yes good morning and welcome to the dinery garden on this wednesday of holy week the last day of march we were intending to go farther into the garden this morning and we're walking across this lawn which is covered in a very heavy dew these warm days in spring and cold nights give a very heavy due in the morning when the scent of the magnolia stellata which you're looking at a young tree arrested us as we walk past and thought well no we'll stay here i'm sorry that we can't share fragrance virtually but believe me as so often happens with magnolias when they first flower there are several days of wonderful fragrance and then many more days of blossom yesterday you saw one of our oldest stellata in the front garden of the deanery which was planted here in 1967 this one here we planted only about 14 years ago but it thrives just here behind me also to my left and your right as you're looking later on is it a video tree which is not yet even um it's in plenty of bud but it is not moving to to flower or to anything yet uh quite often known as a handkerchief tree or a dovetree or a tree of peace but that will come later in the season for the moment this is very much magnolia time and we are rejoicing in them as we go through these days of holy week towards easter itself wherever you are in the world please feel welcome here as we come to say our morning prayers on this day in holy week 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 o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this last day of the month is psalm 145 i will exalt you oh god my king and bless your name forever and ever every day will i bless you and praise your name forever and ever great is the lord and highly to be praised his greatness is beyond all searching out one generation shall praise your works to another and declare your mighty acts they shall speak of the majesty of your glory and i will tell of all your wonderful deeds they shall speak of the might of your marvelous acts and i will also tell of your greatness they shall pour forth the story of your abundant kindness and joyfully sing of your righteousness the lord is gracious and merciful long-suffering and of great goodness the lord is loving to everyone and his mercy is over all his creatures all your works praise you o lord and your faithful servants bless you they tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your mighty power to make known to all peoples your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of your kingdom your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom your dominion endures throughout all ages the lord is sure in all his words and faithful in all his deeds the lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all those who are bowed down the eyes of all wait upon you o lord and you give them their food in due season you open wide your hand and fill all things living with plenty the lord is righteous in all his ways and loving in all his works the lord is near to those who call upon him to all who call upon him faithfully he fulfills the desire of those who fear him he hears their cry and saves them the lord watches over those who love him but all the wicked shall he destroy my mouth shall speak the praise of the lord and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever might be an exercise to look through the verses of that psalm and see how many resonances of what we are thinking about this week and of our lord's total ministry are to be found there as we've said before the psalms contain the verses which he quoted most of any book in the scriptures so much of the scriptures were in his head and memory and he quotes them constantly but also he sees them as a source of prophecy for his own ministry but then the wideness of his arms outstretching stretches across to the whole of creation which in all its aspects praises the creator not in words but in life verses 9 and 10 the lord is loving to everyone and his mercy is over all his creatures all your works praise you o lord and your faithful servants bless you they tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your mighty power but our lord's ministry distills that into a human life and proclaims it in a way that we as members of the human family even now can imagine and relate to and then of course one gets to points in the way of the cross the lord upholds all those who fall the traditional stations give us three times when jesus stumbles and falls under the crosses heavy weight and lifts up all those who are bowed down we see the picture of jesus humanity bowed down in this week holy week we call it in which he shares our human condition and we look around to all those who are bowed down it's not often i stop and reflect on the sound but it's a good thing to do day by day just to find a verse that is speaking at a particular time i'm going on now to the gospel of saint luke for the lectionary at morning prayer throughout this week gives us the passion story as it's told by luke at the three hours on good friday i shall concentrate very much on the passion narrative of john with reflections on the others but it's luke who carries us through the week and on good friday morning in morning prayer two we will complete the passion narrative of st luke in morning prayer before at 12 noon going on to the story as told by john in the three hours i'm starting today at verse 54 of chapter 22 it's just after the story we read from luke yesterday of jesus's arrest in the garden of gethsemane following his betrayal by one of the twelve then they seized jesus and led him away bringing him into the high priest's house and peter was following at a distance and when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together peter sat down among them then a servant girl seeing peter as he sat in the light and looking closely at him said this man also was with him but peter denied it saying woman i do not even know him and a little later someone else saw him and said you also are one of them but peter said man i am not and after an interval of about an hour still another insisted saying certainly this man also was with him for he is a galilean but peter said man i do not know what you are talking about and immediately while peter was still speaking the crowed and the lord turned and looked at peter and peter remembered the saying of the lord how he had said to him before the crows today you will deny me three times and he went outside and wept bitterly now the men who were holding jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him they also blindfolded him and kept asking him prophesy who is it that struck you and they said many other things against him blaspheming him when day came the assembly of the elders of the people gathered together both chief priests and scribes and they led jesus away to their counsel and they said if you are the christ tell us but jesus said to them if i tell you you will not believe and if i ask you you will not answer but from now on the son of man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of god so they all said are you the son of god then and he said to them you say that i am then they said what further testimony do we need we have heard it ourselves from his own lips we pause there in luke's passion narrative and think especially of the quality of narration that st luke is giving us which reflects so much of the evangelists vocation and own personality i've said over and over again through this week and throughout our study of the gospels that each evangelist hands on the evangel the gospel the good news in their own way and become a channel fed by their own experiences and intentions in the way they're writing and handing that on to us and we receive it from those four channels of the four evangelists we receive it in so many other ways in epistles and in the writings of the new testament we receive it also in the lives of those who bear the cross throughout history in so many ways and are bowed down as the psalmist says but become witnesses and remember that the greek word for witness is the same as the word for martyr the giving of oneself sometimes even to death for the sake of that evangel the handing on of that good news sometimes speaking in actions and courage more deep than words for the silence speaks to here we have first of all luke dwelling on peter and there's something very special about the lucan narrative in this the way luke tells the story there's one sentence that is nowhere else in any of the gospels and that is when peter denies jesus for the third time after the proud boasts that he'd made even if i have to die with you i will never deny you and jesus has said this very night before the crows you will have denied me three times but in luke you then get that sentence and the lord turned and looked at peter no words just a look and the depth of that denial of the one who whom he had owned so many times and known for those years of ministry you are galilean they're saying but still he disowns even knowing jesus and now new words from jesus simply the lord turns and looks at peter it's it's a very luken sentence for instant luke's gospel jesus's eyes are always finding the one who at any moment is either the outcast or is struggling with something too big for them or not being understood or being from outside the community but wanting so much to be in all those things and at this moment jesus's eyes focus on peter we've no idea what that looks said but we know what the reaction was peter could stay no longer he felt that he was now outcast for he had done what judas had done and disowned the lord he goes outside and weeps bitterly over his own inability to carry out his loyalty to his friend and master we give great thanks to god for the way in which luke tells that story and we then have a pause and we see what is happening then to jesus when he is left utterly alone the soldiers just for the fun of it almost because they're used to having prisoners around blindfold jesus and say if you're a real prophet that you can't see you'll know who it is who's striking you and they beat him and treat him in that way to luke this is agony and i would believe that the evangelist himself would have been moved to tears by what he's describing at this time but if one goes on then once sets jesus in john's gospel the lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world in front of the official council of his own nation one thinks back in luke's gospel to that little incident which again is only in luke's gospel of the 12 year old boy sitting with great respect but also with great intelligence and spiritual insight before the doctors of the law in the temple and mary and joseph coming and saying my son why have you tried to treat it as sir did you not know i must be in my father's house well here now he is standing again alone if luke is to have the the the dates right because he is the one who tells us that jesus's ministry began when he was about 30 and here we are about three years later so not a 12 year old boy but a man of 33 looking at the doctors of the law and they are intent in bending the law to suit their purposes of keeping tranquility in their city and keeping authority in their hands during this powder keg of a time in holy week when so many are crowded into jerusalem and the situation is explosive and the roman governor is there watching everything they do the scene speaks for itself what i wanted to say was that the liturgical year takes us through times of sadness times of joy times of glory times of just ordinary days and we read these lessons at particular fixed times and in our hemispheres they're at different seasons northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere but the liturgical year only bears an oblique and indirect reference to our own situations i will remember as a parish priest having finished the good friday three hours and having gone back to the rectory in the community i was in this was the village of tisbury in wiltshire and getting a a a cup of tea and a hot cross barn and thinking you know there's a completion but being full of the good friday teaching and the doorbell rang and uh outside the door where a young couple that i knew well full of smiles holding hands and said to me uh director we've come to say we're engaged and their smile was a smile of glory and happiness and everything else certainly for them the liturgical year meant nothing this was a day of total happiness no doubt there were others in the village at that time for whom it meant the kind of things it was speaking of the wrestling with sickness or with death or being bowed down but on this occasion for them their happiness touched me as well and we have to remember the oblique way in which this all matches together we can go back to these stories at any time in our life and realize that the path of our lord's human life much of it hidden for years so many times silent in the context of creation and his glorying in the gifts of the the life of creation from the creator whom he calls abba father all of that is there somewhere for us and we need to know exactly where to go in the sacred scriptures to think our lord went through this too and i am walking maybe the way of the cross at this time in my life and he is walking beside me helping to bear its its weight an important message for holy week well i spoke about the way in which saint luke traditionally was thought also to be an artist he's certainly a writer who can paint wonderful pictures and he's also a traveler for the acts of the apostles gives us his great travelogue and most of the places he describes he would have known well across the mediterranean world and on to rome and we give thanks for that breadth of gifts from st luke the physician and healer of souls and one thinks on this day and there are there are three little dates that i wanted to mention which maybe complement this on this day in 1837 the artist john constable died his paintings of landscapes that he loved have become some of the most popular paintings in art galleries and one can find them everywhere and i think of uh paintings that were reproduced even in our school textbooks or copies of them hanging on the wall and become part of our mental landscape so that when you go into an art gallery and see the hay wayne or the cornfield or the veil of dedham or the loch or weymouth bay which always reminds me of holidays as a child and the way in which constable described his paintings particularly of dead unveil and the affection there he said i should paint my own places best as painting is but another word for feeling well maybe that's what luke is thinking when he is painting pictures in words for us in his gospel but of course the one that is perhaps most famous is the painting of salisbury cathedral from the bishop's garden which he painted again and again we've seen it here in london probably the one we know best is in the frick museum on fifth avenue in new york with its clear sky rather than the brother cloudy sky in the london one constable kept painting this but his favorite painting of salisbury cathedral was saul's brief cathedral from the meadow and he said at the end he painted this one in about 1833 he said in the end this is the confirmation of all my work and in it he didn't say this but in it there are four signs which have been interpreted as the gravestone there as a sign of death which awaits the whole of humanity an ash tree there which for him was a sign of strong life and creation proclaiming the glory and power of the creator the high spire which points to the heavens as the sign of the church's life and of faith and finally the rainbow arching over the cathedral and the sky a little bit troubled giving color to the rainbow the rainbow the sign of hope and promise i should paint these places best as painting is but another word for feeling on this day also in 1816 charlotte bronte uh sorry she was born in 1816 on this day she died in 1855 and again we're dealing with someone of faithfulness in that little howarth rectory two of their sisters having died from illness and leaving charlotte and emily and anne and also the life of branwell bronte the four children who survived to patrick bronte who was an anglican clergyman and he had taken the daughters from the school because he'd feared that they would catch the same disease so he'd lost his two elder daughters and charlotte was next and so charlotte we remember as having the gift in narration and uh personal feelings coming into it of giving us the story of jane eyre and villette and other things which again paint a picture in words which plumb the depths of our humanity and then lastly the thing that i wanted to remember was that on this day in 1862 the railway station at watch it on the somerset coast opened and that was the end of the west somerset line as it ran across the along the coast beautiful area of england and the lovely thing is that the line is still running it's the oldest of all the heritage lines and steam trains for the journey's sake still puff along that beautiful stretch of countryside so that people going fairly slowly in terms of modern transport can see the beauties of the landscape changing nowadays you can get into an aircraft and fly across the world from england shall we say to new zealand and get out and feel that there's so much similarity that all the cultures right across the world have passed you by and yet the journey has taken you through completely different areas of humanity and the earth whereas in this little railway you just go at the pace of realization and that gives us luke the travel writer if you like of the acts of the apostles and the way in which he speaks of the dangers and the journeys of the journeys and the slowness of the journeys and the way in which you had to rely on the hospitality of others and make shift for a night's lodging because your transport had broken down all those kinds of things now at the moment travel is something that is out of our reach and so it's a lovely thing to think of that movement being restored to us as lockdown begins to ease let's say our prayers on this day and give thanks for the way in which luke gives himself to us in his writings but also the passion scenes that we see throughout this week and the way that we can relate to them on this day we are praying for the diocese of badagri in nigeria in the lagos province and for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambeth and also the church of saint leonards at highs here in this diocese and the ministry there a vacancy there of the the parish priest at present but at that point in high there is the coast that you're looking out at and everything else is is is there and uh yeah we we think of all of that this morning well uh as we think of that there are also um tragic memories which are in our news like the mass grave which has been uncovered in libya and at the same time tragic things happening like the karen people uh many of them christians in burma myanmar trying desperately to cross into thailand but being now pushed back from there and that sense of being really not in place anywhere they're suffering bombing from one side an exclusion from the other a sign of so many whom we perhaps don't even know about across our world as we say our prayers this morning so here is the collect for this particular day almighty and everlasting god who in your tender love towards the human race sent your son our savior jesus christ to take upon him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility and also be made partakers of his resurrection through jesus christ our lord amen we say our father in the words that we would usually use in whichever language we would use 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 brand 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 on this day christ crucified draw you to himself to find in him a sure ground for faith a firm support for hope and the assurance of sins forgiven 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 [Music]