing from the community of a jewish set of christians and his intention is to show how important the jewish traditions are in the development of the christian church he's saying don't lose these traditions and he does so by the genealogy of going down like a tree like a family tree and here they are growing up very often in stained glass windows it's jesse who has the the tree growing from him on the line of david but this is a line leading back we'll come back to that tree in a bit i just want to begin with the first sentence because we see what he's doing when we were reading the beginning of john's gospel we did that again the other day in the beginning was the word there's a resonance of the book of of genesis at the beginning of the old testament and so john is giving us a new beginning matthew is certainly giving us a new beginning how does it begin the book of the genealogy of jesus christ but in the greek biblos genocious christo the bible of the genesis of jesus well nothing could be clearer than that he's beginning again but keeping all the order and form of what has gone before like a tree and the branch coming away and the fruiting parts now beginning to appear in the flowering parts and as we go through we see all kinds of people but in luke's gospel the genealogy goes the other way around and goes back to adam taking in the hell of humanity matthew's gospel begins with abraham and from abraham goes through to david and from david goes through to the deportation a cataclysmic event in jewish history the deportation to babylon and from the deportation to babylon to joseph the husband of mary from whom was born christ in this translation messiah you can translate the anointed one in whichever way you would like we in canterbury can never forget that genealogy because there is there is in the cathedral church all around in the clear story windows a succession of late 12th century glass beautiful glass which has survived 86 panels showing the ancestors of jesus and combining the genealogy in matthew and the genealogy in luke is there and they were made to go around the choir clear story around the transepts of the choir as well and the important thing about all of this is that they showed jesus descended from a particular line of people in a particular place when we were restoring some of the glass and perhaps i should just preface that by saying some of the glass when the round head army shot out and destroyed so much of what was in the nave of the cathedral and left it simply with plain glass everywhere one of my predecessors later on decided that to bring some color black to the nave he would take some of the windows of the ancestors in choir and put them in the great south window and also in the great west window of the cathedral church and there they are and when the great south window was being restored then six of the ancestors went across to an exhibition on the pacific coast at the getty museum and then they went afterwards to the metropolitan museum in new york and had a very long journey as ancestors having never left this place from the late 12th century but those ancestor windows were of huge interest and we found when we got there that the new york times had given it a double page spread and these 12th century windows became with all their color and personality something of a wonder to see and it brought our notice to them they're now back in the south window and the ones in the west window uh were never removed because that window didn't need restoration in the way the south window did but as the window was recarved the ancestors went across and were looked at over there and i was interviewed in in the states by one of the broadcasting companies and they said why why why a list of ancestors why are genealogy all these names and i said well for two particular reasons one the ancestors show that jesus was not just born out of nothing he was actually born into a human line and received his humanity from a definite human line in a definite place but at the same time every ancestor there were 86 we still have 43 miraculously from the 12th century we still have 43 of them and each one each character is quite different in shape in the way the body language is given the way they're dressed in the colors there's as much color as we see around here in this garden of flowers it is in fact like a garden when the sun shines through it it gives patterns of color but they're speaking of the human line which matthew is wanting to draw and he's showing god's order in those 14 generations to david 14 generations to the deportation to babylon 14 generations to the birth of christ the messiah and at the same time the line becomes just a little bit quirky as you go through and you can see that and they're certainly not all saints neither the men nor the women they're people who made fearful mistakes and also the mistake made by king david and all that the story of the way in which he dealt with uriah the hittite but uriah's name is there as the husband of bathsheba from whom solomon was born and you remember that solomon was born because david organized the death of uriah so that he could marry the woman whom he'd got pregnant when he'd seen her bathing on the roof of the city that story is the one where nathan comes to him and says you're the man who's done this so god out of just in the way that yesterday we were thinking about saul with the coats that laid at his feet it's stephen stoning god is able to use all kinds of humanity in the way in which his plan develops it's worthwhile just going through and picking out names like ruth the murabitus and and boaz um and jesse and it's worth picking out and seeing how the history goes through because our lord has taught us that we do look back into the scriptures the law moses and the prophets and the psalms in order to see all the things that were written about him so here's the beginning of the gospel of saint matthew and what i would say as we go through is that it's like a bit of a detective story and we'll get matthew's message if we don't keep mixing it up with mark written earlier though matthew uses mark quite a lot um and luke very different and john yes it's great to to to say well in john it says this or in in mark it says this and in luke the story is told in that way but what we should be saying is what's matthew trying to tell us by telling it in this way it might be that that's how the story was handed on to his particularly jewish community he's writing in what people call perfect synagogue greek and so the jewish element is very strong let's let's look for a moment at what's going on first of all around um we mentioned the butterflies and they are beginning now to appear in the garden today it's a colder morning yesterday was a beautiful day and butterflies were all around us and they're a particular interest the the um the nettles uh and plants here tend to feed the various versions of the butterflies that that fly around our garden so we've we've got peacock butterflies and uh painted lady butterflies and red admiral butterflies and lesser tortoiseshell well we didn't have this in the tortoiseshell they they'd gone from the garden but fletcher got some seeds and and some of the eggs of the butterflies and bred them into into caterpillars and chrysolids and so on and now they're very much back the lesser torto shells and um i think the plan is also but this is a very very daring plan uh to try and introduce a butterfly the swallowtail butterfly which was native of kent in warmer days but with climate change it's thought that we might reintroduce some here he's already had success in hatching them inside and they are as you know beautiful beautiful butterflies they feed on things which grow here easily in the garden and they we've got fennel and wild carrot and cow parsley that they would feed on so maybe maybe that could happen it would be beautiful if it could but meanwhile plenty of beautiful butterflies to feed on the herbaceous plants that you see and a wonder as they they add color like the stained glass windows they add color to the garden as they fly around so the coma butterfly is another one that we might have but we don't actually want any more great whites because we've got hundreds of those and they eat the cabbages and so um if you're thinking of of breeding butterflies then try the ones that look beautiful and don't actually destroy your vegetables before you've eaten them yourself let's look at the dates for today two health states to start with in 1862 on this day louis pasteur completed his first pasteurization test and in 1902 marian pierre curie isolated the radioactive compound radium chloride which has become such a a feature of of cure 1920 i just mentioned this because of the genealogy in matthew the balfour declaration and balfour had been the foreign secretary who declared that it was a thought that there might be a homeland set up where the dispersed jews from throughout the world could find a home and his declaration for palestine was recognized by the league of nations and the mandate was given to um the to britain for that uh um creation of of palestine as a homeland for jews and of course the people who were there already um 1889 adolf hitler was born i think we don't need to say much more about that it's just again a date of history um 1808 napoleon bonaparte's nephew louis napoleon was born in paris a nephew who obviously thought julia at the time napoleon's dynasty would go on through napoleon's son the king of rome as he was called but in fact when napoleon uh was was ousted and the bourbons came back louis napoleon simply became a character in french politics until 1850 when he got himself elected following the fall of the orleans monarchy he got himself elected as president of france in 1850 and in 1852 declared himself emperor napoleon iii and the empire began again and uh what we know of paris now mostly because of baron von ostmann who rebuilt paris uh is very much a result of that louis napoleon napoleon the third type of of activity that went on in the middle of the 19th century a great favorite napoleon the empress eugenie of queen victoria and and prince albert we remember visiting her family castle in spain but in exile she came here to england and was a great favorite as was her son the prince imperial and then i'm dotting about uh but in 1653 oliver cromwell dissolved the english parliament had enough of it he said you have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately and he declared himself the lord protector it was interesting that that someone who had come with parliamentary forces uh simply dissolved parliament and began to rule as a law protector without a parliament and the parliament was called the rump parliament because not only was it left over in the past because all the cavaliers had been kicked out anyway but because they had sat too long and that's almost a joke um 1841 this is the last date i'll mention 1841 edgar allan poe's first detective story murder in the room org was published and i say that because i said earlier that we're going to be detectives a bit in st matthew's gospel as we go through day by day um the interest about the murders in the rue morgue is that in 1841 it was seen to be the very first detective story of its type it had not a policeman but august dupa who was ferreting out the information who had a companion who was narrating it and then at the end by um getting all the uh the facts together he comes to a conclusion which the reader is following and trying to work out herself or himself as they go through and does that sound familiar it certainly sounds familiar in sherlock holmes with dr watson but it's it sounds familiar also with hercule puerto with uh captain hastings and the way in which the poor police uh in in in these uh inspector lestrade in in sherlock holmes are the ones who are saying scratching their heads and saying how do you do it to the amateur detective well of course one can go on with all of that but they're books that we enjoy and we give thanks for that beginning but we also enjoy working out puzzles let me tell you now there will be no definite answers to many of the things that we shall be looking at in matthew's gospel but for most days between now and early summer we will go through that book together and enjoy it together in the context usually of the garden let's say our prayers on this day so we're thinking of let's have a look on the 20th of april the in the anglican communion the diocese of bolivia in the anglican church of south america the people there and we pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover and for tim bishop at lambeth and today in the diocese for the parish of cincosmos and damian at bleen and pray for our friends stephen ladd there and all the folks that we know in bleen and so um i think that uh we can just leave that there we know too many to mention there'll be a long list it's very near to us here but it's nice to be praying for them on this particular morning um so as we say our prayers please bring your own intentions and and uh uh concerns there'll be many areas that you're wanting to pray for on this day particularly those where the pandemic numbers are growing and people are fighting it here's the collect for this third sunday of easter almighty father who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples with the sight of the risen lord give us such knowledge of his presence with us that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life and serve you continually in righteousness and truth through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language the prayer our daughters 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 uh silence now for our own prayers on this day [Music] the god of peace who brought again from the dead our lord jesus that great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight 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 we've shown you during this some of the ancestor windows many of them have a clue as to who they are and you will spot david's harp or hes a king hezekiah's um sundial which he is holding do you remember when the isaiah prophesied his cure he asked for the shadow to go back on the dial of ahaz various steps and so some things which are are used in this particular way and remember also yes that that the the blister that he was suffering from was given a a fig plaster the poison in order to pull all of that out and his body was was then completely restored in that way so let's um enjoy this day