good morning and welcome from the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this monday the 19th of july we've come as always on monday mornings to our garden congregation flower meadow which really is a flower meadow now full of the most beautiful flowers and too many to name and just something that we need to appreciate in this warm morning sunshine here in england we continue to pray of course for those so badly affected and also those who've lost their lives and are still missing in the floods in northern europe and we pray too for the citizens of south africa as we did yesterday here in england the 19th of july is a day when we move certain steps forward out of our restrictions during this present pandemic we do so carefully because of course there is still a danger for one another but the steps that we're taking mean that we can begin to come together in different ways and probably the the loveliest thing for us in the cathedral is that the rules now allow us as a congregation to sing for the first time inside the cathedral building since march of last year we are able to sing hymns again it's a monday so a hymn will be sung at even song this afternoon but i think that the the great sounding of the hymn will come next sunday morning when the congregation are present in the nave and until now of course we've only been able to have 170 seats in that vast space because of the distances we have to maintain and now today it will be chaired for 700 as a start uh we shan't be expecting 700 to even song this afternoon but there are bigger services to happen which have been waiting to happen in terms of memorial services and even weddings later in this week and next week and so we look forward to be a being able to do that in a way which is beginning to bring us together in the old way however there will be good provision made for those who are feeling nervous because this is a big step for some who have been shielding and so those who are welcoming people at the cathedral will be very aware if they say they're nervous everyone is still asked to bring a mask with them marks are no longer mandatory as far as the the government rulings are concerned but there will be areas of the cathedral where people can still ask to sit if they want to space and uh certainly in crowded situations everyone will be advised that a mask would be a necessary thing unless they have an exemption to wear so that we still keep each other safe for the pandemic is still a danger nevertheless this is a day when people are really feeling that we are moving a step forward and if that's done carefully may it be a really good step on this sunny morning so let's begin our prayers on this day and we say our prayers together here with the flowers as our as our background oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise in your resurrection o christ let heaven and earth rejoice 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 19th morning of the month is psalm 95 now in our older forms of worship and in our book of common prayer psalm 95 was always the preface for all our worship and sentences from psalm 95 were the opening sentences of every morning in the old latin breviary and in many people's prayers and we shall easily see why it's because of one verse in verse six and then verse 8 also gives us a clue but let's read this lovely psalm psalm 95 oh come let us sing to the lord let us heartily rejoice in the rock of our salvation let us come into his presence with thanksgiving and be glad in him with psalms for the lord is a great god and a great king above all gods in his hand are the depths of the earth and the heights of the mountains are his also the sea is his for he made it and his hands have molded the dry land come let us worship and bow down and kneel before the lord our maker for he is our god we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand oh that today you would listen to his voice harden not your hearts as admirable on that day at masa in the wilderness when your forebears tested me and put me to the proof though they had seen my works forty years long i detested that generation and said this people are wayward in their hearts they do not know my ways so i swore in my roth they shall not enter into my rest very easy to see why the beginning of that psalm began worship it's an invitation to gather before the lord to sing to the lord to come with thanksgiving and sing or say our psalms and bring our prayers come let us worship and bow down and at that moment at the beginning of the old services there was always an inclination of the head knowing that we've come before the lord in all humility but then verse 8 oh that today you would listen to his voice brings everything into the presence and makes us know that in all sorts of ways we shall be listening to what god has for us to do and to respond to on this day so we return after our special sunday lessons yesterday to our regular reading of the gospel of saint matthew and you remember we were in chapter 25 on saturday morning and chapter 25 has given us three parables which matthew has gathered together at that point in his gospel the first the parable of the ten bridesmaids with their lamps the second uh the parable of the talents and the third which we read today one and three are particular to matthew and number two the parable of the talents although it's like a parable in luke's gospel is told in a very matthew way as we saw on saturday morning now we're taking it up from verse 31 of chapter 25 with the third of the parables when the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him then he will sit on his glorious throne before him will be gathered all the nations and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and he will place the sheep on his right but the goats on the left then the king will say to those on his right come you who are blessed by my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world for i was hungry and you gave me food i was thirsty and you gave me drink i was a stranger and you welcomed me i was naked and you clothed me i was sick and you visited me i was in prison and you came to me then the writers will answer him and say lord when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink and when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you and when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you and the king will answer truly i say to you as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters you did it to me then he will say to those on his left depart from me you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels for i was hungry and you gave me no food i was thirsty and you gave me no drink i was a stranger and you did not welcome me naked and you did not clothe me sick and in prison and you did not visit me then they also will answer saying lord when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to you then he will answer them saying truly i say to you as you did not do it to one of the least of these you did not do it to me and these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life it's a fearsome but it's a colorful and memorable parable and certainly that the two lessons which are being learned from it never mind the judgment which uh maybe our our lord was was was uh putting in front of the people as as the fact that the kingdom of heaven actually can't wait and wait and wait all these things are to do now or in matthew is is saying to his people look this is this is what will happen your suffering will be terrible it is a bit like the um dickens story where marley's suffering uh is looking out at all the things that he might have done and now never can and that suffering will always be with him but the real lesson is in the two descriptions and within the inverted commas of what the king is saying to those who have looked around day by day today if you will hear his voice harden not your hearts how do we hear god's voice well so often this parable is saying it's in the voice of another who needs us sometimes we know them and sometimes we don't but when they speak to us or look at us or stretch out their hands to us then it is for us to respond how many of the parables have that kind of message not to using a lucan message not to pass by on the other side even with important business if the job is there for us to do and we can in some way do it tomorrow is not good enough often today is the message of psalm 95 that is all very much explained in the epistle to the hebrews that with god it's always today and that today the present is the time of opportunity to hear god's voice of course we shall wait to a new dawn god willing tomorrow and there will be other occasions to hear his voice but it won't always be in human words and the occasions will be different the occasions of today may by then have passed us by and we've missed it and the parable is saying that later that will be a cause of immense pain and suffering of course that suffering in other parables is wiped away with the tears being wiped away when pain and sorrow and suffering shall be no more go to the visions of the revelation but at the same time if you think well that's always going to happen i don't need to do anything at all these parables are saying no the kingdom of heaven is something which in this life has finite time attached to it and there are moments to respond to i go back to the bishop of mozambique's sentence which was said to the general synod which i've quoted to you before god has no freezer he gives fresh gifts day by day and all of that we are asked to do give fresh gifts day by day but here is a startling parable how do we see jesus well of course we do so by reading the stories of each gospel writer we also see him in the lives of holy people but we see him most of all according to this parable in those who in some way we can serve the kings of the gentiles says jesus lord it over them and their great make them feel the weight of authority must not be so with you whoever among you would be the greatest must be the least and whoever would be the leader must be the willing servant of all just as the son of man came not to serve to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many all of that is in encapsulated in these two startling pictures and jesus lists the way in which that might be done if we went through and and just looked at all the ways in even with the gospel narratives that jesus has responded to those who have touched the hem of his garment and been there and present then we get the the picture in his own life but the parable takes it beyond to the values of the kingdom of heaven and don't forget that these are all similes and metaphors and ways of speaking jesus always says the kingdom of heaven is like this is like that there will be occasions during the day today when you think i must give a a word of comfort to so-and-so and there are many methods of doing that or i must deal with this now because uh i won't have a chance to do that again and i'm the the worst at this of saying let's do that tomorrow not today but this is what the parable is about that we are living in a world of time and time is unforgiving therefore god's world is present tense today if you hear his voice in the sound of anything or the look of anything that you feel i could i could do this for the sake of others even if it's a work of creativity that others will enjoy you're actually hearing god's voice just who's which is saying to you use your creative gifts to to make that flower and make it better and people will be thankful for that different things for each of us and millions and millions of opportunities across the world to serve both this whole planet during a time of pandemic to those in great danger and often at a cost of self-sacrifice and we saw that in the way in which when the disciples in mark's gospel in the gospel yesterday which i was preaching about at the eucharist said send them away jesus says no we must we must serve the people's needs and that is responded to by working himself to the the absolute end of his energy in humanity even when he knows his disciples need a bit of a break but he teaches them that lesson that when someone is to be served then harden not your heart for today if you will hear god's voice is the time to do it well let's look at some of the dates that we have to remind us of things today today like uh yesterday there are many dates i could have chosen i've just chosen three people um the 19th of july of course has become an important date in our mind in in an earlier radio interview i did with bbc radio kent this morning uh with anna the interviewer she was saying how are you feeling on this freedom day there is that sense of people thinking that restrictions have been lifted and it was it was lovely to be talking about how we could sing again in the cathedral and enjoying the the conversation there but keeping in mind as i said earlier the care that we need to take of each other and particularly those at the moment who are afraid and have been shielding for so long that that this is a world that they need help in stepping into again and we all need to be very careful of one another that's july the 19th on july the 19th in 1896 the scottish author aj cronin was born now aj cronin was a doctor and he found later on in his career that he was also gifted with writing stories and they were very good stories and they they captured public imagination but they did more than that they inspired other things to happen and his novel the citadel which was published in 1937 and made into a film was something which gave inspiration and it was heartfelt from him as a physician and a general practitioner this was a story about a doctor working in the mining industry and it inspired the national health service to be an image in people's minds so that when the war ended cronin had been very influential with the founding of the nhs with the vision he had created of that particular kind of fair health in the citadel because he drew a picture of some doctors some doctors using the way in which charges used to be made for medicine at all times of tricking their patients by saying oh you need this you need that you need that and and stacking up the costs and he was very very keen that there should be fair medicine well now he also of course was the writer of a short novella of a country doctor's uh uh life which became a very popular bbc television series every sunday night throughout the 1960s and into the first year of the 1970s it was called dr finley's case book and uh for me it was this regular a thing to watch with my parents over the the cold meat and salad of a sunday supper uh after church that um the the tune of dr finley's case book at that time always reminds me of sunday evenings at home and those three characters dr crookshank uh sorry no sorry um um i'm trying to think what the doctor the first one was called the the old man was called but he was played by andrew crookshank dr cameron played by andrew cookshank and dr finley the younger doctor played by bill simpson and the housekeeper janet played by barbara mullen they became characters of life and when the tune started well mother and father would would allow us to sort of leave the table and sit around and watch dr finley's case book but all those stories from aj cronin and he was he was part of the advisory board that was doing this became something in terms of public service that we were talking about with regard to our parable earlier and dr finley's casebook became something which showed the nation the particular difficulties in scotland at that time the the illnesses that were being suffered quite often by bad water and and not enough medicines for health all those things going on and uh it was just very often amusing because the three would the three characters would play off each other against each other i think it was tried again in a different series later on but for me it's always the black and white series of the 1960s and sunday night at home after after even sonic church well then at the same time he wrote a book called the keys of the kingdom which was made into a film and he did the same with the priests vocation in the keys of the kingdom and and explores vocation there and in the film father francis chisholm is played by gregory peck the film was made in 1944 the novel written in 1941 extraordinary that someone could have such a facility he wrote at lightning pace we're told about 5000 words a day and became very famous at that particular time uh camithia cometh the man really and uh at that point uh um andrew and aj cronin at the beginning of the second world war became someone to whom people looked later on for vision in in health um and in also in vocation in that way the 19th of july also in 1971 was the day on which john jacob astor died not of course the john jacob astor who is most famous who died on the titanic but a descendant of his who lived here in kent and from 1922 to 1945 was the member of parliament for dover and from 1922 to 1966 was the proprietor of the times newspaper all of those things we could remember uh he lost his seat in 1945 and then very much was a servant of the county of kent and became the first baron astor of heaven hever castle where the family lived and which had been the childhood home of anne boleyn the uh second wife of of henry viii of course and uh john jacob astor looking around at that time saw the difficulties of canterbury cathedral which had really been bombed badly at the cathedral had been saved the library had was in ruins and the houses all around and the precincts and all the historic buildings had been badly affected some completely destroyed by the blitz which took place the baydeca raid in 1942 and he realized that a foundation of resources in financial terms to put this right because he believed that this place was something that benefited the whole world both in its worshiping life but also in the sense of stability that places like this in their community give in inspiration to those visiting it and on the on these days of course those who can follow what we're doing online so he chaired a group which became a group of trustees to hold funds for that restoration and there was a strap line which was used during that collecting which is a good strap line it it talked about the cathedral and it said augustine founded it beckett died for it chaucer wrote about it cromwell shot at it hitler bombed it time is destroying it will you save it and lord astor did very well for the cathedral by restoring with those resources so much that was here uh his his mantle was taken up later by someone whose year's mind was yesterday a lord lieutenant of kent called alan willett and alan was a huge supporter of canterbury cathedral during his years here as lord lieutenant of kent but his inspiration for this place came because during the war as a little boy his grandfather had a farm uh well out of canterbury and in the middle of the night of the baydeca raid raid he was awakened by his grandfather to put on his dressing gown and to come downstairs and to look at the glow on the horizon from which there were the rumblings of explosions and the glow on the horizon he said take a last look at canterbury in its cathedral for you'll never see it again that's canterbury burning and that image never lost it would never left alan and in the morning his grandfather harnessed a horse and cart and they came into canterbury and there in the middle of the ruins still stood belharry tower and the cathedral and alan used to say to me it was at that moment i pledged that this precious place would never ever lack resources to keep it as a gift for the whole world two people who were important to us and for whom we give thanks on this day who seized the moment and did what they could and kept this community inspired to be a community which serves all those who need it throughout the world at the same time today and this is also a happy birthday really uh the actor benedict cumberbatch is 45 today he was born on this day in 1976 and we give thanks for the multitude of different parts he has played to show us different situations and one is amazed by the energy that uh benedict cumberbatch like so many actors and act and the the actors both women and men have shown in their careers they seem to be able to to change at a moment's notice and we think of benedict cumberbatch as uh sherlock in the modern versions of sherlock holmes which gives us amusement and also a character that we can relate to and think yes that's that's sherlock now as he would have been and sherlock holmes generally has done in victorian time we enjoyed hugely his representation of christopher teachians in in parade's end another quirky character which really suited him but how many other things has he done he played alan turing in the imitation game which was filmed in 2014 and and so many characters in films like the hobbit or star trek uh enormously different parts and we think of him also as dr stephen strange played in the avengers series and still uh to to to film because the avengers sequence of people who are heroes and desperate villains uh and are attempting to serve that which is good if they're the heroes and and help people who are looking to them for help and uh doctor strange uh is a a strange again and a quirky character uh or all sorts of of heroes appear um in in watching the the uh the trilogy of batman uh the i mean the christian bale trilogy which is the finest trilogy of of the batman series there's that moment in the last series where uh catwoman says to batman in the middle of an enormous danger and she's there and you've come away with me you've done enough and there's the the pillion information about waiting and the influences come away from me with me and we can be happy and batman says when she says you've done enough no i haven't not yet and uh at that point um you feel that he's going to give his all in in that way well i'm only saying that because of course that's exactly what the image of the the the great pictures of that parable which in some ways are surreal because they're trying to describe that which is beyond this existence but at the same time taking that lesson into human life as it is now and what is expected of us perhaps also in 2015 his hamlet which is on the stage at the barbican was something that one can relate to but in in the sense that hamlet's soliloquies are the deep quarrying into himself and no one better for that just a moment of reflection because in 2014 when we were at the hay literally festival with some friends judy dench was being interviewed on stage by richard ayer and she was actually sharing what kinds of huge speeches her mind was stalked with because richard air could just sort of say there's that and she would just and then she said but i would need someone to help me with this one and richard ayer called up benedict cumberbatch from the audience uh and he arrived and there was much greetings julie dencher certainly behaved as though she didn't know he was there there were great embraces and she said it's rather small part for you and he amusingly said i'm used to being told that um but just give me a nod when it's my cue and she began the speech of viola to uh orsini in night the lovely speech she never told her love very very moving but benedict cumberbatch was her servant in that and all the cues of orsino were actually then brought in by cumberbatch without any warning because actors minds whether they be man or woman are s absolutely stocked with those like musicians and operatic singers and oh all sorts of people who then at a moment's notice can conjure that from who knows where in the wonderful thing that we humans in this world call in our language english memory and we never know what's there until we call it up so thanks be to god for actors like benedict cumberbatch and let's wish him happy birthday on this day and we're going to say our prayers now and we start with the anglican communion diocese of south dakota in the episcopal church of the united states and here we're still praying for the parishes around the county town of kent maidstone and we pray for their what they call the ignite communities which is an outreach to people who are wanting that spiritual outreach we pray for them in that work and god's blessing on it same time we pray for archbishop justin and bishop rose and also bishop tim at lambeth on this day and uh we bring our own prayers wherever you are in the world just bring your prayers and concerns particularly as i said at the beginning praying for those in northern europe so badly affected by the floods and those attempting to help them on this day and again we pray for the peoples of south africa but there are many that you'll be thinking of bring them as we say today's collect a new colleague for this week which we use for the first time yesterday lord of all power and might who are the author and giver of all good things graft in our hearts the love of your name increasing us true religion nourish us with all goodness and of your great mercy keep us in the same through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language 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 moment of silence now for your own prayers [Music] oh [Music] [Music] so so foreign oh 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 are men well we shall have a a busy day here but it's a busy day step by step with decisions that we shall be fine-tuning as the days go forward and we help people once again to come together so so so so right oh so so you