good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this wednesday the 18th of november as we meet together to say our morning prayers wherever you are in the world feel welcome here bring your own concerns your own prayers your own thoughts and reflections as in the garden we say our morning prayers it's a a stiff november morning i mean that the breeze is quite stiff and it's chilly but the sky is totally blue and the rising sun is shining on bell harry tower of the cathedral behind where we've just said matins as a group of clergy together but of course the cathedral is locked for public worship and so here we are virtually joining each other to say our morning prayers november the 18th just looking back at random in 1991 terry waite who was the archbishop of canterbury's envoy for peace and reconciliation had gone to beirut in 1987 and was kidnapped and no one really knew the true story of all of that but we do now for terry was kept in darkness and confinement for four years and every day must have been a question as to whether his life would be taken and since then of course his story with the story of other captives has been a story of courage so many have been killed over the years since but thank god terry lived to tell that tale and still is an envoy for peace and reconciliation and a very welcome visitor here in uh canterbury um one of his phrases inspired one of the hymns that i wrote it it was the light is stronger than the darkness he held on to that in that darkness and in that fear and we give thanks for him we remember all those so kept and held prisoner and captive across the world who do not know what fate awaits them in 401 the visigoths under alaric invaded northern italy i say that because one of the themes of our reflections on the revelation has been the fact that the imperial power of rome was so great but there were fracture lines coming through dissensions and different armies fighting for power and now here is the beginning of the fall of that empire and so many empires before and since have crumbled with the years in 1626 the new saint peter's basilica in rome was consecrated and we remember that today because father robert mcculloch was saying only yesterday on the telephone from the vatican that that place is more or less now empty because of lockdowns and the kind of distance that people have to keep and so are very very different saint peter's basilica than most of you and i would have experienced in the past so we we pray for the life of the basilica there we remember that on this day in 1922 marcel proust died having written the enormous reflection on his life which in english is translated a remembrance of things past and we remember also in a tragedy of the 1987 king's cross underground fire which killed 30 people there so let's uh let's say our prayers and one or two other dates will actually be important to our reflection as we go on oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise visit us with your salvation and sustain us with your gracious spirit blessed are you creator of all to you be praise and glory forever as your dawn renews the face of the earth bringing light and life to all creation may we rejoice in this day you have made does we wake refreshed from the depths of sleep open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will that the world may rejoice and give you praise 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 and as 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 of the three psalms for this morning of the month the 18th morning each 90 91 92 are wonderful psalms to read and we've we've used 90 and 91 often in the past but uh today i'm going to use 92. it is a good thing to give thanks to the lord and to sing praises to your name almost high to tell of your love early in the morning and of your faithfulness in the night time upon the ten-stringed instrument upon the harp and to the melody of the liar for you lord have made me glad by your acts and i sing aloud at the works of your hands oh lord how glorious are your works your thoughts are very deep the senseless do not know nor do fools understand that though the wicked sprout like grass and all the workers of iniquity flourish it is only to be destroyed forever but you o lord shall be exalted forevermore for know your enemies o lord low your enemies shall perish and all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered but my horn you have exalted like the horns of wild oxen i am anointed with fresh oil my eyes will look down on my foes my ears shall hear the ruin of the evildoers who rise up against me the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree and shall spread abroad like a cedar of lebanon such as are planted in the house of the lord shall flourish in the courts of our god they shall still bear fruit in old age they shall be vigorous and in full leaf that they may show that the lord is true he is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him so we turn to our reflection from the revelation to john on patmos and today we're completing chapter 11 it's quite a short lesson i'm starting at verse 15. then the seventh angel blew his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven saying the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our lord and of his christ and he shall reign forever and ever and the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before god fell on their faces and worshiped god saying we give thanks to you lord god almighty who is and who was for you have taken your great power and begun to reign the nations raged but your roth came and the time for the dead to be judged and for rewarding your servants the prophets and saints and those who fear your name both small and great and for destroying the destroyers of the earth [Music] then god's temple in heaven was opened and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple there were flashes of lightning rumblings peals of thunder an earthquake and heavy hail it's interesting that in the sun which we read the words became so wonderful that the writer had to reach for the liar and start playing and singing for some words need to be sung and it needn't surprise you as it doesn't surprise me that those words the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our lord and of his christ and he shall reign forever and ever feel musically familiar they are the heart of handel's hallelujah chorus and we'll think a little bit about that in a moment but i want first to think of what austin farah called in terms of this book of pictures the revelation when he was writing his book the rebirth of images he called these john's conclusions it's as though he's about to start something and it stops and once again we glimpse the perpetual and eternal worship of the courts of heaven which no words can describe and no music give fullest sound to and really only the heart can perceive and share as simple as i said before in the letter to the corinthians the second letter speaks of his own perception of that and his longing for that eternal dimension well the cancelled conclusions have come across us once or twice recently we just think something is starting and it's as though the almighty on his throne holds a hand out and says no not yet [Music] we're used to that in moments of the old testament yesterday i said read the book of zechariah for many of these images to begin to make sense this morning i'm going to turn to somewhere else and i will read some of it it's psalm 2. for psalm 2 is something which helps us understand what is going on here here it is why are the nations in tumult and why do the peoples devise a vain plot the kings of the earth rise up and the rulers take counsel together against the lord and against his anointed let us break their bonds asunder and cast away their cords from us he who dwells in heaven shall love them to scorn the lord shall have them in derision then shall he speak to them in his roth and terrify them in his fury yet have i set my king upon my holy hill of zion i will proclaim the decree of the lord he said to me you are my son this day have i begotten you ask of me and i will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession you shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel well that too will remind you of the music of handel's messiah for the worship of the courts of heaven were very much in his mind when he was creating that work which was done at speed in 1742 august and september three or four weeks amazing for this oratorio which is probably the most popular oratorio in western music and handle said of the hallelujah chorus i did see all heaven before me and the great god himself seated on his throne with his company of angels and that he tries to express in his music and you remember that onto that sentence which he has taken from the passage we read this morning the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our lord and of his christ and he shall reign forever and ever you can almost hear the quiet singing it and he he puts on the end of that the name which is given later on in chapter 19 of the revelation to the rider on the white horse the name inscribed on his robe and on his thigh king of kings and lord of lords and when the chorus is being sung you'll remember suddenly a single trumpet now gets louder and louder and louder and comes down like dropping down a staircase a wonderful insight into that very reflected text for if you think about the messiah there's very little narrative in it little bit of gospel narrative around christmas time when the pastoral symphony gives us a sense of the shepherds and the soprano soloist tells us about the shepherds in the fields watching over their flocks and the angels with the trumpets begin to sing their gloria yes it that's there but the rest is a reflective meditation on what the messiah the christ the anointed one as we see in psalm 2 actually means to us and so much of that comes from the writings of the ancient scriptures which jesus himself would have known very well even that great resurrection narrative i know that my redeemer liveth and that he shall stand on the last day comes from the book of job in the old testament and then of course you get the amazing the trumpet sound which comes from the letter to the corinthians the gospels themselves are implied all the way through because we know the story but when we get to the great our men and worthy is the lamb well then we're in the heartland of the revelation which we've been studying it's terribly tempting in the scriptures and i found that when we were going through the gospel of saint luke terribly tempting to leave out the hard bits and pick our best bits the bits that comfort us now without much thought but does doesn't injustice to the situations that we find in the world of great suffering and of horror of terror of evil activity and all the things implied by the images of those four horsemen where death road beside hades and war and pestilence and famine all of these things and there's a how long because of the persecution of saints and one things of terry weight in the darkness he must have thought how long so many times and we just think at the end of the seven seals or the end of the seven trumpets that now is god's moment where and his hand stays then people are given more time more time to realize what they're doing more time so that the forces of good in heavenly places and on earth might prevail and cause an act of penitence a better world it's what we pray for all the time but by pausing then the martyrs still suffer and the suffering goes on and that we have to come to terms with for heaven's answer and we get that in the gospel of saint luke where material about these terrible pictures is not lacking when jesus is speaking to his disciples just before the passion and his arrest and we have stories about these things in the parables but john must have thought why give them a more chances more chances more chances because that's the story of the vineyard of course those who had been working hard and let's take the the metaphor out of it suffering so much for years and years could easily look and say why are these being given a chance when we have worked all the way through it's a human reaction and these have got the same reward as us even though they've come last and because the will of god was to offer his own son when so many of his servants had been killed and not to smite the earth with roth at that time but staying his hand always then we also must take that path offer ourselves freely for we are on the same journey towards the heavenly city and these pictures speak of that when some arkham sergeant did his desert island discs which you can pull up on recording and he was asked for um the the record he wanted to take he said i would like to take a full orchestral score of handel's messiah for there is not one interpretation which is better than another and any one recording can only do it a little bit of justice whereas in my mind looking at the score with all the instruments and he loved conducting the messiah with great forces when i look at all the instruments i hear a myriad of sounds as we do and all those words a reflection on the anointed one become part of that stop go pause while we're going there a cancelled conclusion because the how long is being answered with a let's wait a while yet for penitence may come and the destroyers of the earth are of course series horsemen the tendency to evil the souls themselves whatever has gone on the lord is wanting to save with his outstretched arms on the cross well all of those things in this passage i looked at the beginning to see the the dates and i noticed that uh in 1836 on this day w s gilbert who worked with sullivan at the comic operas was born and sullivan used to get annoyed because gilbert kept bringing up a plot which uh had a magic magic lozenge in it rather like the the the first opera that we know about after trial by jury that the sorcerer where the vicar goes around with his teapot and it's a love potion and everyone uh drinking it is is affected by it but sullivan said look don't let's have any of this magic stuff let's do a real world and so many of their operas poke fun at human power and pomposity but there are no magic lozenges and we know that christ's servants have to work hard with their own flesh and blood imagination and prayers patience and the sense of encouragement for one another particularly at this time the pandemic for all are on a journey as guests on this wonderful planet today margaret atwood was born in 1939 a canadian novelist and parent and critic and she wrote many things but here's one of her poems which touched me this morning the moment when after many years of hard work and a long voyage you stand in the center of your room house half acre square mile island country knowing it last how you got there and say i own this is the same moment when the trees unloose their soft arms from around you the birds take back their language the cliffs fissure and collapse the air moves back from you like a wave and you can't breathe no they whisper you own nothing you were a visitor time after time climbing the hill planting the flag proclaiming we never belong to you you never found us it was always the other way round guests here of god's beautiful creation so let's say our prayers on this morning as we commit ourselves to that ministry of the anointed king of kings and lord of lords who humbly like a lamb that was slain offered himself for us in desperate situations our prayers this morning on this 18th of november are for the parish in this diocese of st andrew barming heath at maidstone and we pray for chris lavender and we also pray of course for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover and tim bishop at lambeth and in the anglican communion for the diocese of salisbury in england and nicolas holtem the bishop there and let's also pray for nick papadopoulos the dean there who was one of our cannons here until recently we pray for the whole life of that marvelous diocese in wiltshire and dorset and also we pray for the diocese of dunedin in aotearoa new zealand and polynesia and for stephen benford uh that's most southerly of the dioceses uh down there in aotearoa and so let's keep all those in our mind as we say the prayer for this week heavenly father whose blessed son was revealed to destroy the works of the devil and to make us the children of god and heirs of eternal life granted we having this hope may purify ourselves even as he is pure that when he should appear in power and great glory we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom where he is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever 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 amen so a moment of silence now for our own prayers on this autumn morning in england and whatever season you are enjoying across the world the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds and 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 so [Music] you