good morning and welcome to the dinery garden this morning i'm starting here with the guinea fowl and the chickens here's russell here who we haven't seen for some little time but as you know the chickens are having to be kept under shelter during this threat of avian flu which seems to be going away really and so i hope that they once more will be able to enjoy the lawns because i know particularly the guinea fowl um miss being able to wander free here so they've got their breakfast and i'll come and begin our morning prayers together ah it's a very frosty morning indeed and the lawn is white with frost here's leo who's just finished his breakfast he's not so unhappy today because the the pigs aren't here in this part of the garden and he's a little bit nervous of them as you will have observed as we say our morning prayers wherever you are in the world please feel welcome on this sunday morning the 24th of january there's no wind whatsoever and we've just had the most amazing sunrise but it's a bit red sky in the morning shepherd's warning as our lord says to the people in in in one of his uh pieces of teaching i think in sin luke's gospel uh so we don't know what's coming later in the day but for the moment we're very happy here and uh we'll say our prayers together i just wanted to say and i didn't say it enough a word of thanks for all your encouragement that you give us this is a mutual ministry of encouragement and it's a ministry which although virtual breaks down barriers right across the world and you send so many messages to a spouse and to all others involved in the worship at canterbury cathedral but we want you to know that none of those letters go unread it's at this time quite hard to answer so many of them but they are appreciated and and as i say this is a mutual ministry of encouragement so we are really happy to both receive your letters but also to receive your stories because that's becomes a very important aspect of our prayers together so this is a big thank you to to all of you on this sunday morning it's a sunday in the week of prayer for christian unity and that will end tomorrow with the feast of the conversion of saint paul but for the moment it's both in the epiphany season and also in the week of prayer for christian unity the unity of the church but the unity of our whole world at this time of pandemic the breaking down of barriers between different cultures and that becomes important as we pray together oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your light springs up for the righteous and all the peoples have seen your glory blessed are you sovereign god king of the nations to you be praise and glory forever from the rising of the sun to its setting your name is proclaimed in all the world as the son of righteousness dawns in our hearts anoint our lips with the seal of your spirit that we may witness to your gospel and sing your praise in all the earth 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 24th morning of the month is psalm 118 and i'm going to read most of it now oh give thanks to the lord for he is good his mercy endures forever let israel now proclaim his mercy and yours forever let the house of aaron now proclaim his mercy and yours forever let those who fear the lord proclaim his mercy endures forever the lord is my strengths and my song he has become my salvation joyful shouts of salvation sound from the tents of the righteous the right hand of the lord does mighty deeds the right hand of the lord raises up the right hand of the lord does mighty deeds i shall not die but live and declare the works of the lord the lord has punished me solely but he has not given me over to death open to me the gates of righteousness that i may enter and give thanks to the lord this is the gate of the lord the righteous shall enter through it i will give thanks to you for you have answered me and have become my salvation the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone this is the lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes this is the day that the lord has made we will rejoice and be glad in it one of those great psalm sentences which every time we read it on the 24th morning of the month ring out this is the day that the lord has made we will rejoice and be glad in it and earlier of course we were having a commentary on that with our little introduction to morning prayer every morning the gift of this new day and this day we will rejoice and be glad in it both being glad and giving thanks necessary part of our prayer and our reflection as we go on this morning to our lesson now it's a sunday morning so we're not with the gospel of saint mark and tomorrow we shall be there either because of the feast of the conversion of saint paul we'll return to that on tuesday morning but for the moment that's very frosty on your paws leo i'm very sorry do you want to come and sit on me is that what you're aiming for um tomorrow tomorrow morning we should be with paul and then at the same time come on leo if you want to sit down come and be warm if you want to come on that's the way come on it's taking his time for me to become the armchair but i'm actually warmer than i can see his footprints on the white frost of the table today we're with the gospel of saint john which is a nice treat and we shall be with the fourth gospel the gospel of saint john for a great part of lent itself so we look forward to that but here's a little foretaste and we're just given a short chapter and it's not not a chapter we use this word pericope somebody was asking the other day what that word was one of their letters and uh if i spell it it's p-e-r-i-c-o-p-e which means a short passage which has been sort of cut around and uh that has then been strung together by the evangelists in different orders often and the different way of telling them but this morning we're in john's gospel chapter three and we're starting now the reading tells us that we should start at or the lectionary at verse 16. in fact i'm just going to start a little bit before that in verse 14 um and then yes verse 14 because that's the last sentence of jesus's conversation at night with nicodemus who's come to him out of the darkness and is sitting with him now that conversation is the beginning of chapter three and we shall come to that when we're doing saint john's gospel itself but uh i'm going to start with that and then go on and i'll tell you why when we get there and as moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life for god so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life for god did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only son of god and this is the judgment the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest their works should be exposed but whoever does what is true comes to the light so that they may be clearly seen and it may be seen that their works have been carried out in god well that passage one of the very memorable passages in the gospels and let me admit it stays in my head because of a a work which was much sung in churches uh steiner's crucifixion it started of course with a recitative if you remember as moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so shall the son of man be lifted up that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life and then that little quartet god so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life for god sent not his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved the whole world no barriers and the fourth gospel is the best gospel at giving us images of what that humanity showing divinity of jesus meant it starts with the word logos in the beginning was the word and we put it in a capital letter to show all of that but these words are let's go back to yesterday with mark these words are parables in themselves now i began first with the last sentence to nicodemus because there i think the inverted commas of christ speaking end and what we have here is a reflection afterwards of the evangelists in writing to us about what that means now i suppose we we might feel that um john's gospel is quite light on parables because parable has become for us the kind of parable which let's say sin luke so lovingly portrays and tells the parable of the good samaritan the parable of the lost sheep of the lost coin of the prodigal son the lost son regained and joy in among the angels of heaven over one sinner who repents more than 99 who have no need of repentance a parable is a story but actually the word is much wider than that as we saw yesterday with just that little use of the word for the first time in saint mark's gospel john's gospel is full of parables in that sense figurative things this morning the parable is of light and darkness and the evangelist has taken up that point because nicodemus who is full of scholarship and wisdom and a powerful person in his own community has come to jesus by night and to st john darkness means not only physical darkness with nicodemus coming in to the warmth and light of the room in which jesus is meeting him by lamplight and in warmth but at the same time it means the darkness which shrouds so many until understanding is given them by the light and i am the light of the world is one of the great parable sayings of jesus for it's a figurative illustration i am the door of the sheepfold and our son this morning was talking about the gate by which one enters into all of that which is divine i am the true vine well we don't have to go far in the garden to find one of those and we certainly didn't have to go far to find jesus's parable saying o jerusalem jerusalem how often if i long to gather you like a hen gathers her chicks under her feathers the world is full of parables and they're not just stories sometimes they're just one word and the fourth gospel is the place to find the very best of those one word parables but we have them all the time and we ourselves use those figurative images only because the moment we leave the factual physical world it's and we enter even into the world of mental theories and puzzles and guesses and relationships and all everything when we enter the emotional world and then when we enter the spiritual world words begin to fail us and we use let's say parables not stories but metaphors and images and just as jesus keeps saying the kingdom of heaven is as if and there we go on and here is light in nicodemus's darkness and jesus then anchors it in the ancient scriptures in which nicodemus is well versed as moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness as a sign of healing from what the children of israel were physically suffering at that time even so shall be and jesus's word about himself son of man emblem of our humanity and emblem of the divine be lifted up that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life so let's give great thanks for the fact that we can use these images and parables even in the winter garden of the way in which god expresses divine truth within the concept of our humanity this is a day when we look back on the times that january the 24th has been possible which is full of really political dates and i would say that the other aspect of sin john's fourth gospel is the importance of the concept of time the time the hour my hour is not yet come that's what jesus says to his mother at the wedding of cana of galilee and that concept of the hour not yet coming is suddenly fulfilled but also there's the sentence the hour comes when and then that moment becomes important there's a famous humorous human saying isn't it cometh the hour cometh the man cometh the human personality man or woman who comes to deal with that situation but it's not always so but it it it very often has been in the past that people have waited for their moment and there are some illustrations of that this morning as i look at the dates in 14 the year 41 claudius was proclaimed emperor and took over at a crucial time he had to wait and the minute i say claudius i think of derek jacoby and i claudius with all his his disabilities but taking over as emperor the emperor hadrian was born in the year 76 an important figure in the development of the roman empire and the time of the early years of the early church but if i come to more modern times then in 1749 charles james fox was born now he was a a massive english statesman massive in girth and massive in the way in which in parliament he was able to use words in a a magnificent way and for 22 years he and william the pit pit the younger faced each other as adversaries across the house of commons and pitt for most of that time was prime minister made prime minister at the age of 24 when his country needed him most in 1784 and after that he went on with only a few months um when george iii became rather ill for the first time in the 1790s only only a few months when other parties took over but mostly it was the era of pit but the very thin and not very emotional figure of william pierce and opposite him the very emotional and corpulent huge figure of charles james fox who knew how to use words but was waiting for his moment to come well it never did for pitch and he both died in the year 1806 pitch earlier in october 1805 having heard the news of the victory at trafalgar which was a turning point in the long napoleonic wars but fox is someone in terms of political life who shows how ideas and situations are changed by mutual uh engagement quite often in hard political fight we all know that in each of our nations and we give thanks for it in 1965 winston churchill died on this day aged 90. it's strange actually because his father lord randolph churchill died on this day in 1895 he is another who in political life waited for his hour which really never came but churchill must have been thinking exactly the same thing was going to happen to him because his political life and it was a political life he was a soldier a writer but he was a politician and a parliamentarian first and foremost and adored the cut and thrust of debate but in those years when he was not in power after all kinds of happenings in his political life too many to go into today his hour did come in 1940. but here too was someone who in his writing and his writing is monumental the amount of it was able to use the english language and in his speaking was able to use the english language to give heart and encouragement to a world which so much needed it in 1940 that the darkest hour as they they call it but at that kind of time it was cometh the hour cometh the human being who would step forward and say this is this is my time it lasted just until the election at the end of the war when a change was needed and so for the years at the end of the 1940s churchill was not there but he had his moment again and was prime minister when our present queen was crowned and that was i think a really really proud moment for him but we give thanks for him on this day for the fact that his hour did come and at that point all his gifts and skills were necessary and were used for the sake of the free world at that time well we're giving thanks also for other creative things on this particular day i should say perhaps because uh this day in 1976 was the day in which a russian newspaper the red star as as a an insult dubbed the the prime minister margaret thatcher the iron lady and she turned it round and embraced it as a title she rather enjoyed that can happen in political life one way or the other in in in debate but one is used to the two factions gaining strength and policies changing and if one goes back to charles james fox and william pitch it was fox's encouragement as an abolitionist which caused pit in the end to embrace the abolition of slavery and that we give thanks for immensely this morning um and lastly i want to give thanks for bamba gascoin whose birthday it is today he's 86 today and for 25 years he was the person who hosted and was the shall we say the quiz master in a university challenge and he did so with such elegance and skill and uh politeness to those who were were there but at the same time with all the erudition that he has and now we give thanks that uh at west horsley place he's also embraced the grange park opera company and a theater for the operas has been built in his grounds of course that kind of performing arts is not possible at the moment so there we are where was having some performing arts behind me from the guinea fowl who are really wanting to be out here with us and i hope that day will come too cometh the hour cometh the guinea fowl so at this particular time we are praying this morning for the diocese of acuri in the church of nigeria and in our own diocese as we pray for archbishop justin and bishop rose of dover and bishop tim at lambeth we're praying for the parish of sitting born with bobbing and we are i'm sorry i'm on the wrong page all together gosh this is the guinea fowl disturbing me this morning we pray this morning in the anglican communion for the church in bangladesh tomorrow is is akuri and for the parishes here of milton regis with merston bapchild and tong and for simon young in his ministry there so wherever you are in the world then bring your own prayers and join them with ours as we say first of all the prayer the new prayer because we're on the third sunday of the epiphany for this week almighty god whose son revealed in signs and miracles the wonder of your saving presence renew your people with your heavenly grace and in all our weakness sustain us by your mighty power through jesus christ our lord amen and then the prayer for the unity of christ's church as this week of prayer for christian unity draws to a close heavenly father you have called us in the body of your son jesus christ to continue his work of reconciliation and reveal you to the world forgive us the sins which tear us apart give us the courage to overcome our fears and to seek that unity which is your gift and your will through jesus christ our lord amen so we join together now in the prayer that our lord taught us in whatever language you would like to 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 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 for our own prayers 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 amen ah