good morning and welcome to canterbury cathedral on this morning of thursday the 25th of june another beautiful morning of mid-summer and across many countries the midsummer festival continues certainly the weather is continuing it for us and i'm sitting this morning in the shade of this great big cherry tree in this section of the great lawn just on the edge which we keep unknown and have done for the last 10 years now because we are rewarded by all kinds of wonderful flowers that simply come up of their own accord earlier in the year cowslips and fratillaries but now pyramid orchids are popping up all around us and cause great beauty in this long grass and of course it's a wonderful home for for insect life and all kinds of things here under the shelter of this great tree you may hear some noise in the background there's a family of jays nesting in the ash tree here and the three infants are really reminding their parents that it's breakfast time wherever you are in the world please be welcome here and as we say our prayers think of those that you would want to pray for in any kind of danger or difficulty or simply because you are you have them in your mind at this this moment and they're people that you love or who love you and support you in your daily life 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 as we wake refreshed from the depths of sleep open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will so 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 the psalm on this 25th morning of the month is a section of psalm 119 i'm reading from verse 33 teach me o lord the way of your statutes and i shall keep it to the end give me understanding and i shall keep your law i shall keep it with my whole heart lead me in the path of your commandments for therein is my delight incline my heart to your testimonies and not to unjust gain turn away my eyes lest they gaze on vanities oh give me life in your ways confirm to your servant your promise which stands for all who fear you turn away the reproach which i dread because your judgments are good behold i long for your commandments in your righteousness give me life so we turn to our regular reading of the gospel of saint luke and today we've reached chapter 14 and begin at verse 1. one sabbath when jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler of the pharisees they were watching him carefully and behold there was a man before him who had dropsy and jesus responded to the lawyers and pharisees saying is it lawful to heal on the sabbath or not but they remain silenced then jesus took the man and healed him and sent him away and he said to them which of you having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a sabbath day will not immediately pull them out and they could not reply to these things now he told a parable to those who were invited when he noticed how they chose the places of honor saying to them when you are invited by someone to a wedding feast do not sit down in a place of honor lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by your host and the one who invited you and the guest both will come and say to you give your place to this person and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place but when you are invited go and sit in the lowest place so that when your host comes he may say to you friends move up higher and then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you for everyone who exalts themself will be humbled but the one who humbles themself will be exalted it's a great lesson and it's absolutely in line with everything that jesus has been teaching us through the gospel of st lou both parts of that lesson the first gets a question asked of those who are sitting around judging him it's a question to which jesus needs no answer he knows what they would do if their child or one of their animals fell into a well on the sabbath day they would instantly pull them out and here is this sick man in need of being lifted from his sickness there is no need for the question to be answered but the answer sticks in their throats and their silence and then maybe on another occasion we don't know with the ordering of the little sections of st luke but on another occasion jesus notices people going in a very important way to an occasion and seeing that's where i must put myself because i am the most honoured person in this assembly it's not the way simply simply wait sit down somewhere in a lower place and wait for your host and here we are this morning as god's good guest and maybe we should use the english words which shakespeare used in a song under the greenwood tree we've been locked out of our buildings and now we have news that we can go back into them and on sunday july the 5th worship can begin in the cathedral church again but meanwhile we've taken shelter for our worship out here it's a concept that's dear to the hearts of the people of this nation this sense of being under the greenwood tree and shakespeare having put in a song in the very pastoral comedy as you like it which amiens sings he was using earlier words from the great ballad of robin hood in sherwood forest who had gone under the greenwood tree meaning leaving the sophistications of society and going outside to learn new lessons amiens song you will well remember goes under the greenwood tree who loves to lie with me and tune his merry note unto the sweet bird's throat come hither come hither come hither here shall he see no enemy but winter and rough weather and he goes on who doth ambition shun and loves to lie in the sun seeking the food he eats and pleased with what he gets come hither come hither come hither here shall he see no enemy but winter and rough weather will remember in that play that duke senior the rightful duke has been cast out into exile and some of his court the faithful ones have followed him into the pastoral scene of the forest of arden it's the most beautiful play and the duke although he has lost everything for the moment says sweet are the ways of adversity and amiens agrees noble though he is that there are enormous treasures to be had away from the sophistications of the court and new lessons to be learned now it's not always always pleasant to be cast out it really is in the beginning when i first went to the sudan in the late 70s the archbishop of that province was a man called elena ngalamu and i was his guest he was a great hero of the faith for in the first civil war which was a desperate war with much much bloodshed he had fled narrowly having missed being killed by by hiding himself in the grass in mundry at the theological college at bishop gwyn where he was and walking walking in the woods and scrub land and eventually finding himself with another bishop jeremiah of yambio arriving almost destitute in kampala and when the archbishop there was told there are two men waiting outside who say they're bishops but they don't look like it went outside there was the bishop of yambio and the archbishop of the sudan standing in ragged clothes having fled they got to kampala and in exile they were able to guide the church but back in south sudan then i knew many of the people who had found themselves outside worshiping in secret under the trees hiding running on and remembering prayers from their liturgies and songs that they knew hymns that they knew singing them there under the mango trees for shade and finding that the drum was their only means of musical accompaniment at that time and still it was so i was jeremiah's guest at yambio and everything around me looked still in the wreckage of civil war the piece of addis ababa had been signed by then but there was little material to build up again and the great gothic ruins of yambio cathedral which had had a thatched roof now a burned-out shell stood a little way away from us as we worshipped under the mango trees with the drum and the songs that were sung were the songs not only that they had learned before but songs they had made up as they had gone out to worship they hadn't stopped they had made use of the occasion but now they were keen to restore the holy place and i had gone to forge a link with the diocese of salisbury so that we might help them to rebuild the cathedral and the shelters that gave clinics and everything else and before had been proud schools all of that was a long time ago but it underlines the lesson that the important ones are really those who take the lead at that particular occasion and i felt a person of little worth as i sat with these heroes of the faith at that time civil war continued and it was sometimes in buildings outside buildings and so on but both teach lessons and we've learned that in these weeks of lockdown on sunday week we'll be allowed in to worship already the folk are going in and out saying their prayers privately but we shall not forget the lessons that we've learned here amongst the pyramid orchids and the shelter of the great cherry tree the other cherry tree has rambling rosie the climbing rose growing up behind me there as you'll see and all of that feeds into our worship but the one great lesson which we've learned is that the equipment you have inside you without the aid of books or anything else becomes very important in moments of crisis our lord taught his disciples to pray with the our father but there are many many words in different cultures many many tunes which we have in our heads which sing to the glory of god inside our holy places but stay with us outside so that we may sing them and enrich our prayers or say them and give shape to our prayers as around us the world can be doing what it will we can still claim holy space wherever we are and take the humblest place and wait for our host in whatever situation to say come up a bit higher my friend let's uh say our prayers this morning we've got a guest here who's come here's tiger enjoying the morning up you come and we will say first of all prayers for those areas which appear on this day on our calendar the diocese of northangoli in uganda and stephen namanya the bishop there and his people the diocese of arachukuni in nigeria and johnson onuoha the bishop and his people there and the diocese of aru in the congo and george teacher andy the bishop there and his people they're quite memories of the way in which and jeremiah made their journey through what was then zaire just the tip of the new yambio and then on into uganda a long time ago and then in this diocese we pray for archbishop justin and for bishop rose the bishop of dover and bishop tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parish of west sheppy and paul kite paul rush and jeanette mccarron in their ministry there and the life of st george's primary school there and all the folk that they look after so we say the special prayer for today and then we'll say the our father as the real centerpiece of our prayers in different languages lord you have taught us that all our doings without love are nothing worse send your holy spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love the true bond of peace and of all virtues without which whoever lives is counted dead before you grant this for your only son jesus christ's sake are men so we say the our father in whatever way you like to say it in whichever language and use it as a basis for our prayers for those that we would want to pray for on this day 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 it's a moment for your silent prayer on this day for all those whom you would pray for is 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 are men you okay