good morning and welcome to canterbury cathedral to the deanery garden this morning on monday the 18th of january as we come to say our morning prayers we've come outside because it's a fine day though i think our friend the rain is going to return later in the day and perhaps for the next few days so it's good to be in the orchard here and we've found you some flowering snowdrops the little flowers the aconites and snowdrops and certainly the hellebores are now beginning to flower and the snowdrops are very much a sign of spring on the way but it's a long way off yet so these little patches of galanthus are a welcome visitor at this time of year as they begin to flower and we have our friend the robin here who's uh fluttering around and probably will like yesterday be omnipresent as he's he's twittering around at the the trees at the moment and trying to find anything there is but it may be that our friend leo who can never be kept away from something that's uh uh um public and and entertaining is here so the robin may for a moment we put some breakfast there for leo because it seemed cruel not to give him some when the robin is there too you saw over the pond there a net because this is a time of little foliage and herons that fly over have great sight for fish down below so we protect the fish but the fish mostly go down deep at this cold time of year so let's begin our morning prayers 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 say may the light of your presence oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this 18th morning of the month is psalm 91 now this is a psalm that we grow used to from compline it reminds me of the sunday evenings in summer when we used to say compliment outside together and this psalm was very much part of that but it also speaks perhaps of our present condition of pandemic and that a worldwide event whoever dwells in the shelter of the most high and abides under the shadow of the almighty shall say to the lord my refuge and my stronghold my god in whom i put my trust for he shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence he shall cover you with his wings and you shall be safe under his feathers his faithfulness shall be your shield and buckler you shall not be afraid of any terror by night nor of the arrow that flies by day of the pestilence that stalks in darkness nor of the sickness it destroys at noonday there are a thousand fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand yet it shall not come near you your eyes have only to behold to see the reward of the wicked because you have made the lord your refuge and the most high your stronghold there shall no evil happen to you neither shall any plague come near your tent for he shall give his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways they shall bear you in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone you shall tread upon the lion and adder the young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot because they have set their love upon me therefore will i deliver them i will lift them up because they know my name they will call upon me and i will answer them i am with them in trouble i will deliver them and bring them to honor with long life when i satisfy them and show them my salvation so we on this monday morning return to our regular reading of the little passage which is the gospel for the day in the gospel of saint mark and we are coming now to the little passage which follows the passage we read on saturday when jesus called levi and then enjoyed the hospitality of his house and was feasting with all those who were there at levi's joy and joining in the celebration and now we carry on from verse 18 of chapter two now the disciples of john the baptist and the pharisees were fasting and people came and said to jesus why do john's disciples and the disciples of the pharisees fast but your disciples do not fast and jesus said to them can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them as long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in that day no one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment if they do the patch tears away from it the new from the old and the worst hair is made and no one puts new wine into old wineskins if they do the wine will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed and so are the skins but new wine is for fresh skins it's a powerful little passage but we can note two or three things from it [Music] jesus is meticulous at the beginning of samar sint mark at keeping the law in which he has been brought up meticulous in attendance at synagogue and his authoritative teaching by invitation for the leader of the synagogue from the leader of the synagogue is set out now we're going very fast in mark's gospel and so these early times of jesus's galilean ministry are done quickly in the first chapter and the first the beginning of chapter two but they obviously took a time as he went around there's one little passage that we saw where jesus was walking from place to place in galilee and going from community to community teaching and at first everything is wonderful and that the healing teaching of body mind and spirit that jesus is giving to the amazement of those who are surrounding him and listening and being the recipients of that healing for themselves and the members of their families and friends as they bring people to him all of that is simply without any kind of criticism to start with but the picture soon changes and here we have the picture beginning to change we saw it a little bit with the call of levi and the feasting yesterday why is he eating with sinners and now we find the same why are your disciples not fasting they're trying to pick it the teaching and say this is this really isn't sound teaching because certain things are not being observed and jesus gives too little almost local domestic images which people will be used to one about unshrunk cloth and one about wineskins and the expression new wine comes very much from just here no one puts new wine into old wineskins because as that new wine begins to mature it will burst the skins and skins and wine will be spoiled it's the first indication that something very different is happening here the crowds have perceived it what is this a new teaching they've said he teaches with authority and not like the usual things we hear but now there's criticism from those who feel that their authority is being challenged and so we see the beginning of a build up which becomes fairly hostile as the gospel goes on it's one of the threads of saint mark but as we see it this morning we're still in the sense of this freshness of jesus's teaching and the exuberance and celebration which is embracing everyone within his own people those who are pointed at us being not worthy of being looked at or healed or saved by those who are in authority now all of that is done so quickly instant marks gospel that you catch it as it goes through but sometimes it comes very strongly because it's done in such a concentrated form and that really is one of the themes of this morning how there are those who are quick to point out little points of error or tendencies in something which is new and attractive and it's also something that we look at with others who are trying to should we say organize the ministry of jesus for him you should be doing this john the baptist disciples are doing this you should be doing this the pharisees disciples are doing this not realizing that in jesus there is something quite new but he's beginning to realize this himself though he never leaves the practices in which he has been brought up and his rootedness in the scriptures the law the psalms the prophets the reinterpretation of them first for his own people and then breaking out to the whole world is beginning to be troublesome to those who want to keep it tight and to organize things so that they can codify understand have it put in a a box which is safe for them and for the position they hold if it's the the authorities who come to him we shall see an awful lot of that but this morning we share the celebration when jesus refers to himself not this morning as the son of man but the bridegroom who is there at the feast giving joy and he prophesies forward there will be times when the bridegroom is not there with them when they will fast but for the moment this is a time for celebration and feasting and of course that time of celebration is an aspect of all our breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup together and the sign of every meal shared with friends because jesus himself has blessed that celebration i think it's why we call the eucharist a celebration but any meal together a celebration in some way or another well on this day if we're looking at uh the way in which things on january the 18th have happened in the past there's quite a lot of things i could mention i'm going to do some very fast because although they are um significant they actually are not what i want to concentrate on this morning so uh we have in 1486 on january the 18th the end of the civil war the wars of the roses with the marriage of henry vii to elizabeth of york uniting the houses of of lancaster and of york the the red roses and the white roses and and england finding a measure of peace in the reign of the first two demonic henry viii in 1752 the great architect of georgian and regency times john nash was born and we have him to thank for much of buckingham palace for the royal pavilion at brighton for marble arch and for regent street all that georgian architecture which were utterly used to but nash was the prime architect of that kind of building so we give thanks for the skill of architects and pray for them this morning and also a book that one is constantly going to uh in 1779 peter mark roger who was the lexicographer who formed the thesaurus rogers thesaurus there are many thesauruses around now but rajes was the the prime one of them all and still sits on the bookshelf if you want another word with the same meaning when you feel you've used a word too many times then go to roger or anyone who writes a thesaurus and then in let me just see where we would go next 1933 david bellamy the botanist and author and very much television broadcaster was born he died in 2019 but we have such happy memories of him because he was the one who so much on television taught us to find creation and nature he was a very very firm christian but he would would find god in all kinds of things and and help us to understand do you remember there was one where he did what you might call a shrinking safari and i think it was in about 1981 and uh he would go down as small as the snowdrops and then uh meet snails and creatures in the garden and i remember him coming to my parish in tisbury to talk about the old yew tree there and dated it much much much older than ever we thought but he was an authority in that we give thanks for him and the way he helped us understand our natural surround i think of uh in 1980 the death of cecil beaton who was the great photographer i have memories of him when i was in tisbury he lived in the chalk valley which was very nearby and in a beautiful house called reddish house and uh also memories of course which all of you may have of the film of my fair lady do you remember when the ascot gavot and that massive wow picture with audrey hepburn in all the beaten costumes at that time giving us pleasure at that time so we remember him and all his photography i remember a quote from him and i might not quite get it right but when he appeared on desert island discs which was recorded just before he died and broadcast after he had died they said what would you like to take with you as your one piece of music and he instantly said beethoven symphony number one then they said but which book and he said a book of photographs of all the people i have photographed some were well known and are still well known some were well known and forgotten some were not well known and are still not well known but to me they are wonderful photographs of people that i knew and one remembers him with thanksgiving in 2009 tony hart the painter and television host one remembers him with his little i think plasticine models of morph but also helping us to understand that many of us can paint many of us can create and draw and he was so always so enthusiastic in those television programs and then i also must remember in our calendar in 1951 amy carmichael the great missionary to india and founder of the donovan fellowship and spiritual writer so we remember her with thanksgiving and we remember also that this is the first day of the week of prayer for christian unity and that desire for the unity of christ's church is set within our desire for the unity of all nations so that the church could be an icon of unity and not of division and that prayer will go on from now for one week until the 25th of january the week of prayer for christian unity but let me come back to where i was going we've got two um we've got two particular people who on this day we will know well 1936 rudyard kipling died now we've dealt with kipling quite a lot and there are there are the just so stories and all sorts of things that i've read recently so with his uh um permission i'm going to leave kipling this morning and go to another person and that is a.a milne who died on this day in 1956 and um sorry i think i think i've got that wrong i think he was born on this day in 1882 he died in 1956 and it causes this day to be international winnie the pooh day and so we're going to just think about the character of pooh in his philosophical acceptance of all kinds of people and situations and his ability to give encouragement so long as the rhythm of his daily life wasn't too much disturbed so i think we've time for just a little bit of reading of winnie the pooh is a long time since we've done that i think it was way back that i sat beside the stream here and read the bit about acoustics but here is the book and i'm i'm going to read the the the passage in the household corner where a stranger comes to the forest winnie the pooh woke up suddenly in the middle of the night and listened then he got out of bed and lit his candle and stumped across the room to see if anybody was trying to get into his honey cupboard and they weren't so he stumped back again blew out his candle got into bed then he heard the noise again is that you piglet he said but it wasn't come in christopher robin he said but christopher robin didn't tell me about it tomorrow eeyore said poo sleepily but the noise went on said whatever it was and pooh found that he wasn't asleep after all what can it be he thought there are lots of noises in the forest but this is a different one it isn't a growl and it isn't a purr and it isn't a bark and it isn't the noise you make before beginning a piece of poetry but it's a noise of some kind made by a strange animal and he's making it outside my door so i shall get up and ask him not to do it he got out of bed and opened his front door hello said pooh in case there was anything outside hello said whatever it was oh said poop hello hello oh there you are sidpoo hello hello said the strange animal wondering how long this was going on who was just going to say hello for the fourth time when he thought that he wouldn't so he said instead who is it me said a voice oh said poo well come here so whatever it was came here and in the light of the candle he and pooh looked at each other i'm poo said poo i'm tigger said tigger oh said poo for he had never seen an animal like this before does christopher robin know about you of course he does said tigger well sid pooh is the middle of the night which is a good time for going to sleep and tomorrow morning we'll have some honey for breakfast do tiggers like honey they like everything said tigger cheerfully then if they like going to sleep on the floor i'll go back to bed sid pooh and we'll do things in the morning good night and he got back into bed and went fast asleep when he woke in the morning the first thing he saw was tigger sitting in front of the glass and looking at himself hello said pooh hello said tigger i found somebody just like me i thought i was the only one of them who got out of bed and began to explain what a looking glass was but just as he was getting to the interesting part ticker said excuse me a moment there's something climbing up your table and with one loud one he jumped at the end of the tablecloth pulled it to the ground wrapped himself up in it three times rolled to the other end of the room and after a terrible struggle got his head into the daylight again and said cheerfully have i won that's my tablecloth sid pooh as he began to unwind tigger i wonder what it was said tigger it goes on the table and you put things on it then why did he try to bite me when i wasn't looking i i don't think it did said pooh it tried said chubby i was too quick for it pooh put the cloth back on the table and he put a large honey pot on the cloth and they sat down to breakfast and as soon as they sat down tigger took a large mouthful of honey and he looked up at the ceiling with his head on one side and made exploring noises with his tongue and considering noises and what have we got here noises and then he said in a very decided voice triggers don't like honey oh said pooh and trying to make it sound sad and regretful thought they liked everything everything except honey said tigger well you will know that pooh himself is going on to show um tigger all his friends and try and find something that tigger does like never to even put put back by something new and different happening he and piglet we've got a little piglet here from the past so he's sitting here with the one that we might consider pooh this morning so um that you've seen him before so we'll put them there and say if they go off and first piglet tries him on hey horns and tiggers don't like hay corns and then they go to see eeyore and eor tries him on thistles and tickers don't like thistles and so it goes on and on but pooh's not to be upset he's going to take him on to all his friends and so here's the last little bit because he's a nice little parent poo and piglet walked slowly after tigger and as they walked piglet said nothing because he couldn't think of anything and pooh said nothing because he was thinking of a poem and when he thought of the poem he began what shall we do about poor little tigger if he never eats nothing he'll never get bigger he doesn't like honey and hay corns and thistles because of the taste and because of the bristles and all the good things which an animal likes have the wrong sort of swallow or too many spikes he's quite big enough anyhow said piglet he isn't really very big what he seems so poo was thoughtful when he heard this and then he murmured to himself another two lines of his poem but whatever his weight in pound shillings announces he always seemed bigger because of his bounces and that's the whole poem do you like it piglet well all except the shillings said piglet i don't think they ought to be there they wanted to come in after the pounds explain poo so i let them it is the best way to write poetry letting things come oh i didn't know said piglet you will know that they go on and eventually at kangas house tigger finds what he does like is the medicine that baby rue is given every morning and it's extract of bought and so he smacks his his lips and his his tongue on the on the spoon and from then on of course he goes to kanga's house and lives with them but pooh accepting all the way through with the rhythm of his honey pot and his desire to make a paramount of absolutely everything but no one is ever set aside as not being important and no one is much interfered with because poo is a live and let live but try as many suggestions as possible and introduce his new friend to all the others tigger is very different but nevertheless who is the one who's saying this is a should we say a time for celebration it's a new friend and he becomes an uh one of those that we get to know in the second book of a.a milne milne was somebody absolutely wonderful at creating stories and he even helped kenneth graham by making his wind in the willows into the little musical on stage uh toad of toad hall but nevertheless there is a endearing quality about his creation of winnie the pooh with his community of friends and although it's all in the imagination it actually creates a wonderful world which is helpful to us in all kinds of ways in our thinking and although we laugh then here's something different being embraced and accepted into the community and the right nourishment are found for this bouncy creature who had threatened to upset the lives of many but was accepted in the way in which he himself wanted to be and tigger becomes part of the community that's maybe something that comes from this little pericappy this little story this morning where people are criticizing jesus and trying to put him into a box new wine for fresh skins says jesus and certainly this is a fresh skin and new wine story from a.a milne well let's say our prayers so we could read lots of winnie the pooh this morning we're going to pray this morning for the villages and communities around sitting born because we're still in that area deanery there but we're praying for those who are exercising chaplaincy ministry there stuart dunn liz cox paul wintle john norroje simon young and nicholas ash and as we do so we pray for the whole life of this diocese and for churches which have had to shut their doors and are like us continuing their ministry virtually and we pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover and for tim bishop at lambeth and in the anglican communion today for the diocese of aporongo in the anglican church of papua new guinea we pray for the unity of christians throughout the world and we continue to pray for the orthodox as they celebrate epiphany in their churches we are in the epiphany season and we place the unity of the christian church and our desire for it in the context of the unity of our world wherever you are in that world bring your prayers today here's the colic for this week almighty god in christ you make all things new transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace and in the renewal of our lives make known your heavenly glory through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language the prayer that jesus 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 lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever are men so our own prayers in silence on this morning of the week i'm going to say the blessing and i'm going to read you a pamian 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 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 today and always are men so the poem i thought should it be kipling but no we'll stay with a.a milne the poem is one of my favorite it's about a dormouse there once was a dormouse who lived in a bed of delphiniums blue and geranium's red and all the day long he'd a wonderful view of geranium's red and delphiniums blue a doctor came hurrying around and he said tata i'm sorry to find you in bed just say 99 while i look at your chest don't you find that chrysanthemums answer the best the dormouse looked round at the view and replied when he said 99 that he tried and he tried and much the most answering things that he knew were geraniums red and delphinium's blue the doctor stood frowning and shaking his head and he took up his shiny silk hat as he said what the patient requires is a change and he went to see some chrysanthemum people in kent the dormouse lay there and he gazed at the view of geranium's red and delphinium's blue and he knew there was nothing he wanted instead of delphinium's blue and geraniums red but the doctor came back and to show what he meant he had brought some chrysanthemum cuttings from kent now these he remarked give a much better view than geranium's red and delphinium's blue they took out their spades and they dug up the bed of delphinium's blue and geranium's red and they planted chrysanthemums yellow and white and now said the doctor we'll soon have you right the doormouse looked out and he said with a sigh i suppose all these people know better than i it was silly perhaps but i did like the view of geranium's red and delphinium's blue the doctor came round and examined his chest and ordered him nourishment tonics and rest have very effective he said as he shook the thermometer all these chrysanthemums look the dormouse turned over to shut out the sight of the endless chrysanthemums yellow and white how lovely he thought to be back in a bed of delphinium's blue and geranium's red the doctor said it's another attack and ordered him milk and massage of the back and freedom from worry and drives in a car and murmured how sweet your chrysanthemums are the dormouse lay there with his paws to his eyes and imagined himself such a pleasant surprise i'll pretend the chrysanthemums turn to a bed of delphinium's blue and geranium's red the doctor next morning was rubbing his hands and saying there's nobody quite understands these cases i do the cure has begun how fresh the chrysanthemums look in the sun the door mostly happy his eyes were so tight he could see no chrysanthemums yellow or white and all that he felt at the back of his head were delphiniums blue and geraniums red and that is the reason aunt emily said if a dormouse gets in a chrysanthemum bed you will find so aunt emily says that he lies fast asleep on his front with his paws to his eyes sometimes people understand the rhythms of their own life and are glad for encouragement in them and in that encouragement their help to give others encouragement and embrace them into their community god bless you all and keep you well and strong