good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral welcome to morning prayer wherever you are in the world joining us online well as i prophesied yesterday march is coming in like a lion outside the wind is immensely blustery and so um tiger and i have come into the orchid house so that we have a little preview of the orchids which are beginning to come into flower and will be taken into the house and into other houses to decorate those rooms but meanwhile this is given to um us to have our morning broadcast away from the wind and probably tomorrow it will be a little quieter there's rain in the air as well but that's not a bad thing because it means that the frost has gone away and the magnolias which are beginning to bloom will not be burned on the edges by frost so let's hope for some quiet weather and as we say our prayers we give thanks for one another and our ability to communicate virtually across the world but also our chance to reflect together as a garden congregation me as well with you this morning so let's begin our prayers on this tenth morning of march a wednesday morning oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise hear our voice o lord according to your faithful love according to your judgment give us life blessed are you god of compassion and mercy to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of our sin your light breaks forth like the dawn and your healing springs up for deliverance as we rejoice in the gift of your saving help sustain us with your bountiful spirit open our eyes to sing your 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 our psalm on this tenth morning of the month is psalm 50. the lord the most mighty god has spoken and called the world from the rising of the sun to its setting out of zion perfect in beauty god shines forth our god comes and will not keep silence consuming fire goes out before him and a mighty tempest stares about him he calls the heaven above and the earth that he may judge his people gather to me my faithful who have sealed my covenant with sacrifice let the heavens declare his righteousness for god himself is judge hear o my people and i will speak i will testify against you o israel for i am god your god i will not reprove you for your sacrifices for your burnt offerings are always before me but i will take no ball out of your house nor he goat out of your folds for all the beasts of the forest are mine the cattle upon a thousand hills i know every bird of the mountains and the insects of the field are mine if i were hungry i would not tell you for the whole world is mine and all that fills it do you think i eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats offer to god a sacrifice of thanksgiving and fulfill your vows to god most high call upon me in the day of trouble i will deliver you and you shall honor me but to the wicked says god why do you recite my statutes and take my covenant upon your lips since you refused to be disciplined and have cast my words behind you when you saw a thief you made friends with him and you threw in your lot with adulterers you have loosed your lips for evil and harnessed your tongue to deceit you sit and speak evil of your brother you slander your own mother's son these things have you done and should i keep silence did you think that i am even such a one as yourself but no i must reprove you and set before your eyes the things that you have done you that forget god consider this well lest i tear you apart and there is none to deliver you whoever offers me the sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me and to those who keep my way will i show the salvation of god i am god your god a very present tense psalm and full of challenges as we turn to our reading from st john's gospel and continue where we left yesterday at the end of that little as i call it inserted passage back to jesus teaching in the temple again jesus spoke to them saying i am the light of the world whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life so the pharisees said to him you are bearing witness about yourself your testimony is not true jesus answered even if i do bear witness about myself my testimony is true for i know where i came from and where i am going but you do not know where i come from or where i am going you judge according to the flesh i judge no one yet even if i do judge my judgment is true for it is not i alone who judge but i and the father who sent me in your law it is written that the testimony of two people is true i am the one who bears witness about myself and the father who sent me bears witness about me they said to him therefore but where is your father jesus answered you know neither me nor my father if you knew me you would know my father also now these words jesus spoke in the treasury as he taught in the temple but no one arrested him because his hour had not yet come so he said to them again i am going away and you will seek me that you will die in your sin for where i am going you cannot come so the jews said will he kill himself since he says where i am going you cannot come jesus said to them you are from below i am from above you are of this world i am not of this world i told you that you would die in your sins for unless you believe that i am he you will die in your sins so they said to him but who are you jesus said to them just what i have been telling you from the beginning i have much to say about you and much to judge but he who sent me is true and i declare to the world what i have heard from him they did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the father so jesus said to them when you have lifted up the son of man then you will know that i am he and that i do nothing on my own authority but speak just as the father taught me and he who sent me is with me he has not left me alone for i always do the things that are pleasing to him as jesus was saying these things many believed in him the sentence in that reading that we've just had i am the light of the world is one of the most important sentences and it's of course present tense it always is in the gospel when jesus is speaking and looking us in the eye i am the light of the world it's strange that uh so many of our words which have most power are one syllable long light it's the same in the greek fos the latin looks but also truth hope life love death war all kinds of words which in one syllable can close a sentence of complicated words of many syllables with a powerful statement i am the light of the world a sentence of words with one syllable each and at the same time light one of the most powerful images of all it is extraordinary that if you are standing in a room and you need to get to the door but the light switch is the other side and you're looking at the door and there are objects in the room and you suddenly plunge the room by turning off the light into thick darkness your sense of direction leaves you pretty quickly you'll find yourself when you feel the wall that you've arrived at very often some little way and you've walked a few steps from the door that you wanted to get to for light is essential to us and when we don't have it we feel our way differently it's not surprising therefore that right at the beginning of our scriptures in the book of genesis there is that powerful sentence if i say it in english god said let there be light and there was light again every word one syllable one thinks of that really wonderful moment in haydn's creation right at the beginning because of the uh because of the way in which haydn has represented the chaos before creation in that overture which sounds fairly gentle but in because every every chord was unresolved there is a sense of chaos in that 18th century mind as that piece is playing and then one comes to the aria in c minor in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of god brooded on the face of the waters and god said let there be and you know that as well that massive chord from c minor to c major the most obvious foundation chord of all music at fortissimo level how the people in austria the people listening must have jumped out of their seats the first time they had that in england too and how that became an immediate an immediate favorite of oratorios both because of its simplicity but also because of the way in which orchestrally haydn then began by using orchestration to show light but we needn't stop there there's the beginning of the five books of the law let there be light but we can go to the psalmist thy word is a lantern to my feet and a light unto my paths jesus would have known that very well or also to the book of the prophet isaiah which i've turned to so often in what jesus says the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light i am the light of the world and one thinks also of works of art like um holman hunts the light of the world with jesus taken from the book of revelation the vision of jesus standing at the door knocking and in his hand the lantern but if a light is turned off then of course our way becomes as dark as before and we go astray and how do we receive that light will we receive it shall we say body mind and spirit and this is what jesus is trying to say for unless you receive it in spirit daily during the gift of this new day you are being content with the one plane which jesus is talking about you of you are of the world i am not of the world but jesus is giving gifts from that other infinite dimension and from the creator whom his love of and his his absolute unity with delights in calling abba father but there's little understanding while the people are constantly answering in earthly terms something which began as we keep saying with nicodemus how can this be so and jesus says if you can't understand me in earthly terms in which i'm talking how will you understand when i tell you the things of heaven but we receive light in our physical being when we're creating something and suddenly it comes right and we realize we can do it and what we are trying to do becomes something that ah i see and light dawns it's a metaphor it's an image but we know how our bodies react to that the first time we can do something the first time which all of us will remember that we realize that we're swimming and for a moment one danger has gone away we're not going to sink because we're swimming and the physical activity of all of that becomes massively important or riding a bicycle in the same way when suddenly our body learns to balance or playing a musical instrument or doing anything you like driving the car doing things which suddenly become automatically part of us a physical turning on of the light but then also mental turning on of the night but that happens with experience and the years going forward as we learn things and begin to piece things together there is in a a french church that we know on the the wall there a cross and in the middle there is a letter x and feeding into it one syllable words ending with x from the latin lex law rex king looks light crooks cross it's a mental image but the way in which we ca connect learning and learn from one another becomes the mind learning and then once again one can go beyond that in spiritual turning on of light how often have you and i waited years to realize the spiritual importance of something words or a fact or something about someone that we've known all along and perhaps discounted and then suddenly in a different dimension there is everything about love and light and truth which before might have looked completely unlikely it's part of the fact of being human with the capacity not only to imagine but to receive the teaching and the word of jesus and the law of the lord the lex and the light of the world looks mundi as it is in latin all of those things become part of our learning but they show us the balance of the day in which benedict would approve of within our communities we exercise body mind and spirit in all those qualities which are shown to us from our spiritual imaginings of the gifts of the kingdom of heaven we say it in the our father which we shall join in with soon now in our different languages thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven in that prayer asking for grace and also imagination and thought processes and physical acts of encouragement and love to receive the qualities of the kingdom of heaven even here and now we take steps which are just one by one but we find that light goes on and darkness evaporates in so many different ways and the wreckage of the past can be part of the pieces that put together the turning on of light for the present and also the future see how this passage is so connected with time my hour has not yet come but when the son of man there's that phrase again jesus using himself as the emblem of our humanity and taking that from the book of the prophet daniel when the son of man is lifted up well that could be a metaphor but it will be in fact a cruel reality at the end of this gospel when jesus is lifted onto the crooks the cross and his blood and water runs from his streaming side this is where john is leading us but as we gaze on that cross then dimensions of this gift of the spirit begin to open up and we're at that time of resurrection narrative which we long to come to on these lenten days going forward there'll be many thoughts in our head today and i'm resisting for the moment going into the past at all it was um a date march the 10th when in the year 515 bc the temple which jesus knew was completed again it had been destroyed by nebuchadnezzar and we were thinking about with verdi's opera nubuco a day or two ago but after it had been destroyed when the exiles came back from babylon having sung their songs of exile longing for homeland and rebuilt their temple it was finished counted finished on this particular day and it would have been the temple much then enlarged and added to and still being built because of the works that herod the great had put in progress and jesus knew that temple the psalms were the hymn book of that temple but nevertheless we're thinking of how any earthly building built with hands is in the context of creation just a speck of time and jesus is trying to teach us as he was trying to teach the woman of samaria at the well when he was talking about streams of living water that he was able to give her the day will come when neither on mount arizona nor on mount zion will people worship god is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth well let's give thanks for that lesson this morning following the great i am the light of the world statement which jesus made in the treasury of the temple to those around him who were not understanding but every statement in jesus as we keep saying is present tense and we still are embracing that truth and learning more about it day by day as we reflect on him and the world around us so let's then say our prayers and on this day we are thinking of the diocese of let me find the right part of what we're doing um i think i'm on the right page i am the 10th of march we're thinking of the diocese of atlanta in the episcopal church of the united states of america which is wonderful and uh one thinks in atlanta of uh sam kandler the dean at saint peter's cathedral and we pray for that community too and here in the diocese we're asked by the area deanery of elam to pray for their missional learning community and those who lead that community throughout the deanery pray for justin our archbishop and for rose bishop of dover for tim bishop at lambeth as we use the college for today and also bring our own prayers and intentions to our prayer almighty god whose most dear son jesus christ went not up to joy but first he suffered pain and entered not into glory before he was crucified mercifully grant that we walking in the way of the cross may find it to be none other than the way of life and peace through jesus christ our lord are men so each in our own language we 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 amen moment of silence now as we say our own prayers on this morning christ give you grace to grow in holiness to deny yourself take up your cross daily and follow him and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and upon those whom you would pray for now and always are men and i think we did well tiger to come into the greenhouse because it's now pouring with rain outside and the wind is strong but we're here in the warmth with these beautiful orchids and you're being more and more comfortable day by day aren't you a brave little boy all right good