good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of friday the 10th of december welcome wherever you are in the world as we look around the world today and we see really fierce fires blazing in western australia and people putting their lives at risk to attempt to put out the fires and then frontline healthcare workers throughout the world struggling with the omicron variant of the pandemic we pray for all of these but we also pray for those involved in the desperate tragedy in mexico where a trailer and a lorry rolled over and in the trailer were about 150 or so migrants from central america and over 50 of them the numbers aren't counted yet really have been killed and about a hundred injured so we think of those dealing with that situation and those who have lost their lives and been bereaved by that appalling tragedy there as people are driven for some way or another from their homes and begin to travel and not in very safe ways very often so we've come here this morning to a particular place because we are actually looking at where we were last year on the 10th of december when we were studying the indigenous trees in the garden and this was the morning for the box and i'm surrounded by little box pages and box butches they're actually quite slow growing and the one very near you the tall one is reckoned to be i think about 150 years old it appears long back in the black and white photographs of the deanery and yet it it's clipped carefully because if you clip it a box bush in a careless way it will respond by dying back and then refuse to grow in the right way but they are little borders giving a green border to all the color of the garden and they they stay green throughout the winter so i'm i'm sitting here on a very chilly day much chillier than last year and also the winter is farther advanced this year as uh if you look back you will see and remember there is a a full talk about the box hedges from last year last year also we remembered that this was the the day that emily dickinson was born in 1860 and studied some of her poems so i remember her today yes but we're not going to to to look at her in any deep way because we did that last year on this day and i've got other things to think about today in our reflection so i've been telling you hello good morning he's arrived since i've started speaking here um and uh he's he's in a pretty chilly wind this morning but it's dry so it's wintry weather and tiger and i will brave the wintry weather together let's start our prayers o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise reveal among us the light of your promise that we may behold your power and glory blessed are you sovereign god of all to you be praise and glory forever in your tender compassion the dawn from on high is breaking upon us to dispel the lingering shadows of night and as we look for your coming among us this day 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 does we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence so gone set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen this the tenth morning of the month gives us three psalms 50 51 and 52 and in the past i've always read either 50 or 51 51 very very uh well known to us as what we call the misery set to music by uh allegri of course in a a wonderful passion-tied way and psalm 50 itself speaking about creation but this morning i'm going to read psalm 52 and we'll see why when we come to our lesson from the hebrews why do you glory in evil a new tyrant while the goodness of god endures continually you plot destruction you deceiver your tongue is like a sharpened razor you love evil rather than good falsehood rather than the word of truth you love all words that hurt oh you deceitful tongue therefore god shall utterly bring you down he shall take you and pluck you out of your tent and root you out of the land of the living the righteous shall see this and tremble they shall laugh you to scorn and say this is the one who did not take god for a refuge but trusted in great riches and relied upon wickedness but i am like a spreading olive tree in the house of god i trust in the goodness of god forever and ever i will always give thanks to you for what you have done i will hope in your name for your faithful ones delight in it very startling imagery there about tyrants but at the same time about the way in which our tongue can be like a sharpened razor when it's speaking to another a wonderful image but at the same time the sense of being like a spreading olive tree there is a great olive tree right at the end of this path if you go all the way along to the end and here's the psalmist once again using all the imagery to help us understand what pictures he's giving but we're going to the epistle to the hebrews and today i'm reading chapter eight we'll read the whole of it uh and in in in that we shall find that another writer is being quoted in full so chapter eight of the letter to the hebrews and i think i'm sheltering you from the wind not i verse one of chapter eight now the point in what we are saying is this we have such a high priest one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven a minister in the holy places in the true tabernacle that the lord set up not man for every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer now if he were on earth he would not be a priest at all since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law but they serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things for when moses was about to erect the tabernacle he was instructed by god saying see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain but as it is christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises for if that first covenant had been faultless well there would have been no occasion to look for a second for god finds fault with them when he says behold the days are coming declares the lord when i will establish a new covenant with the house of israel and with the house of judah not like the covenant that i made with their fathers on the day when i took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of egypt for they did not continue in my covenant and so i showed no concern for them declares the lord for this is the covenant that i will make with the house of israel after those days declares the lord i will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts and i will be their god and they shall be my people and they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother saying know the lord for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest for i will be merciful towards their iniquities and i will remember their sins no more in speaking of a new covenant he makes the first one obsolete and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away well half of that chapter is written by someone else it's a quotation and it sounds like a quotation from the prophet isaiah behold the days are coming declares the lord when i will establish a new covenant with the house of israel and with the house of judah not like the covenant not like the covenant that i made with their fathers on the day when i took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of egypt is it isaiah well it isn't it comes in the most extraordinary place for such a wonderful promise in the old testament it comes right in the middle of jeremiah the prophet who is often thought to be a prophet of disaster and gloom and dismal things but this is not at all dismal this is the covenant i will make with the house of israel after those days declares the lord i will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts and i will be their god and they shall be my people and they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother saying know the lord for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest i will be merciful towards their iniquities and i will remember their sins no more so at this time we are hearing the words of the prophet jeremiah quoted to us very accurately by the writer of the epistle to the hebrews who is attempting to show those in that community of christians who are jewish christians probably in rome as we've said before as the writer writing from alexandria a long way off but he is trying to show that the new way the new covenant has arrived the covenant that the prophet jeremiah is speaking about now if we if we look to to the prophet jeremiah and the prophet jeremiah chapter 34 i'm not going there but you can you can look at that you find him at a desperate state of the history of his people when the city of jerusalem under the puppet king zedekiah is surrounded once again because zedekiah has been has proved false to his promises through the tyrant nebuchadnezzar surrounded by the armies of nebuchadnezzar and jeremiah prophesies that this is all going to end in complete disaster and much of his book is about that and the people are um there in the city and the armies in the end overrun them zedekiah has to watch his sons put to death in front of him by the armies of nebuchadnezzar and he himself has his eyes put out and is bound in chains and carried off to babylon and meanwhile the city is despoiled the temple is destroyed all the vessels of the temple are taken away and it seems that this is the end and in the middle of all that all that rubble if you like of the city of jerusalem which will be this shoot flowers of a promise of a new covenant and we read those verses in chapter 34 i think it begins at about verse 31 but have a look it it comes and then if you go on on on at the end you find the desperate state of the nation at the end of the book but in the middle flowering like a flower in the middle of a wilderness is this promise of the prophet jeremiah and the promise is that temples and holy places wow wonderful prompts to our worship and also wonderful places where people can meet to worship and sense with all the presence of god are not necessary to receive the promise of the coming of the lord and the receiving of him into their own lives because here is a promise rather like the promise given by jesus to the woman at the well at samaria here is a promise that those living waters are available within our own lives we become a holy temple to the lord and our minds and our hearts and our activity is filled with that promise and day by day we rejoice in the forgiveness of sins and we rejoice in our ability to be the body of christ there is a hymn which has the line um hearts and minds and hands and voices in a choicest solemnity it's as though a human being in traveling around with this promise within them actually in conveying the gifts of the spirit becomes holy in themselves and restores that holiness with gifts of grace each morning it's a heavy responsibility but it's also the most wonderful promise so as we think of that promise and also reflect on it day by day not just when we read versus like jeremiah but so many of the verses of the new testament and so many of the verses of the epistles and the the the gospels giving us that promise it becomes really something that is a responsibility for us now i want to think of one or two things this morning really two people and the first is a tragedy in its in in itself i'm talking about thomas merton uh and thomas merton died on this day the 10th of december 1968. he was a trappist monk one of the most aesthetic of all the orders of uh the the monastic life and he'd been born in england educated here but at the same time he went across and joined a trappist monastery at louisville kentucky the trappist abbey of gethsemane at louisville and as that vocation developed he surrounded himself in a sense with the the spiritual messages and began to write in a way that was helpful to our spirituality many of you may know his books probably uh the seven story mountain it published in 1948 the next year he was ordained priest in 1949 but those were books very much about spirituality by the time he got to the 1960s he was beginning to write with social criticism of the way in which humanity erects barriers by causing divisions and uh he was wanting those decision divisions to be broken down and christians to be involved in social action and then he widened that to a dialogue with other faiths and became a close friend of the dalai lama and as all of that began to unfold with all his faithfulness to the gospel as a trappist he went to a monastic conference in thailand and while he was there and here is the tragedy on this day in december 1968 when he was shaving and showering a faulty electric wire electrocuted him and he died instantly and that tragedy we remember but from then on his ministry hadn't finished because then his letters his private journals all of those things where he would think and pray and perhaps commit to paper for he was an ardent writer were published and we have books like seeds of contemplation and the living bread and an asian journal which wasn't published until five years after he had been killed and then many private journals and much correspondence contemplation in a world of action one of them is called and we think of thomas merton who embraced that sense of within their own lives being a tabernacle a temple of the holy spirit and give thanks for him today as we remember that quotation from the epistle to the hebrews helping us on a new journey towards the eternal city which we've been thinking of as we've read this epistle i want then to go on to someone else who has an anniversary on this day i'm talking about the man of letters poetry novel short stories memoirs even opera librettos william pluma who was born on this day in 1903 in the transvaal in south africa and uh he and his parents traveled between the transvaal and and and south africa itself and england where he was educated and back to the transvaal and he began later in the 1920s to write about life that wrote about novels but also wrote about the racial divisions and scandalized the people there at the time by writing novels about that and one of his first novels were um what was talking about an interracial marriage there and it scandalized the people in the end uh pluma and and his his name is spelt as there is ploma but it's pronounced pluma he said always to rhyme with rumor he had to leave south africa at that time and began to travel and he left for japan and in a moment i'll i'll quote from a book which he later wrote not long after about his time in japan but he traveled also the world both in korea and in in the uk uh in in china and everything else i think is a bit alarmed by our feathered friends here so tiger don't be worried they won't hurt you um uh and uh at this uh at this time he began to to travel and then came back to england and from then on he wrote and wrote and i first came across him because between 1938 and 1940 he edited and uh set in order and published three volumes of the diaries of the reverend francis kilvert who was an english priest a priest in the church of england a parish priest and wrote his diary he lived right over on the welsh borders uh and uh the the diaries of francis gilbert are wonderful things to read because he had a wonderful eye for all things around him particularly natural things and pluma made it his business to serve gilbert by publishing all those diaries they're humorous and they're the life of a parish priest about his work and then from then on he began to do other things and we remember him too always serving someone else remember him too for writing between 1953 and 1963 he wrote librettos for benjamin britain to compose music to his opera gloriana written for the queen's coronation year and then more important to us the three church operas operators they are which are to be performed in church and that they are the curlieu river and the burning fiery furnace and the prodigal son all of those librettos are supplied by the writings of william pluma he was a friend of virginia woolf and the the wolf's virginia and leonard wolf having a printing firm published so many of his poems and his stories and a friend of w h ordon of stephen spender ian foster said that william plumer was the best poet he knew and loved his poetry as a modern pair best of all you know how orton took to that but uh foster certainly believed that of william plumer and yet pluma was self-effacing and didn't make much of himself in public he became an uh a an editor and a reader both for faber and faber where of course t.s eliot was and also the chief reader for the publishing company jonathan cape and his collected poems were published in 1973 the year of his death he died in louis here in sussex not too far away from us and he was the one who spotted others uh and especially shall we say ian fleming so ian fleming uh with his his james bond novels uh it was plumer who spotted the potential and the book goldfinger is actually dedicated to william plumer but what he did most of all was to explore the way in which it's difficult for cultures to come together i've got his novel seido yeah it's been on my bookshelves for a long time and it talks about his time in japan but as always when he's writing a novel although he's speaking about himself and there are many memoirs and reminiscences in it's not himself that he is actually describing he actually creates a fictitious character and places it in a scene that he knows but this novel is about how difficult it is for people of different cultures to come together unless they learn that culture and respect that culture and realize that they can do things which can hurt and remember the psalmist now with a tongue like a sharp razor you love all words it hurt but inadvertently because in one culture it's quite different from another and the japanese culture a very respectful and quiet culture at that time it was uh the city of tokyo when he was there was recovering from a desperate earthquake and the city itself was trying to recover but it was filled with overpopulation and also not enough resources and then in the middle of all that he describes a particular scene and here it is one morning in early spring in the narrow street which has already been mentioned a small local festival was in progress toys and flowers were being sold on the crowded pavements and children swarmed everywhere excited by the occasion and wearing their gorgeous clothes this scene in the mild and sunny air tended to disguise the prevailing drabness of the town and suggested the countryside quickening with spring mountainsides covered with blossoming fruit trees and the sea sparkling on wide beaches it awakened at least vague longings in the breast of cedar massage a young japanese in the uniform of a university student who was standing before a pillar box where he was in the act of posting a letter while he was pausing a moment to re-read the address on the envelope it caught the sun and his face was for a moment transfigured honestly luminous reflecting the china white glow of the paper the letter was addressed to a young courtesan whose professional name was miss plova and it was not without a certain tenderness that the young man allowed it to leave his hand and heard it fall into the letterbox a moment later he was aware that somebody was approaching him and found himself confronted by a total stranger a young foreigner who was wearing no hat and had an inquiring expression on his face at this sado felt a slight panic he was afraid that the foreigner might not know japanese and might in consequence address him in english a language which he knew fairly well but spoke mainly for want to practice with some diffidence but who the foreigner was and how he came to be there are matters which require some explanation and there the story opens with the meeting of these two young men and he calls himself william plumer calls himself vincent lucas a young englishman with a little money and the ambition to become a painter who was wandering around the world before settling down to work well of course it's pluma and he's not a painter and that's not his name but he is actually about to explore in uh sado the way in which two cultures have to be very sensitive to one another if they are actually to make any kind of proper relationship let's take that to heart as we as we receive the epistle writers message that we become temples of the holy spirit for one another and that is a precious trust on this advent morning let's say our prayers then on this day and here we are with the collect for the second sunday of advent and in our prayers for the anglican communion we're praying for the diocese of ejesa northeast in the church of nigeria and the ibadan province and we're praying for archbishop justin and for bishop rose of dover and for bishop emma at lambus but at the same time in our own diocese for the parishes of sandwich and worth and we pray for our friend mark roberts and his wife jasmine there and the cure at robin bendel in our prayers so here's the prayer for today bring your own concerns to add to it oh lord raise up we pray your power and come among us and with great might succour us that whereas through our sins and wickedness we are grievously hindered in running the race that is set before us your bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us through jesus christ your son our lord to whom with you in the holy spirit be honor and glory now and forever amen so let's 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 moment of reflection now on this advent morning [Music] [Laughter] come on [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] that sound of the sweet singing of the guinea fowl would have been a very nostalgic sound for william plumer uh a sound from the transvaal uh and uh also we've had uh staff members of kings who always say this reminds them of home because they've come from southern africa to be with us here and say the guinea fowler are actually missing their companions because we've now had to enclose russell and the gang and ducky and everyone because of the avian flu but the guinness are wild birds in terms of nesting high up in the trees and everything else and roosting high up in the trees so a final blessing christ the son of righteousness shine upon you scatter the darkness from before your path and make you ready to meet him when he comes in glory and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you from those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen you