good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this wednesday the 28th of july as we come to say our morning prayers welcome wherever you are in the world i'm sitting this morning in front of the long herbaceous border below the windows of the dinery library and we are seeing here some of the results of all the wind and rain and damage that has happened to the border but it will recover because it's a border that comes into its own in late summer and autumn and although there's there's some color here there will be more color but the great banana plants and the the the cordylines and the trachycarpus palm are all in in good order uh and you've got some nice color from the astrum areas and spa mania is is here and the old rose and dahlias and also we leave the the poppy heads um because uh they self-seed and then after they've lost their seeds and put them in the ground ready for next year we take them in and spray them and make them decorative things for christmas and so they're constantly being used in different ways well i could talk about the olympics but what actually took our attention yesterday was something which caused us to feel compassionate horror i think we shall feel that in part of our lesson from matthew this morning but this was quite different and this was watching as so much of the rest of the world was watching the hearing at the capitol in the united states of america as the officers there who had guarded the representatives and the senators on the 6th of january this year when the capital was stormed gave their testimonies and it was as you probably sensed yourself heartbreaking to see what cost to the lives of those who are asked to keep law and order they had to endure that day they and their families who must have been watching at the same time and terrified members of the house of representatives in their offices nearby or all of that as the officers with with great passion and force testified to what they had had to endure and it gave us in all nations the uh capacity of standing beside them and of realizing once again the the cost of freedom and peaceful transitions of power in any of our nations and so please if you are citizens of the united states please feel that we stand beside you in all these ways and are heartfelt standing beside you with compassion and horror as we hear these testimonies of what we ask our law officers to do in terms of the protection of our freedom and let's say also the stability of our world and nothing is more important than the stability of the great nations in america is is very much in in the forefront of all of that so our prayers are with you as that hearing goes on and we thank you for sharing it so let's say our prayers on this day and then we will continue our reflection of saint matthew oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise let your ways be known upon earth 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 does we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence so god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm this morning on the 28th morning of the month is psalm 130 it's a psalm remembering king david and all his tribulations lord remember for david all the hardships he endured how he swore an oath to the lord and vowed a vow to the mighty one of jacob i will not come within the shelter of my house nor climb up into my bed i will not allow my eyes to sleep nor let my eyelids slumber until i find a place for the lord a dwelling for the mighty one of jacob now we heard of the ark in ephrathah and found it in the fields of jar let us enter his dwelling place and fall low before his footstool arise o lord into your resting place you and the ark of your strengths let your priests be clothed with righteousness and your faithful ones sing with joy for your servant david's sake turn not away the face of your anointed the lord has sworn an oath to david a promise from which he will not shrink of the fruit of your body shall i set upon your throne if your children keep my covenant and my testimonies that i shall teach them their children also shall sit upon your throne forevermore for the lord has chosen zion for himself he has desired her for his habitation this shall be my resting place forever here will i dwell for i have longed for her i will abundantly bless her provision her poor will i satisfy with bread i will close her priests with salvation and her faithful ones shall rejoice and sing there will i make a horn to spring up for david i will keep a lantern burning for my anointed as for his enemies i will clothe them with shame but on him shall his crown be bright that psalm which jesus would have known well encapsulates also his honoring and his desire for the holiness of the temple in the jerusalem he knew in his humanity but of course for the concept of the the new jerusalem which is the representative of the whole of the capacity of humanity to create communities and to fill them with the qualities of the kingdom of heaven we see flashes of that in our earthly communities and we work for that constantly but also our hearts find their home in the heavenly jerusalem as well so let's go on with our gospel of saint matthew and we've entered today chapter 27 it's the penultimate chapter and it's the chapter which on good friday our book of common prayer reading the passion of saint matthew begins with so here we are at verse 1 of chapter 27 following the description we had yesterday of the night time trial uh sort of show trial really in the palace of the high priest and then following that peter's desperate denial and failure of courage as the crows and his complete breakdown and his weeping bitterly chapter 27 verse 1 when morning came all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against jesus to put him to death and they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to pilate the governor then when judas his betrayer saw that jesus was condemned he changed his mind and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders saying i have sinned by betraying innocent blood they said what is that to us see to it yourself and throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple judas departed and he went and hanged himself but the chief priests taking the pieces of silver said it is not lawful to put them into the treasury since it is blood money so they took council and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers therefore that field has been called the field of blood to this day and then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet jeremiah saying and they took the 30 pieces of silver the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of israel and they gave them for the potter's field as the lord directed me now jesus stood before the governor and the governor asked him are you the king of the jews jesus said you have said so but when he was accused by the chief priests and elders he gave no answer then pilate said to him do not hear how many things they testify against you but jesus gave him no answer not even to a single charge so that the governor was greatly amazed now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted and they had then a notorious prisoner called barabbas so when they had gathered pilate said to them whom do we want me to release for you barabbas or jesus who is called christ for he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up besides while he was sitting on the judgment seat his wife sent word to him have nothing to do with that righteous man for i have suffered much because of him today in a dream now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for barabbas and destroy jesus the governor again said to them which of the two do you want me to release for you and they said barabbas pilate said to them then what shall i do with jesus who is called christ they all said let him be crucified and he said why what evil has he done but they shouted all the more let him be crucified so when pilate saw that he was gaining nothing but rather that a riot was beginning he took water and washed his hands before the crowd saying i am innocent of this man's blood see to it yourselves all the people answered his plan be on us and on our children then pilate released for them barabbas and having scourged jesus he delivered him to be crucified matthew tells the story in a way as we say day by day particular to him but there are large sections which are particular to matthew we're used to when morning was come as the beginning of this narrative it happens in mark it happens in luke when it was day when morning came but there's much more here in terms of detail which we grow used to and amalgamate make a harmony in our heads of this story but it's particular to matthew so if we look at what is set down we shall gain something once again of matthew's absolute insistence to his jewish greek speaking christian congregation and community all those years later his absolute insistence that everything is being fulfilled according to prophecy everything and jesus himself often quotes the prophets and the psalms which he had pondered on in his realization of his role as the anointed one the christ the messiah or as he designated himself the son of man the representative of our humanity or son of david which so many called him which is another coded way for them of saying here is the one and remember our psalm 132 who is of the royal line of david and will sit on his throne but jesus is constantly resisting those images of earthly kingship and thrones because they give the wrong impression it's fooled the disciples james and john in our lessons quite recently thinking that glory is sitting on a throne on either side of jesus and all those things matthew is saying are prophecies fulfilled well first of all if we look at the judas narrative which only appears like this in matthew's gospel judas is sudden sorrow and repentance i have sinned i have betrayed innocent blood and another aspect of this story is the pushing away of responsibility by anyone in any kind of power what is that to us see to it yourself and judas taking the 30 pieces of silver which again is a messian thing cast them down on the floor of the treasury i'm always reminded of that moment in elgar's great oratorio the apostles how the sound of everything being cast down in the silver tinkling on the stones becomes a dramatic moment as judas walks away sadly to fulfill his destiny but that we've looked at before not too long ago and so let's just leave this here but it's the result of prophecy now matthew gets this bit wrong and i suppose you can forgive evangelists at that time for having a misremembered moment as their writing this isn't the prophet jeremiah this is the prophet zechariah and you can look up that in zechariah chapter 11 verses 12 and 13 where this quote is to be found and the sense of everything being fulfilled with the the price of blood money and everything else you'll find something there which says the same thing and matthew has quoted that part of the old testament scriptures i think we have to come to terms with those long scriptures were not always in their totality in the possession of people in those days so a lot of things were carried in their heads and it's hardly surprising that from time to time this sort of thing happens it happens to me daily as you well know that i have to correct myself and so throwing down the silver he walks away and clearly in matthew's gospel the expression is that he is full of repentance i have sinned i've betrayed innocent blood repentance and realization can never come too late in god's economy so although there's a desperate end to judas's life and breath in this world the compassion of god to repentant sinners is something which is boundless the next prophecy which is amply fulfilled is and it would do good to read it isaiah 53 that must have been absolutely in jesus mind one of the suffering servant songs the the quotes are so well known to us from handel's messiah but it's about the lamb brought to a slaughter and being dumb before the shearers as the sheep is brought so he opens not his mouth and this silence which surprises pilate is again a fulfillment of the prophecy of the one who must accept that their vocation means all this the silence of jesus and then once again the abrogation of responsibility this time by the one who bears all power and that luxury is not really one that he can afford to indulge he can make a wrong decision he can make a political decision out of choice knowing it's unjust that happens all the time but what pilate does when and the message from his wife is only in matthew what pilate does is call for a bowl of water and perform a ritual act of washing his hands in innocence well we know that again as a a a psalm i will wash my hands in innocence and that becomes immensely important no one can do that if they've made the decision they have to carry the responsibility themselves and uh so on this occasion pilot is doing something which is not only unjust but it's unreal he's the only one who could have done something or he could have admitted that like judas i've sinned i betrayed an innocent man he said it enough and now here we are with the washing of the hands in water everyone of matthew's congregation would have understood that ritual act i will wash my hands in innocence but there's no innocence there on this occasion all those things are there in the details of uh matthew's report and they're special to matthew in chapter 26 i think we said yesterday he doesn't add much to mark here he adds an enormous amount to mark of detail but our habit is of putting all things in to the same box and and amalgamating the accounts but there's one person who didn't amalgamate the account and this is one of our four dates today for on this day in [Music] 1750 on july the 28th johan sebastian bach died and i've said before that that long matthew passion is a complete singing of chapters 26 and 27 of matthew only matthew no other nothing else is allowed from elsewhere a complete singing a narrative of that with the evangelists and voices singing the parts of the others and at the same time corrales which bach was expert at writing and which were the foundation stones going through and of course they're in our hymn books plentifully but the most famous of them all is known as the passion coral and that that marker post which comes and and the the corals again and again through the matthew passion and at the same time the beautiful areas where a voice reflects with compassion which is what we're always doing when we're watching heartfelt scenes like us to watching the proceedings at the capitol yesterday in washington and your thinking thoughts and and both in choruses and in arias and in recitatives one has that given plentifully and those two chapters are made into one of the most beautiful and one of the most famous choral works of the western tradition by j.s bach he did the same with the gospel of st john the st john passion with wonderful orchestral pieces and also wonderful uh chorales and choruses and solos reflecting on the way in which john tells the story in the fourth gospel well we could spend a very long time on sebastian bach because we remember his massive musical output his brandenburg concertos his goldberg variations which were i think written for someone who was suffering with insomnia and could get up and learn and play them in the middle of the night well some let me say let me stress some i enjoy playing some i find beyond my capacity but they are beautiful beautiful works to listen to his well-tempered caviar which is always on the piano somewhere his great organ pieces uh perhaps let's use a representative one with the takata and fugue in d minor which is one which is a hugely popular one and then his great mass in b minor all these things but the heartland of his work as the cantor of saint thomas leipzig from 1723 to 1729 he wrote and this was for sunday by sunday by sunday to be performed 300 cantatas 200 of them survive and this marvelous set of works and from them people have culled really well known things and beautiful works again so our thanksgiving to joanne sebastian bach for setting so much in music for us and allowing us through that music to reflect and think is boundless but this is also the day in 1741 so nine years earlier july the 28th antonio vivaldi died and once again we could quote so many of his works which we enjoyed but let's just think of one because i think it's the one we all know best and that's the four seasons which is uh i work for instruments not a choral work but work for instruments but there are many many choral works of vivaldi still in use very much in in in our worship but the the four seasons have become immensely popular and they are electrifying as they describe the seasons with their particular characteristics and one goes through with the the the gentleness of of um dreaming in front of the fire in winter as well as storms and and and also the joy of spring well you know them well we were privileged to hear uh a truly electrifying performance of the four seasons in venice a few years ago and uh the night before we'd been treated in one of the the palaces in in venice to a drawing room production of traviata and then the next night this very different but again electrifying performance of the four seasons by vivaldi taking our minds to the the gifts of god in creation as musicians can i want to mention next but out of order chronologically the birth on this day in 1866 of beatrix potter and she gave us the glories of creation in a very different way and also spent her time attempting to protect beautiful landscapes and spending all that she earned from her lovely books and her beautiful illustrations on that aspect of life where she lived in cumbria she was absolutely instrumental in the founding of the national trust and also in the lake district national park all of that later in life but earlier in life when she was quite a solitary child she had a facility for the totally accurate painting and water coloring and drawing of plants and of funguses and and and and all sorts of natural things but then also of the little creatures that she kept and if you look at those creatures once she started publishing little stories attached to them that all began when she wrote letters to people and decorated them particularly to children but then she wrote in her 30s and published it herself the tale of peter rabbit and that's become of course hugely popular and famous but it was taken up by frederick warren uh and and uh at that time that meant that everyone could could get to know it so that now uh the tale of peter rabbit has been put on films and also on little television series and there's no more popular character for our little niece arabella than peter rabbit and and if peter rabbit is on television then everything has to stop while peter rabbit has to be watched but of course that's only one of her characters squirrel nutkin the tailor of gloucester where the mice take over because the the taylor has been kind to them and stopped simpking getting at them his cat getting at them and at the same time they come and help him make that beautiful embroidered waistcoat for the the mayor of gloucester's wedding all of that and has snow scenes but the faces of the mice benjamin bunny mrs tiggy won't call that the the hedgehog who does all the washing and and becomes a great character jeremy fisher uh the very elegant frog uh where his ladder is slippy sloppy and in and all of that tom kitten uh and uh jemima padlock uh who who we could have called our ducky jemima very well because she is is just like dominic and jemima puddled up but when i see the illustrations particularly of the mice i'm reminded of the little faces of our colony of harvest mice inside and that is absolutely amazing tiny tiny creatures the smallest mammal and i would say one of the fastest mammals in creation but they're so friendly and they've bread and bread and they're running around and there's a i i hope at some stage we can share you share with you the picture of them because they are so friendly they'll come at the end of their little twig and look at you as if to say what sort of day have you had and their numbers are growing in a great way and they are very beautiful indeed and she captures all of that there's a ballet which was written for covent garden which we've again enjoyed seeing with all these characters but what she's choosing to do by do this and succeeding in doing it is causing us to relate to creation and also to see how fragile it is um it's worth watching if you don't know it the 2006 film simply called miss potter which gives a a real feeling of how things go through and what her life was like and i i find it a really heart-rending film so it's it's worth just tapping it up on google and watching it most of you i'm sure will have seen it and then lastly and this of course is probably the most important one for me but i'm not going to spend long on it and that is that on this day on july the 28th 1844 the poet gerald manny hopkins was born and he died early in 1889 but his poetry was only published much later by his very close friend who to whom he wrote and received letters from all the time robert bridges who by then was the laureate in 1918 he published hopkins verse and how grateful we are to robert bridges for publishing that well many things we could read today but i brought my copy of hopkins of course but i want to follow on from the beatrix potter and the vivaldi causing us to see the seasons and and bach helping us to reflect on all these things i want to follow on by reading just one and this is called binzi poplars the the road to binzi i knew very well walking up through port meadow beside the river it's the river thames but in oxford it's called the river isis walking up there to binsey was a lovely walk and the poplars that hopkins knew there along the bank were chopped down in 1879 and this is what he wrote he called them aspens the other word for them my aspen's deer whose airy cages quelled quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun all felled felled are all felled of a fresh and following folded rank not spared not one that dandeled a sandal shadow that swam or sank on meadow and river and wind wandering weed winding bank oh if we about knew what we do when we delve or hue hack and rack the growing green since country is so tender to touch her being so slender that like this sleek and seeing ball but a prick will make no eye at all where we even where we mean to mend her we end her when we hew or delve after comers cannot guess the beauty bean 10 or 12 only 10 or 12 strokes of havoc unself the sweet especial scene rural scene a rural scene sweet a special rural scene it's a poem which is clearly heartfelt but that we need to take to heart ourselves at this time when we're being taught that the trees and all around us are here for our planet's welfare and our own and if they're being chopped down for profit then it's not just the planet that will suffer the whole of humanity will suffer there is plentiful regeneration in the planet in centuries and centuries in millennia to come but for us we need to be careful of this beautiful home that the creator has given us now and just as jesus told us to look around and and see what is there so many thoughts this morning and uh i am going to say the collect for today and ask you to bring your own prayers together from right across the world we're praying for this morning the diocese of derby in the church of england in our anglican communion and in this diocese for archbishop justin and bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambeth and the parish of maidstone st martin and joyce addison in her ministry this morning so here is the collect for today almighty lord and everlasting god we beseech you to direct sanctify and govern both our hearts and bodies in the ways of your laws and the works of your commandments that through your most mighty protection both here and ever we may be preserved in body and soul through our lord and savior jesus christ amen so in whatever language you use let's 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 are men see a moment of silence now in the middle of this busy world on a wednesday morning as we say our own prayers [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [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