[Music] good morning and welcome on this thursday the 25th of february to the dinery garden we've come high up into the orchard today to show that it's not just the garden flowers that are beginning to spring into life but also the wild flowers the primroses are growing around the mossy bottom of the trunk of a fruit tree here and it gives very much the sense of spring coming it's another lovely day and we give thanks for the way in which things are beginning there may be some cold weather ahead there may be difficult times ahead in weather terms but for the moment we have signs of the spring all around us a foretaste of the of the future and one remembers all kinds of things at their beginnings yesterday we were remembering augustine coming to king ethelbert because it was the anniversary of the death of king ethelbert we remember also how his wife who had been a princess of the frankish kingdom which was part of what hundreds of years later was to become france uh was at that time was already christian and so she was the welcomer of the first shoot the first sprig of christian ministry amongst the angles the english people as they would become so today we're thinking of all kinds of beginnings and we're also thinking of the way in which jesus own ministry develops as we reflect together in st john's gospel wherever you are in the world please feel welcome and bring your own prayers and concerns and intentions as we say our morning prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise hear our voice so 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 and open our lips 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 yesterday afternoon the psalm was the beginning of the long long psalm 119 and that psalm is split into sections of eight verses each and four sections were provided in our book of common prayer for yesterday afternoon so that brings us to verse 33 of the fifth section of psalm 118 and we'll use that for our psalm this morning 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 just one section of that long sound which rejoices in the law of the lord and the way it orders our lives so we come to our reading from saint john's gospel and we're going on through chapter six and on through to verse 15 of chapter 6. after this jesus went away to the other side of the sea of galilee which is the sea of tiberias and a large crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick jesus went up on the mountain and there he sat down with his disciples now the passover the feast of the jews was at hand lifting up his eyes then and seeing that a large crowd was coming towards him jesus said to philip where are we to buy bread so that these people may eat jesus said this to test him for he himself knew what he would do philip answered him 200 denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little now one of his disciples andrew simon peter's brother said to him there is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish but what are they for so many jesus said make the people sit down now there was much grass in the place so the people sat down about five thousand in number jesus then took the loaves and when he had given thanks he distributed them to those who were seated so also the fish as much as they wanted and when they had eaten their fill he told his disciples gather up the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost so they gathered them up and filled 12 baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten when the people saw the sign that he had done they said this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself this is an another telling of the story that we looked at just a week or two ago in st mark's gospel and we saw how in sin mark's gospel the story is told twice with a different emphasis in each but here from another source an original source of john's testimony the story is told in a different way we have here more characters named but we also have the location after all that we saw going on yesterday in jerusalem and the day before the way in which the jewish authorities were attempting to trap jesus and had violent intentions towards him because he seemed to be threatening their authority we saw how jesus began to be well more than irritated with the way in which they were keeping his real teaching from the people and the signs which are bringing the people and we get that again when the people saw the sign they come to him but jesus himself has taken his disciples up into a mountain to be by themselves and still the people come and on this occasion it's that crowd which jesus has been teaching that need to be nourished a large crowd following him and then jesus noticed their need and says to philip where are we going to buy bread to feed all of these [Music] knowing what he's going to do and it's andrew after philip says that we don't have enough money to buy even a fraction of the food that would would feed these it's andrew then steps forward in this gospel philip and andrew are very often seen together later on at a very significant point in the gospel when jesus is teaching the crowds again in the outer courtyards of the temple the colonnades where even gentiles were allowed to come and when the greeks come and ask to see jesus they are the ones who pull philip's leave who clearly was quite an approachable person and had a greek name and so the greeks say we'd like to see jesus and philip tells andrew and andrew tells jesus and it needn't surprise us either that it's andrew who has found the boy who has his breakfast there with the loaves and the fishes because it's andrew in the first section of this gospel who is the one who having been told by john the baptist to follow jesus as the one who is to come goes instantly to find his brother and in the same way philip goes to find nathaniel you can look back at that in john chapter one but the this this pair seemed to be significant the questions they asked at the same time at the the um final supper become important too but here they are today with the crowd and jesus and the story is very similar to the feeling of the five or four thousand that the people sit down and jesus there aren't the same definite uh sequences set out of jesus taking the bread blessing it breaking it and then distributing it through his disciples but the same actions are going through but what we come to at the end when the 12 baskets resources for each of the 12 who notice here are called disciples the 12 learners what we come to then is the people saying this clearly is the prophet capital p and then jesus finds himself shall we say between a rock and a hard place on the one hand yesterday he is upsetting the pharisees and the jewish authorities in jerusalem and on the other hand today he's about to upset all these people who are intending to come by force to make him their king well we see that quite clearly these people have political intentions and jesus his own vocation is entirely otherwise and so he at the moment because he has to decide what to do needs more time alone more time that that vocation which he spoke of so clearly as being dependent upon the will of the father the creator more time for that to develop within him and he withdraws by himself onto the mountain not taking the disciples with him that becomes very clear tomorrow he goes alone leaving these people it's a very important moment in the gospel of saint john for it's quite clear he could have been a powerful military or political leader with all these thousands of people coming to him it wasn't his intention that we get in the discourse with pontius pilate later this whole gospel unfolds step by step and what is being unfolded is the vocation of the christ the anointed one in order that that can be handed on that the spirit can be given by those who have that work to do afterwards and jesus says greater works than i have done will you do the twelve take their resources those baskets signs of what they will do the conversation about that bread will continue tomorrow but for the moment a very definite step has been taken by jesus i am not your military or political leader he goes away by himself to the mountain and always going to the mountain alone is a sign of prayer we'll find that again within this gospel and oftentimes in the other three gospels so let's remember perhaps our own times of quiet prayer when we have puzzling things to do and find ourselves between shall we say a rock and a hard place where no decision seems to be the right one and people are screaming at us powerfully on each side but on the other hand the real decision has to come as jesus keeps saying from the heart and as uh saint paul says so often the belief comes from the heart from within and we ourselves in this lenten journey are about that journey that personal journey of discovery with jesus but about what the creator's will for us is and jesus has promised that he through the spirit will be there with us in every aspect of our lives so let's think of other things which happen today sometimes of people who are left between a rock and a hard place there are political leaders on this 25th of february who claim our attention only because of the tragic circumstances often that they found themselves in on this day in uh i can't remember which date it was but edward ii was crowned in westminster abbey the date that i have is the date of his death in 1327 and that took place on the 21st of september the crowning in westminster abbey when edward ii was crowned was an immensely joyous occasion and so uh in in uh thirteen is the right answer of the crowning of it with the second and um edward reigned until 1327 his death in barkley castle in gloucestershire remember being taken on school trips uh to see first barclay castle and then peter scott's bird sanctuary at slim bridge in the day when on the river seven when scott was still denied but in barclay castle edward ii was brutally murdered he'd been as i say between a rock and a hard place and he is buried in gloucester cathedral gives us a chance to shout out a prayer for stephen lake the dean of gloucester there and the chapter remembered stephen and carol and their family as very personal friends and uh we we think of edward ii because all that glory which began in 1308 in westminster abbey ended in terrible tragedy and death there's a play about all of that by christopher marlowe the writer who actually went to school here at kings there's a plaque for marlow on the gateway as we leave the green court here and then another tragic political leader in the end a man of so many gifts but in the end left lonely napoleon on this day in 1815 left the island of elba where he'd been sent by the victorious allies in exile his first exile and the temptation to return and try again came over him and he was received of course with enormous welcome and the congress of vienna where the peace making process following the the allied victory in 1814 was going on broke up in a certain amount of disarray for a while because the duke of wellington had to go back and with um the armies there to fight again and the battle of waterloo was was fought and napoleon of course was taken off to a very different and much much farther away exiled at centalina rock and hard place decisions to make and how often political leaders and leaders of any kind must scratch their heads afterwards and say if only but jesus promises the sense of the the spirit in our intentions and thinking together and in following the will of the creator for us which he lives out in his human life in 1570 on this day pope pius v excommunicated queen elizabeth the first it's the last time a pope has ever excommunicated a reigning sovereign but the excommunication already to a national monarch with christendom beginning to fragment as it was seen in earlier centuries was already a much weaker tool for a pontiff to to exercise so we remember that and then some good things to remember uh in uh nine in 1890 damira hesse was born now so many recordings of her piano playing were played in on the radio i don't know she's played so much these days but what she was best known for what she became famous for was that in the years of the second world war for six years in the national gallery which was totally devoid of paintings they'd taken them out for safety's sake because of the bombing just as they took the stained glass out of canterbury because of the bombing and demira at lunch time when bombing was much less likely organized during the second world war can you believe it 1 700 recitals to keep the morale of the nation high that people could come into and be should we call it soul fed by the music and for her raising the morale of the nation she was given uh the title of dame of the british empire by king george vi and so we give thanks for dem myers shall we call it what we always do for one another imaginative encouragement of the nation by her supremely wonderful piano playing and that six years of intention of helping the morale of the nation at the same time two and a half million anderson aerial shelters were being delivered to the homes of the nation they were to be dug into the garden and covered with a depth of earth i remember one in the garden at home after the war that we used to play in and and father would keep pots in for the um planting up of plants but to me it was a placing to the nation it was a very frail security against bombings which rained down on different parts of the country and then we might mention today also the in 1841 the births of pierre augustus the french painter and sculptor his paintings give the most wonderful aspect of the society he knew ordinary life with such life in it such movement in his paintings little girl with the watering can or two girls at the piano enjoying the duet they're about to play the umbrellas very strange thing to paint and yet it's the most wonderful painting of umbrellas in paris and also the festive luncheon of the boating party all those are worth really looking up and enjoying renoir so we give thanks for him and also on this particular day in 1897 peter lewellen davis was born he was the inspiration as jm barry said later for peter pan the boy who wouldn't grow up and played heroics the most heroic sentence of peter pan that i know is i don't fear death it's a great adventure and maybe one can say that heartfully but not many could say that without a beating heart and uh what we think about that is that peter llewellyn davis said that his peter pan character which j.m barry had fastened on him dogged his life from then on so he found himself between a rock and a hard place of admitting it and celebrating it or thinking i really want to shake that off and be the person who did grow up and then we think of nice sporting events like ian botham's first test match century in 1978 i should have mentioned yesterday um hewitt the australian tennis player because it was an anniversary of for him yesterday i forgot about him he'd been born in adelaide and won the wimbledon tennis championship many of you will remember in 2002 having won the u.s open also so he was a great tennis player on the earlier years of this century just after the millennium so we remember him so too just one more character today and a really important one as we had a late 17th century early 18th century person yesterday a hero a superstar of music opera and oratorio handel today we have another late 17th century early 18th century superstar in the architect sir christopher wren it's extraordinary that if you ask people the name of an english architect they will still be most likely to say sir christopher wren and already today we've mentioned the name of king ethelbert and yesterday i said he gave a land grant not only for canterbury but also for rochester and then saint paul's cathedral the sin paul's cathedral that stands there now following the great fire of london in 1666 is uh the work and conception of christopher wren before that people didn't use the word architect too much and a master builder was what the monks used to call them that kind of thing but architect has now become very much a kind of profession which as ren showed needs so many gifts he was an anatomist an astronomer a geometer a mathematician a physicist and at the same time his imagination could think of such a thing as synthol's cathedral and of course it's not his grave in there that you notice it's actually the latin inscription on the wall if you seek a monument look around it's the cathedral itself but all around that area of london ren churches and uh throughout england you can find aspects of ren's houses and influence of ren on his own working staff so we give thanks for the creativity in all kinds of art forms which i see daily going on of course in this cathedral community in stone and glass and wood and libraries and music and so on and we give thanks for that and pray that when the lockdown ends so many of you will be able to come and enjoy this but meanwhile remember to take a a a thought a picture a word from today's lesson even the rock and the hard place for your own thinking and creativity body mind or spirit and remember also as we go through this exercise day by day together and in your notebook then remember to keep a balance between body mind and spirits and benedict would have said that keep a balance so that sometimes the idea is something that you ponder or talk about with someone else sometimes it's food for your prayers and opens a dimension of your spiritual life and sometimes it's something which gives you the encouragement to do something creative with your gifts not necessarily to build saint paul's cathedral but to do something quite simple and that is using your your physical attributes which god has given you whatever they are because it's from the smallest seeds that real refreshment can grow for others so let's say our own prayers today on this 25th of february and we are praying in the anglican communion for the diocese of arizona in the episcopal church of the united states and as we remember justin our archbishop and remember also rose bishop of dover and tim bishop at lambeth our diocese has asked us to pray for every part of the diocese as the lenten journey continues and we do that today a prayer is is given for this by malcolm gavin who's a church warden at st martin's dover and the dover deanery lay chair said this is a request from the deanery that we are praying for at this time and we'll go on praying for tomorrow so let's say our own prayers and think of people that we need to pray for and we continue to pray for the health of his royal highness the duke of edinburgh prince philip pray for any whom you know to need our prayers in sorrow or sadness or bereavement almighty god whose son jesus christ fasted 40 days in the wilderness and was tempted as we are yet without sin give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your spirit and as you know our weakness so may we know your power to save through jesus christ our lord amen the moment of silence will follow the our father and into that silence for your intentions for this day and now we say the prayer our savior taught us in whatever language you 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 for ever and ever are men [Music] 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 those whom you would pray for today and always amen [Music]